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The differences to consider when teaching young vs old learners English In this paper, I will look at both general age groups that are learners of English, old and young learners. Another way to put this is I will look at the main challenges to teaching children, as opposed to teaching adults. Due to the fact that I will be teaching children, this essay’s lens will be focused on children and compared to adults This paper will focus on four main differences between these group, firstly looking at motivations for learning, keeping them entertained, dealing with discipline and their lastly their learning speeds The first main difference is motivations. The great thing about teaching adults is that they are generally self- motivated learners. Children are different story. This is because, in many countries English is mandatory for children to learn so they often don’t want to be in the class or are not serious about it. With adult learners they don’t need to be motivated because they are often learning on their own time. For this reason, the key with teaching children is to keep them entertaining and engaged in the classroom. This leads to my second point, the idea that children get bored and are not self-motivated leads to the need to keep them entertained. The idea behind this, is about the development of the child and as I will elaborate later, to help manage behavior issues. The main way to do this is to make games, the arts and fun a central theme in the learning. This is going to be of central importance when I become a teacher, I will attempt to incorporate music, arts and drama everyday within classrooms. The games and arts also play a part in maintain discipline in the classroom. This brings me to my next point. Whereas adult may come late, or skip classes more then children, disruption is very common with children any many ways. There are ways to deal this. Two important things are not to lose your temper with student or raise your voice. One of the additional things that can be done is that you have to build rapport with the students, so they respect you. With adult students, building rapport is also important but not necessarily for discipline reasons. The last point that I would like to mention is the difference between adult and child students in terms of learning. As previously mentioned, adults are generally more focused and disciplined than children, they also have a better attention span. However, this does not that they learn faster. In truth, children learn things much faster than adults do. Its for this reason that many people suggest that working with children is more rewarding than working with adults. Therefore, it is imperative with children to keep them focused on learning and engaged with the material. In this paper, I examined younger groups such as children and older adult groups, with a larger focus on younger learners. The paragraphs above drew four main distinctions. The main differences between these group, were motivations, their learning speeds, the importance of keeping children entertained and dealing with discipline. These distinctions are very important for anyone planning to deal with either age group. I hope this paper was informative to future teachers looking to teach both groups.
