What a trial lesson should actually do

My early trial lessons were auditions. I demonstrated method, showed materials, was charming for thirty minutes, and then wondered why the learners who signed up were rarely the ones I could help most.

A trial lesson has one honest job: to find out what the learner has been avoiding. The chapter they skipped, the tense they fake, the meeting they let a colleague chair. Everything about the course follows from that answer, and it will not appear in a placement test.

Ask what they have been avoiding. The answer is the course.

So the shape is now fixed. Ten minutes of the learner talking about their work or their life, in which I mostly listen and take notes on what they can already do. Ten minutes of one genuinely difficult task, chosen from what they described. Ten minutes agreeing what the first month would contain and what it would not.

The difficult task matters. It shows the learner what a real lesson feels like, and it shows me how they behave when something is hard - whether they guess, freeze, translate, or ask. That behaviour shapes my planning more than their level does.

I also say clearly when I am not the right teacher. Exam-driven work with a fixed date, or a technical register I do not know, belongs with someone else, and saying so has cost me nothing except courses I would have taught badly.