Teach English in Fuling Qu - Chongqing

Difference between adult and young learnersYoung learners and adult learners are crucially different students in the way they receive, absorb and use language. Here I am taking adult learners to be those 18 years and older. In unit 1, we learnt that adults and youth are different in several key areas such as what they look for in a teacher, motivation, reason for learning, previous learning experience, behaviour and life experience. young learners are always going to be more active, energetic learners and this can be a double-edged sword. It is beneficial in that it generally results in a higher confidence (or rather, a lack of nervousness) as well as a willingness to experiment and to be more vocal during classes. However, this same activity and energy can result in less disciplined classes resulting from having an audience of peers to show off for. In smaller classes this is less of an issue but particularly in mid-sized classes (15-30 students), it can lead to unproductive classes with a lot of time spent on lesson control and discipline. Of course, this depends on the country. In some countries, like Japan, students are extremely respectful towards the teacher. In contrast to this youthful energy, adult learners can bring a great deal of life and past education experience allowing them to act maturely in the classroom, keeping time productive but also giving them an opportunity to relate lessons to experience which leads to greater creativity and interest within lessons. For example, a discussion on future plans using future continuous tense will generally have a lot more creativity with adult learners (although, in saying that, young learners can also be very imaginative, making up detailed fictional work on the spot even if they can't express it in English straight away). This maturity and life experience can also be a liability as it can sometimes make adults nervous about losing face if they make a mistake in front of the class (especially in Asian cultures). It is important to set up a friendly, error-friendly environment where experimentation with language is encouraged and mistakes are seen as the product of productive learning (but not recurring mistakes). Motivation is also a key difference between adult and young learners. More often than not, young learners are studying English because they have too and while this is not a bad thing in itself, it can often mean that students are unmotivated as they didn't make the choice to be there so it can feel like a chore sometimes, especially when learning irregular verbs. In contrast, adult learners have usually made a choice to study, either at a night class or at a tertiary education institution. Inevitably, there will always be exceptions to the rule as is often found in the English language itself. It is important to remember that each learner is an individual and while it is helpful to stereotype students until we have a greater understanding of them, we must always be sensitive to the fact that what works for one student (or even the entire group) might not work for another student. So we can have adult learners that are vocal and keen to get involved or we can have young learners that are shy and unwilling to participate in front of the class. And not all adult learners have made a choice to study, some are required by their workplace to study English to either keep their job or get a wanted promotion. So the expected differences between adult and young learners are helpful in giving us a starting point for how to approach teaching a group or student. And these sterotypical differences allow us to tailor our approach to address these issues. But we cannot rely on stereotypes as everyone is individual and as we get to know our student(s) more, we should be adjusting our approach to reflect what they respond to.