Long-term incorrect English

[HeatherCB]

I need some advice please:
My student has been in England for 13 years and learnt to speak English with colleagues. I've been teaching him for 5 years. Despite correcting the same mistakes every week during our conversations, he never learns the correct phrases, verbs, etc. Drilling works to a certain extent, but he's not keen on this.
Thank you

 

[jutfrank]

First, you should try and work out why he isn't learning. Is it connected to understanding and awareness, general intelligence, motivation, senility, fossilisation, speed of speech?

 

[5jj]

He has been your student for five years and is not really learning anything?

I have two questions:
Why is he still paying you money?
Why are you still taking it?

 

[HeatherCB]

First, you should try and work out why he isn't learning. Is it connected to understanding and awareness, general intelligence, motivation, senility, fossilisation, speed of speech?

Thank you for responding to me in such helpful detail. He does understand my corrections, he recognises that they are the same corrections all the time (I reassure him that it's normal as he has learnt the wrong English originally as I don't want him to feel bad). He is very intelligent, but in an engineering/inventive way (he sells his own inventions online). He is very motivated but has dyslexia and doesn't like or excel in grammar. He is only 50 and has no dementia. You are right to point out his speed of speech - he does speak very fast and this is probably another cause of his grammatical mistakes. As for fossilisation, yes, you are right, he does seem to have reached the point where he finds it hard to learn more. I teach him new words regularly and he doesn't note them down or seem interested in memorising them.

Given all these facts, could you please advise how I can help him progress? I do drill certain phrases sometimes and have had success with the phrase, "worth +-ing".

Thanks again so much for your help. I really appreciate it as I work independently.

 

[emsr2d2]

What's his native language?

 

[jutfrank]

To be frank, it doesn't seem from what you say like he cares too much about improving. What is it exactly he's paying you for? Have you asked him to specify his learning goals? Do you think if you ask him to write down exactly what he wants to achieve, it will help motivate him? If he's been paying you regularly for five years, he must be getting something out of your sessions. Ask him what it is.

 

[HeatherCB]

To be frank, it doesn't seem from what you say like he cares too much about improving. What is it exactly he's paying you for? Have you asked him to specify his learning goals? Do you think if you ask him to write down exactly what he wants to achieve, it will help motivate him? If he's been paying you regularly for five years, he must be getting something out of your sessions. Ask him what it is.

He has told me that he wants to speak like I do (impossible goal), but really I know that he enjoys the indepth discussions we have on history, politics, religion, anthropology, biology, etc. He is very intelligent and doesn't have such enjoyable and stimulating conversations with anyone else - this is what he values. I also teach him German and, interestlingly, he has less difficulty with grammar and such .....

I shall talk to him about his English grammar and verbs in general terms next lesson and see how that goes.
You are right about motivation - he must want to relearn incorrect phrases. It must come from him.
Thank you for your help

 

[HeatherCB]

What's his native language?

His native language is Hungarian.

 

[probus]

That's a partial explanation right there. Cognate words help us, and Hungarian, being a Finno-Ugric rather than an Indo-European language, has no cognates in English, or very very few.

 

[HeatherCB]

That's a partial explanation right there. Cognate words help us, and Hungarian, being a Finno-Ugric rather than an Indo-European language, has no cognates in English, or very very few.

That is true and a very interesting point. Grammatical structures will be different too. I'm learning Arabic at the moment, and the same is true for this language.