Dear Dr. Zack,

Many of the students we work with are corporate employees with hectic schedules. It's sometimes difficult, if not impossible for them to find the time for lessons, despite their immediate need to focus on their language skills. I would like your opinion as to how may be a good way to motivate the students to regularly attend lessons. The students' lessons are typically 2 hours twice weekly, but oftentimes cancellations occur, thus the students are not progressing as quickly as possible. I'm quite interested in your opinion.

Thanks very much for your time,
Jenny

Dear Jenny,

Thank you for a very important question. I, too, have experienced situations where Adult Learners were unable to consistently come to class due to outside personal, family and professional commitments.
Depending on the size of the class, you might want to consider giving out a number or email address where students who are going to miss a class could contact you ahead of time. Then, you could send them the material that would have been covered so they could practice it on their own. Also, you might consider having students develop a "buddy" from the class where an exchange of telephone numbers could be made so that if a student was to miss a lesson, they could also contact their "buddy" to find out what material they missed for that particular lesson.