Teacher Discussion Forums

For those of you who tutor adults what is the longest amount of time a student studied with you? I've been a private tutor for the past 4 years and noticed that the longest an adult student stayed with me was for a year or little under a year. I'm beginning to wonder if it is just me or if this is normal. With elementary aged students it has been more like 3 years or more..

I know with kids, their parents make sure that they arrive to weekly tutoring sessions whether they like it or not. With adults, things like golf, care taking, post-work fatigue seem to get in the way of wanting to continue tutoring. Reasons for quitting seem to range from being too busy at work or school.

I enjoy working with adults very much and try to do my best to make lessons engaging, useful, and meaningful. How long have your adult students stayed with you?

p.s. I also realize that students must "move on" and not rely on a tutor forever. At the same time I would like to know if it's just "me" or it's just the nature of tutoring adults.

Adult students who claim they want to improve their English generally only stay with me for a few months. The few that have stuck around any longer are the ones who are "learning while doing": they need my help with work emails or other forms of correspondence. (These adults tend to learn more and learn faster than the ones who come voluntarily.)

I think adults forget how much effort is actually involved in being a student.

When I taught adults, they usually stayed with me 2+ years, but I was teaching at a teachers' college where they were enrolled to study English education, so I guess they had already made the choice to stick with/study education. We did lose a few of our ESL students, but not many. Also, this was in Africa, where I found life to go at a much slower pace than anywhere else and with less distractions, so maybe the students there were more available (physically with time and mentally with concentration) to put forth all the effort necessary to master a language.

Just my two cents;)
Stephanie

Check out the latest post on a fellow Gen X'er surviving the Mozambican Civil War and an unexpected visit with her @ http://www.bilinguallearner.com/-blog