Environment and behavior

➡️ As much as we’re accommodating fun and spontaneous conversation sessions in English, we expect you to conduct your sessions in a well-lit, tidy room with no one else there besides you. Your face should be visible at all times during the sessions, and you should be either sitting at a desk or standing if it’s more convenient for you - in this case, your computer should be at your eye level.

Conducting sessions while lying in bed is considered unprofessional and might come off as rude. Your computer should be on a flat surface, and you shouldn’t move it around during the session. Last but not least, you should not have sessions in public places. Tutors are not allowed to use smartphones or tablets, as we want to ensure a good quality of the call and a good connection, but please note that yosers might opt for this option.

➡️ While we know that you are cool and authentic, we expect all our tutors to have polite, professional behavior during sessions. The types of behavior we consider inappropriate include, but are not limited to:

• Drinking alcohol, consuming drugs, smoking, or eating during the sessions

• Wearing inappropriate clothing (e.g., bikini, spaghetti strapped tops)

• Implying anything overly intimate or sexual toward yosers

• Having group sessions (e.g., bringing your friends or family members to meet a yoser)

• Using your smartphone during sessions (e.g., to check social media or messages) and not paying attention to the session

• Being rude, angry, or disrespectful toward yosers

• Making culturally insensitive, derogatory, or discriminatory comments about the yoser’s or any other culture

• Ending the session earlier than you should

If a tutor displays any of the abovementioned kinds of behavior, depending on the severity of the situation, their account might be temporarily suspended or, in some cases, terminated. Yo! Inglês sessions are recorded automatically (audio and video), and tutors and yosers who do anything against our policies will be held accountable if we verify that there are grounds for suspension or account closure. We use recordings for quality monitoring purposes and to handle potential complaints.

➡️ Please note that using curse words and slang is allowed, but only if the yoser requests that in their session preferences. As we strive to establish conversation partnerships between the yosers and tutors, it’s important for us to give yosers a real, authentic experience of using English in daily life, which sometimes includes that kind of verbiage as well. However, this means that tutors mustn’t be disrespectful to yosers and shouldn’t force them to use that kind of vocabulary.

➡️ If you speak Portuguese, whether you’re a native speaker or not - please refrain from using it during your sessions. Portuguese should be used as the last and ultimate resort - only if the yoser asks you to, or if they cannot understand what you said in English at all, when you must check with them whether speaking in Portuguese is valid at that particular moment. Even so, always rephrase and paraphrase what you're trying to say or use other resources (e.g., showing them pictures, objects, etc.) to help them understand before giving in to speaking in Portuguese. This means - stick to English whenever and as much as possible! After all, we all know that's how learners can truly get a hold of spoken English (and that's Yo!'s core mission).