Younger and older learners
ashleyblake02
Created on May 24, 2023
Mind map by Ashley Palafox LI6A
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Transcript
Younger and Older
LEARNERS
What difference does age make to language learning?
Notes
Teaching adolescents
Students preferences
Teaching children
Teaching adults
By Ashley Palafox LI6A
1. Young children learn languages better.
- Children are intrinsically better learners; but this has not been confirmed by research (Singleton, 1989).
- The older the child the more effectively he or she learns (Snow and Hoefnagel-Hochle, 1978; Ellis, 1994: 484-94).
- Teenagers are overall the best learners. (The only apparent exception to this is pronunciation, which is learned more easily by younger children).
- Young children learn better, even more, dubious if applied to formal classroom learning: there is only one teacher to several children, exposure time is limited, and the ‘survival’ motive does not usually apply.
- Moreover, young children have not yet developed the cognitive skills and self-discipline that enable them to make the most of limited teacher-mediated information.
- The investment of lesson time at an early age may not be cost-effective because young learners are effective language learners as they get older.
- C. Snow (in a lecture ‘Using L1 skills for L2 proficiency: Why older L2 learners are better’, at the Conference of the English Teachers’ Association of Israel, Jerusalem, 1993) claims that twelve is the optimum age for starting a foreign language in school; it is also true that an early start to language learning is likely to lead to better long-term results if early learning is maintained and reinforced as the child gets older (Long, 1990).
- Adults have more logical thought, learning skills, and strategies that children do not yet have. Moreover, adult classes tend to be more disciplined and cooperative, because people learn as they get older to be patient and to deal with frustration.
- Most adults are learning voluntarily, have chosen the course themselves, often have a clear purpose in learning (work, travel, etc.), and are therefore likely to feel more committed and motivated; whereas most children have little choice in where, how, or even whether they are taught.
- Children are not likely to concentrate on certain learning activities as adults do. However, the problem is not the concentration span itself because children can be absorbed in activities that interest them but rather the ability of the individual to persevere with something of no immediate intrinsic interest to them.
- You can raise children’s motivation and enthusiasm more easily than with older learners.
- On the other hand, you can also lose it more easily: monotonous, pointless activities quickly bore and demotivate young learners; older ones are more tolerant of them. It would be more accurate to say that younger learners’ motivation is more likely to vary and is more susceptible to immediate surrounding influences.
It is difficult to motivate children, and the teacher can use varied materials, prizes, and similar rewards to help, but effective learning is through intrinsic motivation (interest in doing the learning activity itself). There are three important sources of interest for children in the classroom:
- Pictures: Even though not all children are visual, using pictures helps to not allow them to get distracted by any other thing. So, the more clearly visible, striking, and colorful, the better.
- Stories: telling a story in a foreign language is one of the simplest and richest sources of foreign language input for younger learners. Besides, it is even more effective if you combine them with pictures.
- Games: Those are recreational ‘time out’ activities whose main purpose is enjoyment; language study is serious purposeful work, whose main purpose is personal learning.
For inexperienced teachers, classes of adolescents are perhaps the most daunting challenge. Their learning potential is greater than that of young children, but they may be more difficult to motivate and manage, and it takes longer to build up trusting relationships. One source of guidance about how to teach adolescents successfully is books on developmental psychology. Another - arguably no less reliable, and perhaps under-used is the adolescents themselves. So, to know how to teach them, you can apply a student preferences survey and base the lesson on the results. Usually, teenagers don´t care about their teachers´ appearance, just that they care about teaching. They also consider important that teachers are in control, respect them, also that they let students participate in decisions related to the group. https://media.giphy.com/media/UatRnEUNX8iCQ/giphy.gif
(1) Other sources of interest for children Some other ideas are physical movement, drama, projects, and decorative writing or other graphic design. (2) Language-learning games for children Here are three game-like activities I have used successfully with younger classes. 1. Association dominoes: You use pictures and ask students to link the pictures to suggest an association with them. For example, a camel may be put by a table because they both have four legs. The aim is to make as long a line of pictures as possible or to make the line reach the sides of the board; students who run out of pictures may take more from your pool. 2. Doodles: Draw an abstract ‘doodle’ on the board and invite students to say what they think it represents. The idea you think is most interesting or original ‘wins,’ and its producer gets to draw the next doodle and judge the resulting suggestions. 3. Decide on names: Students see a picture of different people to discuss with a partner people´s names and personalities. The condition is that they may not look at their partner’s picture: they may mark the names on their own picture, but the identification of the character to be named must be done entirely through talking. After some time, stop them. They lay their pictures on their desks and check that they have in fact given the same names to the same people. (3) Community Language Learning: This methodology is for learners to learn a language, promote their personal development, and form a warm supportive community. The teacher acts as a non-judgmental counselor who helps to achieve these aims. https://media.giphy.com/media/A7rTdPxXP9fqM/giphy.gif
Teaching adults can be less common and complicated for some teachers because adults have specific purposes to study English. Nevertheless, there exist different relationships between the teacher and the class, for example: Authority-subjects to authority: Even adults can see a teacher as an authority because the teacher is expected to give instructions and students to respect and obey them. Adults in return for conceding authority to the teacher in the classroom, adult learners demand returns in terms of their benefit in learning outcomes. Assessor-assessed: Teachers and students have an asymmetrical relationship, with dominance being attributed to the assessor (the teacher). Transmitter-receivers: Adults are in the right to question, criticize and participate actively by being more disciplined than younger learners. Motivator-motivated: Adults take more responsibility for the learning process and rely less on the teacher´s initiative in making activities attractive or providing incentives. They are usually more motivated than younger learners and tend to be more stable. Activator-activated: As with “transmitted receivers,” this is a relationship that depends more on the teacher´s chosen methodology than on the age of the learners. Counsellor-clients: The teacher focuses more on the needs of the learner rather than to impose a predetermined program. It involves a perceptible shift of responsibility and initiative in the classroom process from the teacher to the learners themselves. Seller-buyers: The teacher has a commodity knowledge that the learner is willing to pay money to acquire (a role as employee and seller). Resource-users: The teacher is a mere source of knowledge to be tapped by learners and passive in classroom interaction. https://media.giphy.com/media/l3dj09hpsfuYkijDi/giphy.gif
Stages:
- Preparation: think about the items that you will use in your survey and choose the more relevant ones.
- Interviews: ask fifteen (or a few) teenagers that are learning foreign languages locally and who are willing to answer your questions. A well-designed survey (with space enough and clear questions) will always be helpful.
- Summarizing results: see the results and compare them with your expectations.
- Concluding: write down some general comments and conclusions of your own based on a similar survey conducted by teachers in the school where you´re teaching.