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ESL forum >
Techniques and methods in Language Teaching > Teaching adults
Teaching adults
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florimago
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Teaching adults
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Hi, dear friends : I �ve always liked the quote " my personality is who I am, my attitude depends on you " . Well , I think it defines perfectly some aspects of our relationship with students no matter how old they are . At present I �m giving a course to adults without having a long experience on this field. Things with children and teenegers are different, I think, though no easier of course. My problem is that I don�t know how to keep them on talking. I �ve tried different things (power points, conversation cards, roleplays, discussions ... ) nothing helps .... The people with the lowest level don�t want to participate cause they see that some others can have a conversation without any problem . The advanced ones don�t want to do it cause they don�t want to show off so I usually work with roleplays in pairs .I interchange couples all the time but it�s useless.... Well what can I do ? I try to encourage and motivate them every single day but nothing is working . I �m a cheerful and positive person (my personality) but I`m afraid I � �m getting less and less motivated , and that may affect my attitude towards them . I�d appreciate some feedback, Am I doing the correct thing? How can I improve my teaching ? How can I change their attitude towards speaking activities ? Thanks in advance
Flori |
15 Nov 2013
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rashou
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hitry games , competitions and rewards they are more motivating even for old people. they
easily lose their reserved character when it comes to entertainment.
it worked with me
stay strong
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15 Nov 2013
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Peter Hardy
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Dear Florimago, I �d change my favourite quote if I were you. My attitude depends on me, and no-one else. Why should I give other people the power over my attitude? (And feelings, and as such, my life?) In case I have it wrong and you mean that your attitude depends on your own personality, of course, than you have the choice. Happiness is an attitude after all. My slogan in this case would be: I am that I am. Not who or what, but that, meaning I still grow and learn. This attitude is contagious, too, you know. My adult students have the same problems as yours (and anyone else �s for that matter), being afraid to talk, making mistakes and so forth. So that �s what I do. I make deliberate mistakes, laugh about it and ask them to help me out. Mistakes are nothing else but learning opportunities, and after some time they know that, too. I use PPTs to explain and practice, worksheets, so they have examples, and role-plays. Games are an insult and rewards are too childish, too. I learned that the hard way, and it depends on their cultural background. We watch short clips from YouTube (real-English and Comedy for ELT) and I use the most used sentences, which gives them the necessary confidence. All that, combined with my attitude of enthusiasm, gets them over the threshold of speaking freely. Some after a few weeks, and some after a couple of months, but when they finally do, wow, that recharges my battery to a healthy overload. In short, stay in control of your attitude, keep up the enthusiasm and the good work. Cheers, peter
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15 Nov 2013
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MoodyMoody
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I respectfully disagree that "games are an insult" to adult students. I teach adults from age 18 to whatever (my oldest student was 82). I have found that bingo is a great way to drill the past tense of irregular verbs, my sentence game is terrific for sentence building, and tic-tac-toe is very good for practicing pronunciation, for example. Your results may be different because of your attitude towards games. I have always loved games, so they work for me. It �s fine if they don �t work for you; not every tool works for every teacher or every student. But I don �t have students who feel insulted by playing games. |
15 Nov 2013
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Peter Hardy
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As said, Moody, it depends on the cultural background. Believe me, I tried, and wondered why there was so much resistance, including students walking out of class. Luckily one of my �clients � managed to explain to me they felt insulted. The lesson learned is that I now do more research on the (cultural) background of my students. Luckily my employer supplied me with a PDF book on many different cultures. Another good book on language problems of people from different language groups is: Learner English by Michael Swan and Bernard Smith. Understanding your students is after all an important tool to teaching as well.
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15 Nov 2013
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Doot
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I sometimes use a roll call question in class. Everyone must answer for one mark. For lower level students the questions would be easier - what �s your favourite food for breakfast? Sometimes I use short articles or youtube clips and then ask the question or questions. Sometimes it works to ask the question and allow groups to discuss first and then have them discuss in class. |
16 Nov 2013
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joy2bill
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Goodness Peter, what type of students are you teaching? I always explain to my students that working on worksheets, which some nationalities love, is actually just an intermediate step in language development whereas games are using the language in �a real � situation �. I used an activity yesterday where I put 50-60 words on flashcards on the wall. The students were placed in teams and had to compete against each other to grab a word when they heard it in the song as I played it. This invovled a lot of teamwork and discussion as a number of extremely similar words were displayed. Another favourite is playing half a video clip to half the students which they must explain to the other half and then they switch roles for the second explanation. Conversation comes naturally if you get them to work on a worksheet together with only one copy between two. That way they learn by teaching! As for rewards, I use candies and I have always had a good response even down to a 45year old cardiologist from Japan trying hard to answer just so he could get a sweet. It �s human nature to crave reward...I just don �t allow the reward to become predictable. |
16 Nov 2013
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s.lefevre
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In my opinion, students are all the same, if they are 8 or 80, they act like students act. That means they are sometimes lazy, sometimes noisy, sometimes interested, sometimes not. I have always used games and flaschcards, just the pictures are not the same. Of course, if you use a game with teddy bears or other similar pictures, some of the adults would feel insulted. But if adults didn �t like to play games or to compete with others, there wouldn �t be so many gambles and sport fans. Competition is in the human nature, you have just to find out what kind of games they like. Have a chat and ask them what they would like to do or about what they would like to discuss. |
16 Nov 2013
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Peter Hardy
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Most of my students are well over 40. They are from a divers Middle Eastern background, and wish to be taught the traditional way. The fact they are detained by our government does make for happy surroundings. Hence I tried as all of us would do to lighten their day by teaching with games. It just didn �t work out. The initial point, to Florimago �s question, if your students don �t want or dare to talk, we change our teaching strategies to get them talking. After all, their are no learning disabilities, but only teaching disabilities. My methods work, my students are/seem (despite the environment) happy and start talking. So what else do we want?
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16 Nov 2013
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rashou
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Dear Peteri was teaching children between 6and 9 years old using games, flashcardsand songs. They liked it they were too much motivated. At the same time i was teaching a mixed age class between 18and 50 years old my kids responded spontaneously but my old pupils were more bored until one day i decided to try games and rewards the 50 years old pupils responded in the same way kids did forgot to mention they were Middle Eastern |
16 Nov 2013
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florimago
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Thank you for all your comments and I agree with most of you : games are a great tool for teachers . I �m using them in this course and my students really have fun playing taboo, snake words, hangman .... things get more serious when I want them to roleplay a conversation on the phone, at the restaurant .... The big problem in my opini�n is this course is very short and tight in time but wide in contents ( just 200 hours , giving 7 hours a day) . |
16 Nov 2013
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