If the coach is a good one, he will look at what you have now, ask what your goals are now, then work within your "basic" game to get you closer to your goals.

If he's really good, he's not going to try to have you change a bunch of stuff at a time, but will give you methods to work with on one or two things until you get the hang of it, and you can get back together.

If you walk up to a new coach and say something like "I want to learn how to hook the ball coast to coast", the coach might not get a favorable first impression.

But if you say "I want to learn how to repeat shots, be more accurate, increase my rev rate, and pick up spares", the coach will know he has a serious student to work with.
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-- The way we see the problem is the problem.

Chances are if this person is a good coach they will have you fill out a small questionaire describing a little about yourself, your goals, your equipment, what your average(s) are if you bowl in multiple houses/leagues and what you want to accomplish out of these lessons. The coach will want to see what you are like for a few shots (usually can be 4-6 shots, sometimes more) and then will work on things from there. Do not be surprised if they will work on only 1 or 2 aspects of your game and try to get your muscle memory working from there. It is better to try to accomplish a few things in a short amount of time then to try to fly all over the place and not have you retain anything.

Open mindedness is key= some techniques will be picked up quickly and others may take months of heavy practice to burn into your brain permanently.

Matt