Last night I was in Portugal, Turkey and two different cities in Brazil. The other week I was in Saudi Arabia and Turkmenistan as well as China and Japan. How is this possible? By connecting with my students on Cambly.
Cambly is an English learning platform which enables its users to connect with native English speakers from around the world, twenty-four hours a day. The students can take up a free trial from 5 to 15 minutes (depending on which country they are in) and then decide if they want to study from 15 minutes to 2 hours a session, from 1 to 5 days a week. The price plan is connected to the country as well. For example I know that the cost of taking Cambly in Brazil is much lower than taking out a plan in Europe.
It is a cheap option for students but that has the downside of being a poorly paid option for the native speakers who give the service, but more on that later.
Just a little on how I got into this in the first place.
I first started to think about teaching ESOL (English to Speakers of Other Languages) when I was considering my trip around the world many years ago. In fact, I took a post-grad TESOL certificate in 2007 – so over 10 years before I started my journey. It was to give myself a chance of earning money whilst I was travelling, and I enjoyed the course and the practical experience I had in the classroom. However, when it came to keeping up my skills whilst I was in Sheffield, I failed.
I applied to be a volunteer for a charity, teaching English to refugees and asylum seekers in the city. I was asked to attend for an interview and was waiting to be seen when another volunteer came to chat to me. He was saying how much he enjoyed the routine of coming in every week and seeing the same students, but when I looked around at the classrooms and desks all waiting to be filled I had this sinking feeling of being back at work.
I thanked him and got up and left. (I rang in later to apologise for time-wasting!) I guess that is how I have always felt about classroom teaching and it was the one-to-one nature of Cambly, as well as the fact that I could teach from home, which attracted me.
Fast forward to 2019 – and I was looking at options for earning some money whilst I was travelling to stop my savings from disappearing completely. It was whilst I was researching other travel blogs that I came across Cambly and decided to go for it.
So, to answer a question that I guess some of you are asking, NO you DON’T need a teaching qualification or any experience of teaching English to work on Cambly. It will help to get you hired – and I know that not everyone who applies gets accepted – but as long as you are a native speaker, all you need to do is to apply on the site and upload a video of yourself outlining the reasons why you feel you would be a good fit. I understand that the company then assesses the video, both in terms of your suitability and also for your use of spoken English. There are numerous videos on how to apply to Cambly, like this one here.
So, what are the good points for tutoring with Cambly? Notice I said tutoring – there is no requirement for you to teach and that is one of the pluses. Many of the students with higher level English skills just want to have a conversation and for you to make them aware of any mistakes as they speak. Some people are virtually fluent, but are aware that if they don’t keep up their conversational skills, they will lose their fluency. If a student does want some actual tuition, then Cambly does offer some ready-made slides that can be used with the student. I am not a great fan of these as I like a more flexible approach and prefer to screen share, (yes that is possible,) from other sites with the student. Flexibility for the tutors is a great plus of Cambly. I can literally log in (from anywhere where there is a good internet connection) at any time of the day or night and make myself available to students. There is also something called “Priority Hours” where, if I agree to be online for the full hour, the company will push new or unassigned students my way and guarantee me at least 15 minutes pay, even if I don’t speak to anyone (very rare in my experience.)
Because the students come from all over the world, there are different nationalities on at different times. So, for me, when in the UK, the early morning slots will be taken by Chinese, Japanese and South East Asian students; during the day it is more likely to be Turkish and Middle Eastern ones; and in the evenings students from South and Central America, especially Brazil. Some students may be of one nationality living in another country: I have had Japanese students living in the USA, Indian students in Kuwait and one of my regular students lives in London (he is Turkish). Although there is no staff room, there is an active Facebook group linked to the platform. Connecting with tutors from around the world has been one of the joys of Cambly and I have learned a lot, especially about which idioms are unique to the UK and those that are not; as well as inspiring me with different, often travelling, lifestyles.
If I were to talk about the negatives of working for Cambly, the first thing would be the pay: $10.20 per hour (currently about £8.00 due to the exchange rate) but I am not dependent on the money and it is something that I was considering doing as a volunteer. However, I think there are lots of issues regarding money and payment for things which I may well address in another blog post. As a compulsive gambler, (albeit no longer gambling!) knowing the value for money is difficult for me and I am also concerned that students are not being ripped off. (I do suggest for some that they look at free language exchanges, such as Hellotalk, but I realise that that is not a realistic option for everyone.)
Another negative is that not all students take the platform seriously. This can mean larking about and making fun of the tutors to more serious incidents. I once opened my camera to a line of five or six men pointing submachine guns at me whilst wearing masks. I was told I was speaking to the enemy of all US citizens and I blurted out that I was British. This led to some confusion and I heard the word British being bandied about amongst the Arabic. Eventually they left the tutorial and although I know they couldn’t shoot me over the internet, I still felt quite shaken by this.
I have also been flashed at. Now this is much more a concern for women than a 66-year-old man, but recently the company have responded to student concerns and now switch the camera off on the student side for all new clients. Some tutors say that this doesn’t help much because they can still hear the student grunting away… but tutors are able to ban any student from the platform for gross misconduct like this (although all such cases are reviewed by someone at Cambly, a job which must go down as one of the most distasteful in the world!)
My pet peeve about Cambly is the poor rating system and how little of this is divulged to people before they join the team. Basically students are encouraged to rate tutors on a scale from one to five (by clicking on emojis of smiley faces) and this counts to a rating which determines how much exposure the tutor gets on the platform. In other words, the higher the rating the more students are sent your way and the less down time you have (you are only paid for time actually spent talking to people). That is well and good, except that the average rating is expected to be 4.80 out of 5.00, so is biased to most students giving a 5/5 score which in real life (especially if you see a wide variety of students) is not going to happen. Free Trial ratings and low ratings due to connection problems (of which there are a lot) are supposedly screened out, but the company doesn’t offer any information on why a rating should go down from one week to the next, so there is no indication of what a tutor can do to improve. NB. In late 2023 the rating has been changed to a percentage score (max 100%) it is too soon to tell how this will affect tutors. Tutors on Cambly Kids are not rated.
One other negative, (and it may not be a problem just for Cambly but I have few other sites to compare it with,) is connection issues. I have to say, I don’t get so many of these compared to other tutors, (from what I read on the company’s Facebook page) but they do happen. Not being able to see the student is not such a problem (some students decide to turn off their cameras due to cultural issues or poor WiFi speeds) but, of course, I need to hear them. The one technical problem I most dislike is latency feedback, i.e. hearing my own voice coming back at me seconds after I have said something. I find this impossible to work through and trying to explain this to a student without fluent English is really difficult.
But if all this seems unduly negative, the great joy of the job is the students. In my time I have been in touch with over 1500 different students and only had a few negative experiences. I have several regulars – including one I see 5 days a week and have been with him (via his mobile phone) to the park, a waterpark and various beaches. With some random students I have been out to feed camels in Saudi Arabia, on a see-saw in Japan and outside a street cafe in Vietnam.
All in all, working for Cambly is a real joy and I wish I had known about it earlier. I keep my involvement down to a modest 15 hours a week over 4 days and that includes some preparation time and feedback time (not paid). Whether it would be right for others is another question. But it costs nothing to sign up and join, and it might, literally, open up a whole new world for you!
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If you are interested in working for Cambly, you can sign up using the link here: Cambly tutor referral. I will receive a small, variable amount for the referral which will help to keep this blog going! Contact me if you would like to know more!
