IMMEDIATE GOALS – In contrast to the young learners, adults usually have some specific goals, which they want to reach in a near future (it may be a job promotion, college admission or any other personal goals). Be sure to figure out the individual goals of your students at the beginning of the course, so that you constantly connect the studying material to the goals, in such a way keeping the students motivated.

SELF-CONCEPT – There may be a huge difference between the participants’ of the course self-concepts. While some may be very optimistic about their capacities to learn English, others may be convinced that they are too old to learn, or just cannot do it (maybe because they have failed school or had poor learning capacities in childhood). It is very important to establish friendly and trusting atmosphere in the class, so that students don’t feel nervous or strained.

NATIVE LANGUAGE – Although it may appear not very important, native language plays a big role in how fast the person learns English. For instance, it is much easier to understand and learn English when the native language of a student has a similar alphabetical system, or is close to English in grammatical structure, vocabulary or sound forms. Don’t get prejudiced, however, to those students, whose native languages are very different from the English. Very often such students may become fluent and knowledgeable in English as well.

NATIVE CULTURE – May be one of the most unexpected factors for the teacher that influences the lessons. However, the truth is that the culture defines such things as:
- the role of the teacher in classroom,
- the atmosphere in which the class should be held,
- the techniques for teaching the language.

In some Eastern cultures, a teacher has a very dominant position in the classroom, and there cannot be any friends-like interaction between a teacher and a student. That is why you might need to adjust your behaviour and the way you conduct class to some minor changes in order not to offend the students; however, it might also mean you need to explain the culture differences and encourage students to share the norms of communication of the society they are living in at the moment.