They expect to learn as much as possible in the classroom. Being assigned homework and not finding time to do it can be very frustrating and may eventually lead to giving up the course. When assigning homework is pointless because the learners never do it, classroom activities must be enough. There may be alternative homework which does not require extra time, like listening to the radio or TV news in English and reading the press in English. Some Polish newspapers, for example, Nowa Europa , now have summaries of the issue's articles in English, and in almost any newspaper one can now find advertisements in English.
Adult learners respond negatively to the teacher's using the textbook as the only teaching aid.
They do not like the situation where the teacher uses the book in an indiscriminating way, prepares no other materials, or follows the teacher's book blindly. One of the reasons why adults are not very fond of conscientious, uninterrupted covering of the material in the textbook may be that they associate this kind of learning with their school years, which they obviously would not like to go back to as grown-up, professional people. Sticking to the textbook material all the time sounds boring. It is necessary for the teacher to be innovative and prepare some extra materials and organise classroom activities in a different way from what the textbook instructions suggest. Most textbook writers would agree that the teacher may sometimes deviate from or supplement the author's suggestions.