Effectiveness of ESL Tutoring

I met with two ESL students today for private lessons. Today was one of those days where I doubted my effectiveness as a tutor. I have been working with one of today's English language learners for several months. He is mostly working on his business English skills. He is making a lot of progress, especially in the area of writing effective emails. During our sessions, he takes notes of the mistakes he has made and the improvements we make to his writings. He then studies these notes between our sessions and applies what he has learned.

I have been working for only a few weeks with the other student. Unfortunately, I don't feel like he is making any improvement. Of course, we have only met a total of six times, so I should probably allow more time for an assessment. However, I still doubted my effectiveness and the choices I was making for lesson plans.

I have to remind myself that I am only in control of the lesson plans that I make and the job I do of teaching. Learning a new language is something that cannot be done in only one or two lessons per week. Ultimately, it's the student's responsibility to learn what is being taught.

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