Teaching Working Professionals ESL | What Works?

Teaching working professionals English as a second language (ESL) or English as a foreign language (EFL) can be a tricky thing because they often don't have much extra time to study, and they want maximum results. What can we do as teachers? How should we conduct our classes?

​How can we give maximum value to our adult students who have minimum time to study English?

ESL Teaching Adults

Providing Value

Whether you're a beginner teacher or an experienced professional, the main thing that we should be looking to do in our EFL classes is to provide value. Especially if our students are paying us a decent price for our lessons. How can we provide maximum value to our adult students? 

​One way is to provide extra work for them to do on their own. This doesn't have to be extra work for you, and it doesn't have to be annoying work for the student.

How it works

If you click on the Superstar Students tab at the top, you'll see a checklist of tasks you can give your students to have small tasks to do in their daily lives, you'll also see a listening and reading worksheet for the students to grasp the content that they are taking in and give them opportunity to review expressions they knew as well as learn new expressions from their listening or reading piece.

Things they do anyway

"Assigning extra work doesn't have to be a task. Watch something you genuinely enjoy."

When you assign extra work for your students, make it as stress-free as possible. One way is to remind them that anything they enjoy reading, watching, or listening to in their own language probably has an equivalent thing in English. Give them a reminder to do these things in English and give them the worksheets above to give them some guidelines as they're watching.

The important thing is that they are taking in things they genuinely want to hear or learn about. If the desire doesn't come from inside, it really won't be very effective in the end.

Pro Tips:

Use the Material - Use these materials (including the worksheets) in your private lessons and the students will get to reinforce and check their expressions. Practice them together.

Adults Need A Little Push, Too - Just because your student is a working professional, doesn't mean that they will automatically do your homework. Give them small assignments and tasks to do as homework even if it's just to be regular contact with English. Consistency is Key.

Easter Egg Lessons:

Motivation - Our objective should be to provide intrinsic motivation.

Other Lessons - By looking at interesting articles or watching interesting videos, students will learn new things PLUS they will be learning it in English.

​What else can you find?

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