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the sex of the noun, and it worked.

Further introducing phrases that will help the elderly to answer questions that they do not understand was dealt with in lessons, asking directions was dealt with, knowing how to approach that first polite contact with their neighbors and being able to explain in simple terms that their French was limited but that they were trying actually enhanced their lifestyles here.

We play games with the masculine and feminine, and it works. I try at all times to make the lessons tailored to each individual and have developed my phonetic system to almost perfection, and with people from all kinds of backgrounds and with all manner of accents from different areas of the UK, the system works.

French numbers are extremely complex when first learning them, and here I started by explaining to students how to pronounce their own telephone numbers. This was extremely helpful and they never had to write them in correct French to begin with, and has been a valuable lesson as it is a question that is asked so many times in France. Another thing that I taught them phonetically was to be able to spell their names and addresses.

The point of this advice is that many teachers stick to traditional teaching because it is what they were taught, and put up with the failure ratios. Personally, I believe in my circumstances, failure ratios are a reflection of my ability to communicate with my students, and if it means developing a system of my own, which it has, then it was worth the extra work to have the satisfaction of seeing people learning to speak a language that they need to speak.

Flexibility is the key to success. Academic lessons have to be made not only relevant to the students' lifestyle, but to their level of intellect and interest. Make a lesson dull, and as a teacher, you fail and since developing my system of teaching, I honestly believe that other teachers of mature students may wish to try this method of teaching that is simple but works.

The older disabled or non academic student can and will learn, though it is important to gear the lessons to those people, bearing in mind their own individual circumstances, disabilities and working on areas of strengths to achieve some kind of balance and harmony that works.

Learn more about this author, Rachelle de Bretagne.
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