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Anonymous Posted 19 years ago
Teaching

Please help me to better teach older learners!

Hello everyone. As you can probably guess from my name, I am quite a young teacher and I am currently doing my Masters in TESOL. Since I have often found it difficult to teacher learners a lot older than myself, I am currently doing a project on teaching older learners (middle-aged or older). I feel like most teaching courses and books treat all "adult language learners" as one group, but in my experience there are significant differences. I am very interested to hear about other teachers' experiences. Have you also found that older learners are quite different to younger learners? How have you found them different? Have you had to teach learners a lot older than yourselves? How did you find that? What changes did you make in your teaching style? What things worked? What things didn't?

Any comments would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks
  

Top answer

I have been a teacher all my working life - in the Colleges of Further Education (business studies) - and then I have also taught adults English as a Second Language. Adults are so much easier to teach than teenagers. I've never had any problems whatsoever.

— Brunate

  • I have been a teacher all my working life - in the Colleges of Further Education (business studies) - and then I have also taught adults English as a Second Language.
  • Adults are so much easier to teach than teenagers.
  • I've never had any problems whatsoever.
  • With youngsters you have a discipline problem, and a lot of work persuading them that what they are learning is worth learning, but adults come to you because they want to learn, so it is much easier.
  • I have become a student later in life, and I am really enjoying studying the things which I always wanted to learn but never had time to do before.
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2 Answers
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I have been a teacher all my working life - in the Colleges of Further Education (business studies) - and then I have also taught adults English as a Second Language. Adults are so much easier to teach than teenagers. I've never had any problems whatsoever. With youngsters you have a discipline problem, and a lot of work persuading them that what they are learning is worth learning, but adults
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Hi, anonymous! Unlike you, I've been teaching for many years and in the last 12 or so it's been adults. Obviously , they are very different from young learners. You don't have to run such a tight classroom management, but you sometimes have to be more motivating because they no longer have so much energy, and besides they have jobs. As regards interpersonal relationships, I'd go for truthfulness
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