Supporting Students with ADHD in English: How One-to-One Tutoring Can Help Build Focus and Confidence
As a private English tutor with years of experience working with students with ADHD, I’ve seen first-hand how bright, creative, energetic learners can sometimes find traditional classroom environments frustrating and overwhelming.
Distractions, fast-paced lessons and rigid structures don’t always work for students with ADHD, but one-to-one tutoring can. In this blog, I’m sharing a little about my experience supporting students with ADHD, and how personalised English tuition can help them build skills, confidence and focus in a way that suits them.
✅ Why Tutoring Works So Well for Students with ADHD
In a classroom, it’s easy for students with ADHD to:
Feel distracted by noise, movement and the demands of managing lots of tasks at once.
Lose track of long, multi-step instructions.
Struggle with sitting still for extended periods or concentrating on long reading passages.
Miss opportunities to show what they’re really capable of.
One-to-one tutoring changes that. Sessions can be:
Shorter, varied and broken into bite-sized tasks.
Adapted to match the student’s pace and attention span.
Flexible - if a student needs to stand, fidget, or take a break, we work around it.
Focused entirely on what the student needs that day, without the pressure of peers or school-time constraints.
✅ How I Personalise English Support for ADHD Learners
When tutoring students with ADHD, I:
Keep lessons dynamic: We might switch between reading, writing and discussion to maintain interest.
Use timers or visual cues for short bursts of focus, followed by quick breaks.
Offer plenty of active, practical tasks, like story games, verbal planning, or sorting ideas with flashcards.
Use visual prompts and checklists to help with organisation and memory.
Provide lots of immediate, positive feedback to keep motivation high.
The aim is to harness their energy, creativity and fast-thinking skills, not suppress them.
✅ A Track Record of Support
I’ve supported KS3 and KS4 students with ADHD across a range of needs, including:
Focus, attention and impulse control.
Task-switching and organisation.
Motivation and engagement with longer texts.
Essay structure, planning and revision strategies.
I know from experience that when the environment and tasks are right, students with ADHD can produce wonderfully original, lively writing and insightful ideas.
Final Thoughts
If you’re the parent of a student with ADHD and you’ve seen them struggle to settle in busy English lessons (or lose confidence because of it) one-to-one tutoring could be the supportive, flexible space they need to thrive.
I have a limited number of one-to-one tutoring slots available both online and in-person across Stockport, South Manchester and surrounding area. Contact me today for a private tutoring quote - whether it’s for focus-friendly reading sessions, dynamic writing tasks, or English exam preparation built to suit your child’s learning style.
Visit my Contact page to get in touch.