Finding students

Teaching foreign students from home is a great way to earn a valuable extra income and you are able to tailor earning an additional income around your daily life.

You can dictate your terms for taking students. For instance you may wish to consider the following: -

  • Time of year
  • Which sex
  • Sport or interests
  • Certain countries
  • Length of stay
  • Hours of tuition
  • Involvement
  • Age range

The times of year you will take students. Students under 23 generally travel in our holidays. Will you want to keep your holiday time separate, or get the most out of the most lucrative times of year? How much time would you like to spend with your own children or will you see it (as I do) that you make an effort (and get paid for it) to take your student along with your own children to places of interest which you wouldn’t normally make the effort to go to. Personally speaking, my children love having someone else to come along with us. It helps to curtail the bickering between brother and sister!

Will you accept both male and female students? Obviously this depends on your personal circumstances. A single female would not be sensible taking on a single male for a homestay visit.

Likewise, you may decide that if both your children are girls, a boy may (or may not, depending on how old they all are) not have a great time and prefer to stay where there are other boys to interact with.

You may wish to attract students who play a particular type of sport so that they fit in with your children or lifestyle.

You could decide to accept only students from certain countries i.e. France, Spain or China. If you have a particular interest in certain countries, by all means, stick to only certain countries and nationalities.

The length of the students stay – this could be from 2 weeks to 2 years

How many hours per week tuition you are prepared to teach. Most homestay students opt for tuition of between two and three hours with the occasional student requiring four hours per day. If you are teaching business English or medical English or a very particular niche to adults, you may be asked to teach up to five hours per day. Bear in mind though, that over four hours per day can be very tiring for both student and teacher and you are better to opt for two hours to begin with.

How much do you wish to get involved? Will you only offer a room which could be a foreign exchange student at an exchanging university, or full board and lessons, or somewhere in between

You may prefer a particular age group, for instance, if you have young children at home you may only wish to take children under 15 or even under 10.

Consider that we have so far found that the majority of overseas students, visiting the UK to improve their English, are aged between 17 and 23, although we are now aiming at attracting older, business and niche customers too.

You may wish to only tutor from home or go to other people’s house or meet them in a café, the options are: -

  • To host and tutor
  • To host only
  • To tutor only
  • Where to tutor
  • Tutoring online

The more you narrow your choices down, at least in the beginning, the fewer students you are likely to attract.

Once you become established, you may wish to specialise and take only male or female students and for example, accommodate only children under the age of 10.

You could look to specialise in certain activities outside of lessons, for instance, if you have an adventure centre near you which does archery or if you have horses and ponies you could appeal to horsy female students.

It is essential to encourage all your past visitors, to leave feedback. As a parent looking to send your child to a foreign family, previous visitor’s feedback is really important.

When preparing your Xilfee profile page, do put up photographs. The main point of the site is to allow students to see you.

Many students, who view the pages, do not speak or read English fluently which is why they are looking to visit you in the first place.

You have probably heard the saying, "a picture is worth a thousand words" so sell you and your family through your pictures.

View the pictures the day after submitting them to your profile and ask yourself, would I go to that family? If you have put up pictures of your house, your dog and some bad pictures of you, would you, if you were a student, apply to you?

If the answer is no, then change the pictures. Students will not beat your door down if you have submitted fuzzy pictures of your house or because you have a dog or because there is an obscure group picture of you.

Students visit because they see a nice, smiling family who look well dressed and happy. They visit you because you look as though you have made an effort with your profile and so you probably will when they visit you.

Be sure to make an extra effort to get someone to take a posed group picture of you and your family along with a picture of the room they will use and some of the places you plan to visit. Sell yourself like a holiday brochure.

Keep changing your profile as you have new information, so as to improve it.

Don’t forget, no matter how many students we attract onto our site and no matter how hard we work, we won’t get bookings for you unless your profile looks professional and inviting. Its up to you to help yourself as much as you can.

 

 

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