Teach English in Crapaud - TESOL Courses

This unit talks about what an ideal teacher and student should be. I learned the different characteristics and descriptions of a good teacher and a good learner, but what I really enjoyed about this unit is the way adults and young learners differ from each other. Here are some things I learned from this unit. I learned that adult learners and young learners differ in a number of things: first, in the area of motivation. I found out that adults make a conscious decision to attend classes because they know that it is economically beneficial for them ? a good command of the language equates to higher pay. This serves as good motivation for adult learners to be serious with their classes. I also learned, on the other hand, that young learners are motivated to attend classes because they may want to please their teacher, their friends, or their peers. This will be challenging to teachers because this situation will require them (the teachers) to make their classes more diverse and exciting to keep young learners motivated. Second is in the area of experience, adult learners bring with them a wide range of experience to class. This helps make lessons more engaging as they share their stories of success and failure to one another especially in the area of language learning. I believe that it is quite motivating for adults to talk about their jobs and experiences because it brings language learning to a personal level. I also learned that although young learners may have had some prior learning experience, there are still gaps that need to be filled in Before they can begin talking about their own accomplishment and disappointment in language acquisition. For example, the teacher can engage young learners in a discussion about jobs, but they can only talk about jobs based on what other people say about it and not based on their own experience. This activity would not be as engaging as participating in the discussion using a first-hand account. Last is in the area of behavior. According to the reading, attention span plays an important role in discipline in the classroom. This being said, activities in adult classes naturally have less problems in terms of discipline because they have longer attention span. On the other hand, young learners lose interest in the task easily. This may cause disruption in the activity as they try to find other sources of interest in class. Because of this, the teacher has to build and encourage motivation in order to curb the effect of young learners? short attention span.