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Learning modes- young learners vs adultsThe age of the persons you are teaching makes a big difference in what you are going to teach them. You wouldn?t prepare the same lesson for a 9 year old as you would for one that is 30!! The attention span of a child is much shorter and they learn in a totally different way than adults. A child cannot sit there for hours at a time learning the grammatical aspects of the English language. Those things should be kept to a bare minimum. They just can?t grasp those things! Children learn very much through playing and working with material things like pictures and music. Have you ever wondered why is it when a family that has small children moves to another country that has a different language that they (the children) usually pick it up and speak it fluently before their parents? Well its because they are able to learn the language through their play and almost anything they do!!! Because children have a short attention span the teacher needs to put more effort into making things interesting and fun for them. They want to see and feel things when they are learning. The teacher needs to give young learners the attention and approval they need. If a child does not feel the approval of his teachers or authority, they usually do not learn or behave as well. A child will easily get bored if things are not made interesting. With the child?s attention span being so short, the teacher would need to have a variety of different activities on hand to keep them motivated. Now let?s look at the other side of our topic- adult learners of English. Adults learn in a totally different way than children. An adult is much more disciplined and mature than a child. Even though the lessons may be hard, an adult can struggle through it. This is often the case because an adult chooses (for the most part!) to go through the course. They usually have clear goals for doing the course and that is a motivator in itself!! Because of all the life experiences an adult has gone through there is a large range of activities that the teacher can do with the students. Another difference in teaching adults verses children is that you can teach adults the grammatical structure of English. An adult?s attention span is much longer and therefore the teacher can prepare lessons that will last quite a bit longer than that for a child. It may be harder though to teach adults new teaching methods because of past experiences and also an adult may not be as ?sharp? any more , in that he cannot pick up a different language as fast as a child can. Making achievable goals for the students to make will help with keeping things ?rolling?!! So as we can see that there is a big difference in the way you teach adults and children. Though they may be on the same level of not knowing English, they need to be taught differently!!
