Teaching English to adults who work ten-hour days

Every adult class I have taught in Hanoi begins with the same optimism. Learners promise an hour a day. By week three the engineer has a deadline, the nurse has night shifts, and the shop owner has Tet coming. If the course depends on that hour, the course is already over.

So I plan for the worst week. The non-negotiable homework is twelve minutes: one short recording of their own voice, one retrieval quiz, one sentence written about their actual work. Anything beyond that is optional and clearly labelled as optional.

Design for the worst week, not the best intention.

The recording is the part that changes people. Speaking aloud for ninety seconds, then listening back once, catches more errors than I could correct in the lesson, and it takes place in the car park or on a motorbike stop rather than at a desk that never gets used.

In the lesson itself we cut the warm-up. Adults who have been awake since five do not need a game; they need the first five minutes to matter. We start with the hardest thing while attention is highest and move to lighter practice at the end.

Two years of this and my completion rate has roughly doubled. Not because the learners became more disciplined, but because I stopped designing courses for a version of them that does not exist on a Thursday.