TEACHING ACROSS AGE LEVELS

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TEACHING ACROSS AGE LEVELS

A. TEACHING CHILDREN

Popular tradition would have you believe that children are effortless second language learners and far superior to adults in their eventual success. On both count, some qualifications are in order. First, children’s widespread success in acquiring second languages belies a tremendous subconscious effort devoted to the task. Second, adults are not necessarily less successful in their efforts. Third, the popular claim fails to differentiate very young children (say, four- to six-year-olds) from pre-pubescent children (twelve to thirteen) and the whole range of ages in between.

1.   Intellectual Development

An elementary school teacher once asked her students to take a piece of paper and pencil and write something. A little boy raised his hand and said, “Teacher, I ain’t got no pencil.” The teacher, somewhat perturbed by his grammar, embarked on a barrage of corrective patterns: “I don’t have a pencil. You don’t have a pencil. We don’t have pencils.” Confused and bewildered, the child responded, “Ain’t nobody got no pencils?”

Since children (up to the age of about eleven) are still in an intellectual stage of what Piaget (1972) called “concrete operations,” we need to remember their limitations. Rules, explanations, and other even slightly abstract talk about language must be approached with extreme caution. Children are centered on the here and now, on the functional purposes of language. They have little appreciation for our adult notions of “correctness,” and they certainly cannot grasp the metalanguage we use to describe and explain linguistic concepts. Some rules of thumb for the classroom:

Ø  Don’t explain grammar using terms like “present progressive” or “relative clause.”

Ø  Rules stated in abstract terms (“To make a statement into a question, you add a do or does”) should be avoided.

Ø  Some grammatical concepts, especially at the upper levels of childhood, can be called to learners’ attention by showing them certain patterns (“Notice the ing at the end of the word”) and examples (“This is the way we say it when it’s happening right now: “I’m walking to the door’).

Ø  Certain more difficult concepts or patterns require more repetition than adults need. For example, repeating certain patterns (without boring students) may be necessary to get the brain and the ear to cooperate. Unlike the scene with the little boy who had no pencil, children must understand the meaning and relevance of repetitions.

2.   Attention Span

One of the salient differences between adults and children is attention span. First, it is important to understand what attention span means. Since language lessons can at times be difficult for children, your job is to make them interesting, lively, and fun. How do you that?

Ø  Because children are focused on the immediate here and now, activities should be designed to capture their immediate interest.

Ø  A lesson needs a variety of activities to keep interest and attention alive.

Ø  A teacher needs to be animated, lively, and enthusiastic about the subject matter. Consider the classroom a stage on which you are the lead actor; your energy will be infections. While you may think that you’re overdoing it, children need this exaggeration to keep spirit buoyed and minds alert.

Ø  A sense of humor will go a long way to keep children laughing and learning. Since children’s humor is quite different from adults’, remember to put yourself in their shoes.

Ø  Children have a lot of natural curiosity. Make sure you tap into that curiosity whenever possible, and you will thereby help to maintain attention and focus.

3.   Sensory Input

Children need to have all five senses stimulated. Your activities should strive to go well beyond the visual and auditory modes that we feel are usually sufficient for a classroom.

Ø  Pepper your lessons with physical activity, such as having students act out things (role-play) play games, or do Total Physical Response activities.

Ø  Projects and other bands-on activities go a long way toward helping children, are excellent ways to get them to learn words and structures and to practice meaningful language.

Ø  Sensory aids here and there help children to internalize concepts. The smell of flowers, the touch of plants and fruits, the taste of foods, liberal doses of audiovisual aids like videos, pictures, tapes, music-all are important elements in children’s language teaching.

Ø  Remember that your own nonverbal language is important because children will indeed attend very sensitively to your facial features, gestures, and touching.

4.   Affective Factors

A common myth is that children are relatively unaffected by the inhibitions that adults find to be a block to learning. Teachers need to help them to overcome such potential barriers to learning.

Ø  Help your students to laugh with each other at various mistakes that they all make.

Ø  Be patient and supportive to build self-esteem, yet at the same time be firm in your expectations of students.

Ø  Elicit as much oral participation as possible from students, especially the quieter ones, to give them plenty of opportunities for trying things out.

5.   Authentic, Meaningful Language

Children are focused on what this new language can actually be used for here and now. Your classes can ill afford to have an overload of language that is neither authentic nor meaningful.

Ø  Children are good at sensing language that is not authentic; therefore “canned” or stilted language will likely be rejected.

Ø  Language needs to be firmly context embedded. Story lines, familiar situations and characters, real-life conversations, meaningful purposes in using language-these will establish a context within which language can be received and sent and thereby improve attention and retention. Context-reduced language in abstract, isolated, unconnected sentences will be much less readily tolerated by children’s minds.

Ø  A whole language approach is essential. If language is broken into too many bits and pieces, students won’t see the relationship to the whole. And stress the interrelationships among the various skills (listening, speaking, reading, and writing), or they won’t see important connections.

B.   TEACHING ADULTS

Although many of the “rules” for teaching can apply in some ways to teaching adults, the latter age group poses some different, special considerations for the classroom teacher. Adults have superior cognitive abilities that can render them more successful in certain classroom endeavors.

So, as you consider the five variables that apply to children, keep in mind some specific suggestions and caveats.

1.      Adults are more able to handle abstract rules and concepts.

2.      Adults have longer attention spans for material that may not be intrinsically interesting to them.

3.      Sensory input need not always be quite as varied with adults, but one of the secrets of lively adult classes in their appeal to multiple sense.

4.      Adults often bring a modicum of general self-confidence (global self-esteem) into a classroom; the fragility of egos may therefore not be quite as critical as those of children.

5.      Adults, with their more developed abstract thinking ability, are better able to understand a context-reduced segment of language.

C. TEACHING TEENS

Perhaps because of the enigma of teaching teenagers, little is specifically said in the language-teaching field about teaching at this level. Nevertheless, some thought are worth verbalizing, even if in the form of simple reminders.

1.          Intellectual capacity adds abstract operational thought around the age of twelve.

2.          Attention spans are lengthening as a result of intellectual maturation, but once again, with many diversions present in a teenager’s life, those potential attention spans can easily be shortened.

3.          Varieties of sensory input are still important, but, again, increasing capacities for abstraction lessen the essential nature of appealing to all five senses.

4.          Factors surrounding ego, self-image, and self-esteem are at their pinnacle.

5.          Secondary school students are of course becoming increasingly adult like in their ability to make those occasional diversions from the “here and now” nature of immediate communicative contexts to dwell on a grammar point or vocabulary item.

TEACHING ACROSS PROFICIENCY LEVELS

A.  Defining Proficiency Levels

Is there a standard set of guidelines by which these three mysterious terms may be uniformly understood. The answer is yes, and while textbooks and curricula do not by any means adhere to these guidelines universally, the guidelines nevertheless offer us a practical description of speaking, listening, reading, and writing proficiency at numerous gradations.

The ACTFL Proficiency Guidelines (1986) have come to be a widely recognized proficiency standard in language-teaching circles. The current version of the guidelines is historically related to what for many years was referred to as “FSI  levels” of speaking proficiency.

B.   Teaching Beginning Levels

Teaching beginners is considered by many to be the most challenging level of language instruction. Since students at this level little or no prior knowledge of the target language, the teacher (and accompanying techniques and materials) becomes a central determiner in whether students accomplish their goals. This can also be the most tangibly rewarding level for a teacher because the growth of students’ proficiency is apparent in a matter of a few weeks.

1.          Students’ cognitive learning processes

2.          The role of the teacher

3.          Teacher talk

4.          Authenticity of language

5.          Fluency and accuracy

6.          Student creativity

7.          Techniques

8.          Listening and speaking goals

9.          Reading and writing goals

10.      Grammar

C.   Teaching Intermediate Levels

Now turn your attention to that vague curricular territory that we call intermediate, where students have progressed beyond novice stages to an ability to sustain basic communicative tasks, to establish some minimal fluency, to deal with a few unrehearsed situations, to self-correct on occasion, to use a few compensatory strategies, and generally to “get along” in the language beyond mere survival. The picture changes somewhat. Your role and the students’ capacities change. Consider the same ten factors.

Students have developed some of their abilities of learning the target language, so the teacher has to apply different teaching methods in the class. Teacher has to dare students ask questions; make comments during the class to their own learning. The teacher is able to use more advanced word according to the level.

1.          Students’ cognitive learning processes

2.          The role of the teacher

3.          Teacher talk

4.          Authenticity of language

5.          Fluency and accuracy

6.          Student creativity

7.          Techniques

8.          Listening and speaking goals

9.          Reading and writing goals

10.      Grammar

D.   Teaching Advanced Levels

As students move up the developmental ladder, getting closer and closer to their goals, developing fluency along with a greater degree of accuracy, able to handle virtually any situation in which target language use is demanded, they become “advanced” students. At the very top of this ladder is what the ACTEFL Proficiency Guidelines describe as the “superior” level, comparable in most aspect to an educated, so in order to be more in keeping with reality, we will simply focus on what the Guidelines describe as the “advanced” level.

Students have developed not only their reading and listening comprehension but also their fluency in speaking. Techniques can be like group debates and argumentation, complex role-plays, scanning and skimming reading material.

1.          Students’ cognitive learning processes

2.          The role of the teacher

3.          Teacher talk

4.          Authenticity of language

5.          Fluency and accuracy

6.          Student creativity

7.          Techniques

8.          Listening and speaking goals

9.          Reading and writing goals

10.      Grammar

REFERENCES

Brown, H. Douglas. 2000. Teaching by principles: An interactive approach to language pedagogy (Second Edition)

Ros fisher, Teaching children. Retriefed October 26,2018. https://ore.exeter.ac.uk/repository/bitstream/handle/10036/47180/Teacher%20Child%20Interaction.pdf?sequence=5&isAllowed=y

Anne Mishkind (2016). Adult Education: What Makes Teaching Effective?.Retreved October 26,2018. https://www.calpro-online.org/documents/CALPRO_BRIEF_13_508.pdf

Vaske, Joann ( 1998). Teaching, and Evaluating Critical Thinking Skills in Adult Education. Retrieved October 26,2018. https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED420794.pdf

Gentile and Leiguarda ,(2012). Getting Teens to Really Work in Class.Retrieved October 26,2018. https://americanenglish.state.gov/files/ae/resource_files/50_4_5_lauria_and_leiguarda.pdf

Neil A. Bradbury,(2016). Attention span during lectures. Retrieved October 26,2018. https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/62cc/95ee94955d127788dd76ea56d1c7a4b08be7.pdf

Richard M. The Intellectual Development Of Science And Engineering Students. Retrieved October 26,2018. http://www.dphu.org/uploads/attachements/books/books_2612_0.pdf

 Rizki. TEACHING ACROSS PROFICIENCY LEVELS. retrieved October 29,2018. http://blogrizkirmd.blogspot.com/2014/01/teaching-across-proficiency-levels.html