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The differences between young students and adult ones are a large factor for teachers to consider in making plans about how and what to teach. Teachers must take into account students’ learning needs, expectations, cognitive abilities, and skills. For instance, when teaching language, teachers respect children's need to learn languages through play which is different from adolescents who are in need of activities to trigger their cognitive abilities to understand abstract notions. Kids can usually learn through talking about themselves, families and their lives; they are more curious than adults to learn and discover new concepts on their own, they also like to use their imagination to discover things. Children naturally need to touch things, see, hear and interact to learn and they also have more energy to spend, the teacher should have in hand a variety of activities for the class to fulfill that subject. Another aspect to consider is about their attention span, which is limited, they need, then, to be engaged on entertaining activities in order to not lose interest. Younger learners like to cooperate and work in groups instead of alone, they need constant support and encouragement while learning. Adult learners are quite different in the class, they are more disciplined than the young ones; they also have a clear understanding of their learning objectives (they are learning because they want it, not because their parents wanted them to, like the children usually are). Adults need to be involved in choosing what and how to learn and they prefer to rely on themselves and work on their own pace instead of working in groups. They come to the classroom with a wide range of knowledge, expectations, and experiences, so they are able to do a wide range of activities. Adult students learn at various rates and in different ways according to their intellectual ability, educational level, personality, and cognitive learning styles; they also come into the classroom with diverse experiences, opinions, thoughts, and beliefs which need to be respected. There is not a better group to teach considering kids and adults, each one is progressing in certain form according to his/her age and abilities. What's important to keep in mind is that the ultimate level of proficiency is linked to the amount of time spent on that target language, and the amount of the exposure to it. Age, however may be a differential factor when it comes to learning a high order processes such as grammar and low order processes such as vocabulary and pronounciation. To put it simple, adults may differ from children in the way that adults rely on their developed cognitive qualities that help them in using their critical reasoning and meta linguistics knowledge to memorize and understand hard grammatical structures per see. On the other hand of the scale we have children who, because of their spongy minds, may acquire a native-like pronounciation. Yet attaining a native like pronounciation is not something unachievable for adults. Thus, each one is better in his/her way and according to his/her state of development. Though, there may be a number of differences between teaching english to adults or to young learners, the fundamental practices will remain the same. Encourage communication and authentic language use, utilize your students’ previous knowledge and, above all, maintain a fun atmosphere in the classroom and that class will be a successful one no matter the age of the learners.
