Spanish students: what would you want in a Spanish e-course?

[LadyStache in Baja]

Hello all,

I keep getting requests from local expats here that want to learn Spanish.  I'm fluent and have teaching experience (more with kids than adults, and teaching reading and writing of the English language).  There are two other teachers in town.  There are countless resources online.  I know several of you want to learn Spanish, and despite all the free resources, you're still struggling.

So I know there's a market for my talent.  But I don't want to get $20 an hour to sit with someone and suffer through their terrible attempts at Spanish.  :)

But if I could get 10 people to pay for a $20 e-course that includes some sort of end of the course live group chat, I could go for that! 

So I guess I'm asking....what you you want in a course like that?

Ideally I'd create 5 or so courses and students would enjoy the first one enough to want to sign up for more.  Each course would have multiple lessons.

I guess I'm still thinking out loud here, there's a lot of different ways this could go.  If I could get rid of the live group chat all together, I would, but I think practice speaking and listening is the major key to being able to converse, so I think it has to stay.  I could certainly do videos, but then the client won't get to practice speaking....any ideas to get around this?  I could do a phone conversation....but that still involves my one-on-one time, so I'm back to making $20/hr.

Just want to throw out there that Skype is not an option at this point because of slow wifi speeds.

[LeRainDrop]

To be honest, I'm not your target market because even though I have rusty Spanish-speaking skills and want to get them re-tuned, I probably would not do it primarily via online course.  The reason my high school classes were so awesome is that we all had to converse 100% in Spanish from day 1.  We had complete immersion at school, supplemented with studying abroad in total immersion.  I actually think the "live group chat" part that you mentioned would be the most valuable aspect of an e-course in Spanish.  Good luck!

[Gimesalot]

Why don't you create a simple product that you can give away for free after people answer 3 questions and give you an email.  For example, a list of the 10 super useful phrases in Spanish and English with very clear phonetic spelling. 

You can have three multiple choice questions like, "What is your goal for learning Spanish?" "Where do you learn best?" and "How much would you pay?"

Then you'll have a list of potential clients, and some data for generating your product.

[LadyStache in Baja]

Love it Gimesalot!  Thank you!

[Lake161]

Practice speaking and listening is key. I'm not sure how to handle the speaking practice.

For the listening part, if you could pre-record a bunch of audio or video to listen to with comprehension questions, that would be great. Living as an expat in a Spanish speaking country, people are generally very patient when I speak slowly and badly, but my biggest problem is understanding what they are saying. A lot of listening practice would help. I use the local news for practice, but to have a listening component tied to the syntax I am currently learning would be helpful.