Having a high speed Internet connection with suitable computer hardware and software are important if you want to learn or teach conversational English online.
The various packages provided by Skype are probably a good place to start when it comes to looking at software and in some cases this system actually provides free calls(Skype to Skype user calls) to anywhere in the world covered by the network. Using voice over Internet technology (VOIP), Skype facilitates high quality audio and video connections, which are ideal for teaching and learning English. There are other free facilities such as MSN and ICQ but generally speaking Skype seems more stable and provides a better learning platform since there are several useful teaching aids like a whiteboard available.
Whatever your choice in software you also need to look at the hardware that you will be operating it from. Lets face it modern software like Skype eats up memory and effects processor speed so a fairly modern computer is a must. I personally favour a laptop running Windows with a processor of around 4Ghz. My computer also has connections for headphones since speech quality is much better using them.
A broadband connection of at least 1Mb download speed is a definite plus, dial up connections are not really suitable for online work.
Just a word of caution here, since you may well be exchanging files with your clients please make sure you have an effective firewall and anti-virus software installed on your machine. Keep it up to date and scan any files arriving from a client whatever the source.
Better safe than sorry!
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