Why Do Adults Need One to One Coaching to Learn the Difference Between “These” and “Those”?

One to One English lessons in Hua Hin

One to one English lessons in Hua Hin at Pre-A1 level tackle the plural forms of this and that — these and those — as a natural extension of the lesson that comes before. If you can say “this is a bag” and “that is a chair,” the next step is learning to say “these are bags” and “those are chairs.” It sounds like a small step. For a Thai adult learner, it is not, because it requires the learner to change not just the demonstrative word but also the verb — from “is” to “are” — every time they move from singular to plural. Two things change at once, which is where errors appear and where a private coach earns their value.

At ILC in Hua Hin, one to one English lessons at Pre-A1 level give the coach the ability to catch these errors the moment they occur and correct them before they become habits. The learner says “these is my books.” The coach corrects immediately: “these are my books.” The learner repeats. The coach notes what to practise again in the next session. This is how the Pre-A1 Foundation English Coaching programme at ILC works — not by explaining rules once and moving on, but by building accuracy through repeated spoken practice with consistent correction.

Plural Nouns and Why They Cause Problems for Thai Speakers

Thai does not mark nouns for singular or plural in the same way English does. In Thai, whether you are talking about one bag or ten bags, the word for bag stays the same — the number or context makes the quantity clear. In English, the noun changes: bag becomes bags, chair becomes chairs, book becomes books. And when you move from this to these, you also have to change the noun. For a Thai adult in one to one English lessons in Hua Hin, this requires building a new grammatical habit that simply does not exist in their first language.

Private coaching is the most effective way to build this habit because it allows the coach to create practice activities that specifically target the error pattern the individual learner is producing. Rather than running through a standard worksheet that covers plural nouns in general, the coach at ILC focuses on the specific combinations — these are, those are — that the learner finds difficult, and practises them until they come out correctly without conscious effort. The British Council’s guidance on adult language acquisition supports this targeted approach as significantly more effective than general exposure to the language at Pre-A1 level.

What Mastering These and Those Unlocks

Once a learner in one to one English lessons in Hua Hin can reliably use these and those alongside this and that, they have control over the entire demonstrative system of English. That might sound technical, but in practice it means something simple: they can point at anything — one thing or several things, near or far — and say something accurate about it in English. That is a genuinely useful ability that comes up dozens of times a day, and it builds the learner’s confidence significantly because they feel that their English is correct and complete in this area, not approximate.

Adults who are ready to start building this kind of accurate spoken English can find out more on the adult English courses page at ILC, or book a free consultation at ILC in Hua Hin to discuss their level and goals. The EF SET CEFR guide explains how Pre-A1 fits into the international framework of English language ability for anyone who wants to understand what level they are starting from. One to one English lessons in Hua Hin at ILC are built for adults who want real results from real coaching, not from an app or a group class that moves too fast.