Hello everyone,

I am a primary teacher, though qualified with an MA in EFL teaching. Primary teaching pays for the bills, one-to-one teaching gives me the feeling of  self-actualisation and self-satisfaction and offers me both personal and professional development.

I am tutoring an adult student (37), who I have to stress approached me and asked if I could brush up on his English. Well, I'd rather rephrase that. If I could teach him English from scratch. He's been living in the UK for over three years, yet has got non-existent English. This means, apart from introducing himself, he is incable of saying anything else.

With a great enthusiam, I have started turoring him using mainly visual resouces, as I have a feeling he's dislexic, focusing on pronunciation and ocassionally using New English File Beginner. In the past 4 weeks I have been stuck on the verb "to be" and that's only the singular. He is simply reluctant  to contribute towards his learning. I have got a feeling that his understanding of one-to-one tutoring is "getting fed with a big spoon full of knowledge". No homework done, his student's or work book have never been opened and the seal on the CD that comes with it never broken.

I have had a serious conversation with him, not in Enlish but my rather broken Polish. I have asked what his expectations were and stressed that I cannot teach him, unless he wants to learn. He admitted he's lazy with  an excuse that he comes home from work at 6 o'clock. Well, all of us work and have a choice to use our spare time constructively or not.

There's a saying in English: "Where there's a will, there' a way." But in this case, I'd change it to "Where there's no will, there's no way."

What shall I do? I'm keen to teach him but at the same time I don't want to jeopartise my reputation. "She took money and didn't teach me anything."

I have never had an issue with motivation when teaching adults. They pay for their lessons and want to learn.

I told him we would give it another try. After his holiday we would start over again, hopefully with a more positive attitude and better involvement from my student's side.

Any suggestions?

Anyone encountered similar situation? How did you deal with it?

Shall I carry on or give up?

Thanks,

Alena