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[riverboat]

I've recently acquired a new student from my school. He's a guy in his 40's, French, who has already taken 65 hours of one-to-one English lessons in two hour blocks twice a week over the last year and a bit.

He cannot say anything in English with any certainty except "hello", "bye" and "yes". After 65 hours of private lessons. If asked something like "what's your name" he can sort of unconfidently venture "Jack" but "Where are you from?" / "How old are you?" etc all draw blanks. You can then spend entire lessons drilling a couple of simple basic question and answers over and over and over, but he forgets it all moment to moment if he's not able to read it off a piece of paper or the board. We spent literally 10 minutes on "where are you from / I'm from France" but then if you ask him where he is from once hte answer text is wiped off the board, you get something like "Where I France" as a response. Conjugations of "to be"...hell, even the basic subject pronouns, just do not seem to be able to penetrate his brain with any lasting effect. Nor can he understand them when written down or spoken by someone else. Pointing to something on a piece of paper that said "listen" (part of an instruction to a task) he said (in French, everything is in French)...listen...that means "I am", right?

I left grammar behind and did a lesson on basic colours and food vocab....but again, even just working on trying to get five or six colours in English into his brain is practically impossible! Blue, black and green for some reason he already knows, but despite repeating "red" a million times while pointing to red things and getting him to repeat it back a million times, if you then 5 minutes later point to a red thing and ask what colour it is, he has forgotten the word for red and can only say it in French. You repeat the whole "red" drilling process for a while and move on, but then he just forgets it again.

After a few lessons with this guy, plus talking to other teachers who have taught him, I am literally at a loss as to how to proceed. He seems to be trying hard, he writes stuff down etc, but there is some kind of fundamental problem here. I've asked if he has memory problems in other areas of life, and he says no...he's clearly frustrated by his inability to learn English, and says he tries to look at his notes and stuff at home but he just can't make any progress. But it seriously seems like there is a kind of connection missing in his brain somewhere.

Has anyone ever had a student who literally seems impossible to teach? I just don't know what approach to take here...

[spiral78]

I've recently acquired a new student from my school. He's a guy in his 40's, French, who has already taken 65 hours of one-to-one English lessons in two hour blocks twice a week over the last year and a bit


It's definitely more difficult for some would-be learners than others, and this guy does sound like a very tough job!

Sometimes the disjointed times over a week don't really sink in - it's not continuous enough for a few learners to make progress.

This may not be feasible, but sometimes a short stint in an immersion programme can jump-start learning. I don't know if you can suggest that he spend 2 weeks either half or full time with you (hopefully lucrative for you, if he can do it!) or you might suggest a programme.

CERAN (Spa, Belgium) offers one and two week residential immersion programmes for all levels....

Again, this may be utterly impractical, but if he could get an intensive to get him on the path, he would possibly be able to pick up more on his own on a more regular teaching schedule.

Good luck with a tough case, in any case!

[steviok85]

I have a private lesson with a brother and sister who are a mismatch in terms of proficiency, but their father insists they have the lesson together.
After many hours pushing the boy to remember and use the auxiliary (is/am/are) for the present continuous tense, including making him write 'she is washing up' 65 times in his notebook, I have just given up trying, and turn a blind eye if he says: 'He making pierogi'. Is it my fault? How many years has he been learning this in his state school? How many more lessons can I give him the stern look of disbelief?
The approach is - try your best. Some people are not cut out for it, if you catch my drift.

[santi84]

There's quite a few possibilities. Obviously he struggles, I wonder if there is some sort of anxiety/fear/psychological barrier. I know he says he doesn't struggle with memory, but how is his academic history? Do you know if he has any sort of learning disability, or a possible undiagnosed learning disability?

[Daktari]

Some - not many - but the answer is YES!!

[artemisia]

Maybe. I had one years ago. Just about the only thing he could remember was "My name is X". When in doubt (all the time), that's how he'd 'answer'! ("How are you?" / "X". "My name is X"). Being relatively new to teaching at the time, I initially gave the poor guy a proper and relentless sledgehammering. He was retired and I thought he definitely had learning difficulties. I finally realised that he was really only doing his one on one class as a hobby so I stopped (mentally) tearing my hair out and things went much better after that. He didn't learn anything that he could remember but we both enjoyed the class a whole lot more.

I had a class of adults I also thought had learning difficulties. They DID learn but it was very slow and repetitive. I realised they couldn't 'understand' a question like "Do you live here?". They could understand the meaning but not the structure, which hugely stressed them out. Because they were a mono-lingual group, in the end I resorted to "translating" (incorrectly). I used a word for 'do' in their language to show them what the structure would look like if I asked the same question - word for word - in their language. After that, they relaxed.

[Dragonlady]

[artemisia]

I thought of one thing I did myself sometimes as a learner, though I don't know if you're going to easily be able to communicate this to him or if it's a practical thing for him to do at home. He could use post it notes and write down the English words for everyday objects and colours etc. and stick them onto things at home. So the post it with �cup� on it is stuck to a cup, 'mirror� is stuck to the bathroom mirror, the same with food and so on. Maybe if he sees such words constantly (and says them to himself) and has a visual association with them, some might stick in his brain. Hopefully, he'll build up some basic vocabulary that's reinforced in your classes. You could then use the same vocabulary and have word cards and picture cards and see if he can match them.

I guess if he can�t remember words, he won�t be able to remember sentences or questions. Things he's interested in is a good idea (sports, free-time activities vocab?)

[Justin Trullinger]

Businessman, right?

I know this type inside and out. My thoughts-

He's had difficulty learning; maybe not anybody's fault. It's just hard, and harder for some.

He doesn't have any idea HOW to learn. (Looks over his notes at home, etc, but avoids chances for real practice, I imagine.)

Low tolerance for ambiguity. Will not guess. (Doesn't like to make mistakes in public? Perfectionist? Shy? Whatever)

Does he want to learn? For himself, or is it an extrinsic thing? Pressure from about? Promotion in the future that requires English?

He's probably too busy, and doesn't do as much as he thinks he should (tells you he does) between classes.

All of these situations snowball and create the "real problem" described in your post:

[the_thinker]

I've had similar students. Sometimes several in a class. Immersion? Pah � I was teaching in a school in London, where all courses were 15 hours a week. When I joined, one of the two classes I was given was a beginners class. There was a Brazilian student there, who had been living in London, and studying at the school, for coming up to a year. He still hadn't progressed from this beginners class, despite good attendance. And he was the weakest in the class. It was incredible.

The policy at the school was that teachers changed classes, and level, every three months, from what I remember. So I think I did a six month stint with some other levels, and then after that I was given an elementary class. At some point, this guy appeared in the class. It was his last day at the school and he had just been moved up by his beginner class teacher to elementary! So after 18 months of living (and working) in London, studying 15 hours a week at a language school (and it was a decent place � good teachers), he made the transition from beginner to elementary.

It saddens me to say, but I do agree that some people just can't learn languages. Or only VERY slowly.

[Kofola]

Just an idea - why not focus on building passive knowledge and forget the productive skills for now?

CLT is very demanding on beginners who find languages difficult. They are trying to do so many things at once - receive, understand, memorise, produce, pronounce, store etc. You could reduce the load by using simple written texts, perhaps even - dare I suggest it - using a bit of the old grammar-translation style teaching. Just passively getting him to associate meaning and pronunciation with the words might help build his confidence and reduce the frustration of trying to remember things and produce them. You could build it up by using texts that repeat the same vocabulary and grammar just with slight variations here and there. Using texts that relate to pictures might help us well. Even better if you can use interesting pics of a place/family etc and use it as an ongoing narrative. It might make it more memorable and he will be able to associate words with images. It all depends on how his brain works. Perhaps he has an interest you can build it around or something to do with his job etc.

[santi84]

Justin has a good point - some adults just don't know how to learn, no matter what the subject is. Either they've lost that skill from being out of school for 25 years or they never learned it in the first place.

Effective learning strategies is one of the most unspoken and under-rated abilities out there!

I wonder if he is the type who attempts to glance at his notes while sitting at the dinner table with his family, rather than sit down and read them. I tried to do this recently (I am learning French) and found it was terribly inefficient

[fladude]

I am one of those adults who can ONLY learn another language through immersion. Academically, my other subjects have always been very good. I do have a juris doctorate degree and graduated 3d in my class. So I doubt that my problem is a general learning disability. However, when it comes to foreign languages the classes just do not work for me. My performance would be no better than the French gentleman. The traditional and accepted means of teaching another language just do not work with me at all. I took years of French and Spanish classes and can only say "hi" and "bye" and one beer/ cervesa.

The classes are even less effective when the teacher tries to stress proper grammar and starts using words like "tense." I can learn though if I am in a foreign culture speaking to locals. I believe that it is because I am a "people person." As long as the discussion is relevant to real people, real conversations, real issues, etc... my brain will pick up on it. But take out the human element and my brain decides that its all a bunch of disposable waste.

[riverboat]

Thanks for the replies all.

I must admit, I'm wavering between on the one hand "just make these classes as painless and possible for both him and me" approach, and on the other actually trying to get him to progress, which is of course going to be more painful for both of us. It's extremely tempting to go with the first approach, but am trying to stay motivated enough to go with the second.

[riverboat]

...and I forgot, someone asked about his motivation for taking lessons. He was told by his company that he had to learn, because they thought it would be good for his job (given the importance of English in the IT sector) and they booked and paid for something like 120 hours for him up front, through a public scheme that part-funds training. He was game enough to learn at first (as far as I can make out from other teachers' notes) but pretty soon psychologically gave up, and now he definitely would rather just quit, but can't because the hours are bought and paid for, and his company is enforcing attendance.