Sadhana Pemadasa
A Day in the Life of an English Lecturer for 18+ English as a Second Language Students
By Sadhana Pemadasa
My day as an English lecturer for adult English as a Second Language students does not start with textbooks or grammar charts, but it starts with coffee. Strong coffee. The kind that wakes you up and whispers, You’re about to talk, laugh, and listen for the next five hours straight—better be ready.
By the time I walk into the classroom, it is already buzzing. Some students are chatting in their own languages (Sinhala or Tamil), switching to English when they spot me. Others are flipping through notebooks, trying to memories the last-minute vocabulary from yesterday’s lesson. It is a mix of nervousness and excitement that I have come to love.
This is not a quiet, orderly room full of children waiting for instructions. This is a colourful meeting point of worlds—my 18+ English as a Second Language students come from every corner of Sri Lanka. Kandy, Anuradhapura, Colombo, Rathnapura (Gem City), etc. And they are here for a reason: to learn English well enough to live, work, study, and dream in it.
Morning: Breaking the Ice
The first ten minutes of class are never about grammar. They are about breaking the ice, about easing everyone into the rhythm of English before we dive into the heavy stuff. I usually start with a question—sometimes serious, sometimes silly.
“Tell me,” I say today, “what is your dream breakfast?”
The answers roll in, each one a tiny cultural postcard. Ahmed talks about warm, flaky bread from his village bakery. Mekala describes steaming bowls of rice porridge that her grandmother makes. Kithma insists nothing beats a strong espresso and buttery croissant.
By the time we have finished laughing about the merits of pineapple on toast (“Why? Just… why?” says one student), everyone is speaking English without realising they are practising. The shyest students are smiling. The room feels lighter, and just like that, the lesson begins.
Late Morning: Grammar Meets Real Life
I will be honest: teaching grammar to adults can be tricky. The past perfect tense is not exactly the most thrilling concept. But here is the thing: 18+ students bring their own lives into the classroom, and that is the magic.
Today, we are working on telling stories in the past. Instead of dull example sentences, I ask them to share a “disaster that turned into a funny story”. You would be surprised at the tales that come out. One student accidentally bought a goat instead of soap in a local market. Another tried to ask for “chicken” in a restaurant but ended up ordering “kitchen”.
The room explodes with laughter, and suddenly grammar is not a boring set of rules; it is a tool for telling the stories they want to tell.
Lunchtime: The World in One Room
One of my favourite parts of teaching adults is what happens when class ends but nobody wants to leave. During lunch breaks, the classroom turns into a little festival of smells and sounds. Someone has homemade pickles. Someone else offers spicy snacks from home. A shy student from Kegalle quietly hands me an oil cake she made that morning.
We talk not just about English but about families, jobs, and the strange things we have all had to get used to living in a different country. These moments are not in the lesson plan, but they are where the real language learning happens. No pressure, no grades, just human conversation.
Afternoon: Pushing the Comfort Zone
The afternoon sessions are where I push my students a little further. Today we are doing a mock job interview. I play the role of a potential employer, complete with a serious face and tricky questions.
“Tell me about a time you faced a challenge,” I ask one student. She hesitates, glances at her notes, then starts speaking. At first, it is halting. Then the sentences begin to flow. She tells me about moving to a new country, about learning to navigate a strange city, and about the day she bought her first train ticket without help.
When she finishes, the whole class claps. It is not just about the English; it is about the courage it took to speak it out loud.
The Laughter that Keeps us Going
Here is something people do not always expect: adult English as a Second Language classes can be downright hilarious.
Once, during a pronunciation exercise, I was explaining the difference between “beach” and… well, let’s just say a word you would not want to shout in public. The class could not stop laughing every time someone slipped. But by the end of the lesson, not a single person made the mistake again.
We have had debates about whether cats are secretly smarter than dogs, storytelling sessions where the plot goes completely off the rails, and role-plays so over-the-top they feel like mini theatre productions. Those moments of joy are just as important as the grammar drills, they keep everyone coming back.
The Quiet Victories
Not every success is loud and dramatic. Sometimes it is in the small moments you almost miss.
There is the student who, in the first week, barely spoke above a whisper but now volunteers answers without being called on. There is an engineer who can finally write a full professional email without second-guessing every word. There is the young woman who shyly tells me she ordered her coffee in English for the first time at the airport, and the barista understood her perfectly.
These moments might not make headlines, but they are why I keep showing up. Each one is a step toward independence, toward confidence, toward a future that feels bigger.
Evening: Reflecting on the Day
By the end of the day, my voice is tired, my coffee cup is empty, and my desk is covered in papers with doodles in the margins, but my mind is buzzing.
Teaching adults means you never just teach English, but you learn, too. You learn about other cultures, resilience, and the many ways to express “I miss home.” You learn patience when a student just cannot quite get a tricky sound. You learn humility when they tell you about the sacrifices they have made to be here.
As I pack my bag, I think about tomorrow’s lesson. Maybe we will practise giving directions. Perhaps we could play a storytelling game. Either way, there will be laughter. There will be new words. There will be moments that surprise me.
And that is why, after all these years, I still think teaching 18+ English as a Second Language students is one of the most fun and most meaningful jobs in the world.
Why it Never Gets Old
Every class is a fresh mix of accents, experiences, and dreams. Every lesson is a chance to connect with someone whose path I might never have crossed otherwise, and every day is a reminder that language is not just grammar but it is a bridge.
We build that bridge together, word by word, until my students can cross it into new jobs, new friendships, and new adventures. Sometimes they send me a message months later: “I have got the job!” or “I am studying at university now!” Those messages are like little bursts of sunshine.
So yes, there are hard days. Days when the Wi-Fi dies mid-lesson or when I have to explain the same grammar point three different ways before anyone gets it. But there are also days when a whole class laughs so hard we cry. Days when a student speaks a perfect sentence and I want to cheer and days when I walk out of the classroom thinking, ‘This is exactly where I’m meant to be.’
That is the thing about being an English lecturer for 18+ English as a Second Language students: it is not just fun, but it is a privilege. It is a privilege I get to live every single day.
