Personalised English tuition: 'I don't think you can help with this, but...'
That sentence comes up more often than you might expect. An agent or a parent writes in with a request that feels, on the face of it, slightly impossible. A child too young for a normal course. A student whose needs do not fit neatly into a brochure description. A passion so specific that it seems unlikely we would have a teacher to match.
This is exactly where personalised, one to one English tuition earns its name. Because every course is built around a single student rather than a fixed class or curriculum, there is almost always a way to make an unusual request work. Here are a few recent examples of what that looks like in practice.
A flexible English course for a four year old who learned through play
A mother in Spain needed lessons for her four year old daughter while she worked. Our courses are normally designed for students aged seven and above, so on paper this did not fit. But personalised tuition means exactly that, so rather than turning the enquiry away, we asked a simple question: what does she enjoy doing?
The answer was painting, drawing, baking and swimming. It happened that one of our teachers, normally known for football coaching, has a young daughter of his own and spends his free time doing precisely those things with her. He was delighted to take on a young learner for the first time, building lessons around play and creativity rather than a textbook. The agent had expected a no. What she got instead was a teacher who turned out to be a perfect fit.
A gifted teenager who wanted to debate politics in English
Another enquiry described an exceptionally able teenager, fluent in several languages already, whose ambition was to practise political debate in English. It is not the kind of request that fits a standard course listing. But one of our teachers is, alongside his academic work, a sitting local politician. The match took moments to make once we knew what to look for, and the proposal went out with the agent waiting eagerly to hear back.
Combining an English course with golf coaching
A request came in for a student working towards professional golf, already at a strong level of English, who wanted English lessons combined with golf coaching. We were able to place him with a teacher based in Northern Ireland, within easy reach of several excellent golf courses. For a student who lives and breathes the sport, learning English somewhere he could also spend afternoons practising made the whole experience click into place.
Accessible English tuition for a student who uses a wheelchair
We have also been working through the practicalities of hosting a student who uses a mobility scooter, looking at which of our teachers could offer ground floor accommodation and step free access, and what support a teacher would need to make the placement work safely and well. It is not always simple, and it does not always come together immediately, but the starting point is always the same: how do we make this work, rather than whether we can.
Why personalised tuition can flex around almost anything
None of these students fit a standard course description. That is rather the point. A homestay or one to one English course, built around a single teacher and a single student, or a small family group, can flex around almost anything, because there is no large class timetable to accommodate and no fixed curriculum to follow. The course can be built around the person, not the other way round.
So if you are reading a request and thinking it sounds a little unusual, or a little too specific, or simply not the kind of thing that gets listed on a website, it is worth asking anyway. With personalised English tuition, most of the time there is a way to make it work.
If you have a student in mind who does not quite fit the usual brochure, get in touch and tell us about them. We would love to help you find the right course.
