Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
Language Learning for Teens and Adults
The first video in this series looked at teaching English to children. This video will consider
teens and adults.
Let's look first at some similarities for teens and adults. The biggest one is that
they both are capable of understanding abstract concepts. They can learn rules and understand
how to apply them in a variety of situations. Their attention spans are longer than childrens'
although, teens can easily lose focus. Their memories are much better than children also.
Where repetition is necessary and welcome for children, it may be considered childish
for teens and adults. Both also need modified input so that it will be comprehensible to
them.
Both teens and adults have somewhat fragile egos and self-esteem. I realize that some
would argue with me that adults have well-developed self-esteem, but my response is that their
self-esteem in their first language does not necessarily translate into a second language.
In fact, from my personal experience I know that walking around Japan I often felt like
a pre-school child because of my lack of language knowledge. The impact to my ego was rather
significant. I was overly sensitive to corrections, unwilling to risk public mistakes, and frustrated
at my lack of independence. So, while teenagers usually have more volatile egos and self-images,
adults will struggle with this in the language learning classroom as well.
Teens will often lack intrinsic motivation to learn a language. For them, if they learn
another language, it may result in being teased by others in their culture who don't know
the language. Work is too distant of a goal for them to be motivated by that and they
seldom are in an ESL or EFL class by choice. Even if they are there to pass a college entrance
exam, they still may consider what is being taught as useless information because entrance
exams tend to focus on grammar, reading and writing. Convincing young adults to actively
participate in communicative activities will prove challenging usually. It will be necessary
to tap into their interests, skills and abilities. Tasks, projects, problems, and cooperative
activities can be motivating and fun if the learning purposes are clear. Teens want to
have fun, but they don't want to be treated like children. They want limited responsibility.
They want creative challenges. They have no desire to focus on grammar for an entire lesson.
Adults are more mixed. Some of them will try to insist on grammar and more grammar. Usually
because it is the only method they are familiar with. They are willing to participate in fun
activities if they understand the language learning objective behind it. They almost
always have either high intrinsic or extrinsic motivation. They have goals and they know
time is running out, so fun is okay as long as it improves their English in meaningful
ways. They are more reluctant than teens and children to try new tasks, so it is preferable
to make small changes at a time. Let one successful experience build upon another. I suggest having
adults keep portfolios of their work because it is extremely difficult for them to recognize
growth in their L2 ability. But if you ask them to analyze their portfolio at the end
of the semester, they will amaze themselves at the progress they have made. It will be
more meaningful for them to discover their improvement than for you to tell them their
improvement.
So, as you can see, there are plenty of similarities between teaching teens and adults: cognitive
reasoning, longer attention spans, better memories, and somewhat fragile language learning
egos. Some differences are that teens usually are uninterested in grammar unless they need
it to pass some kind of exam whereas adults tend to think that is the only way to learn
a language. Adults need to recognize a learning objective for every activity in the classroom
while teens are willing to have fun and be entertained as long as they feel it provides
useful language practice. Teenagers have very little motivation while adults usually have
strong language learning motivation. Teens are more open to new teaching techniques than
adults in general. Finally, teens can make quick language improvement while adults experience
improvement more slowly.