ESOL tutors for everyday English, work and study

Choose a task that matters to you. This gives the tutor a useful starting point and helps you judge whether the lessons are relevant.

You may speak comfortably but find a written form difficult. You may read a message accurately but miss the same information when someone says it quickly. A useful first assessment looks at speaking, listening, reading and writing separately.

For example, read a short class notice, explain it in your own words, listen to a change of time and write a reply. This helps identify whether the next step is vocabulary, understanding speech, sentence building or reading accuracy. Bring any recent course feedback, and tell the tutor which languages you use and whether you read and write in them.

Agree a small first goal, such as finding the date and time in a new message without help. If English letters and spelling are unfamiliar, ask for spoken practice, pictures and a small amount of writing at a time. If you already manage everyday English, use longer texts and tasks that need explanation or reasons.

Here is a made-up practice message:

Your appointment is on Thursday at 10.30 am. Please arrive ten minutes early.

The appointment is at 10.30 in the morning, but you need to arrive at 10.20. “Early” means before the appointment. Count back ten minutes; arriving at 10.40 would be ten minutes late. Finding the time alone is not enough: the instruction changes when you should arrive.

Now practise the conversation. If you miss the time when someone says it, you can ask, “Could you repeat the time, please?” After listening, check: “So I should arrive at twenty past ten?” “Twenty past ten” means 10.20.

For a follow-up, change the message to 2 pm, with the same instruction to arrive ten minutes early. The arrival time becomes 1.50 pm, or “ten to two”. “Ten to two” means ten minutes before two o’clock. You could check: “So I should arrive at ten to two?”

The aim is to understand a fresh message and confirm the detail, rather than remember one answer.

Imagine you need to change your English class because your work schedule has changed. A first attempt might be:

I need change class. I work Tuesday.

The reader can guess the problem, but does not know which class you want. A clearer message is:

Hello, could I move to the Wednesday class? My working hours have changed, so I cannot attend on Tuesdays. Thank you.

“I need change” needs to before the verb: “I need to change”. The improved version uses “could I” to make a polite request, names the class wanted and uses “so” to connect the reason with its result. “On Tuesdays” shows that this is a regular problem.

A beginner could practise the shorter pattern, “Could I change my class, please?” A learner ready for more can explain the reason and offer an alternative time. For example: “I can attend on Wednesdays after 3 pm.” This tells the reader when a different arrangement would work.

This is an illustrative task, not an official assessment answer. A useful check is whether someone reading your new message can tell what you want, why, and when you can attend.

Choose practice you can fit around work, school or family life. You might listen to a short message twice, write down its key detail and then say a reply aloud. If writing is your priority, revise one short message using the tutor’s feedback before trying a different request.

Keep the first attempt and the revised version. At a later lesson, try a similar task with a new date, purpose or reader. Can you complete it with fewer prompts? Can you explain a misunderstanding or correct it yourself? These are useful signs to discuss when reviewing progress.

Agree lesson frequency around the goal, budget and time you can spend practising between sessions. For a course deadline, bring the assessment date and recent feedback so you can prioritise the skills that still need work.