3 differences between teaching teenagers and young learners

There are many factors which affect how you learn and what kind of a learner you are:
motivation, educational background and cognitive capabilities, to name a few. Another really
important factor to consider when thinking about your learners, their learning styles and their
learning preferences, is age. Age affects your interests, capabilities and experience, so it will
affect how you approach learning and your attitude towards learning.

The differences between the learners of different ages can very easily be seen when we
compare teenagers and young learners.

Motivation

Firstly, young learners are naturally more motivated than teenagers. Young learners enjoy
being stimulated and so enjoy the classroom because there is always something happening to
keep their attention. Teenagers, on the other hand, may need a bit more convincing. They
prefer to entertain themselves and may find classroom activities the teacher has planned
boring and uninteresting.

Autonomy

At the same time, young learners need much more assistance in the classroom. They are not
capable of accomplishing many tasks on their own so they need a lot of help, while teenagers
thrive with more responsibility. So while teaching young learners means holding their hands
and progressing together, step-by-step, teaching teenagers means taking a step back and
allowing them to figure things out on their own.

Learning

As a result of the age difference, children and teenagers learn differently too. Young learners
need to work with their different senses to learn and they need to be constantly stimulated.
Teenagers, on the other hand, have the capacity to engage with content on a deeper level and
work independently when needed. In other words, young learners need a range of activities to
keep their attention while teens can be stimulated while working on one task.

It should come as no surprise that there are a number of differences between teaching young
learners and adults. As people they are at very different stages of their lives and this will affect
their learning styles and capabilities. This does not, of course, mean that one age can learn
better than another, but rather that teachers need to be conscious of the age of their learners
in order to be able to teach them effectively.
Top of Form

Classroom Management

I find the best way to control a class of young learners is to have an activity at the beginning of
the class that will engage them and tire them out so that they are able to sit down and
complete a small worksheet at the end of the lesson.

The classes I teach love to play Simon Says or we sing the Wheels on the Bus to calm
everyones excitement from entering the class.

More importantly, young learners need visual and kinaesthetic prompting to absorb the
language most effectively.

My best advice for teaching kids would be to enjoy it because if you let them know you are
happy and relaxed then it is most likely that they will be too.

Additionally, for classroom management, it is helpful to create a star chart which is visible to
the students every time they come to class. Then make sure you remind them of it before you
begin the lesson.

This strategy works because they are so eager to get new stars by their name for good
behaviour and not have any removed for bad behaviour I never have any problems.

Teaching Teenagers

Teenagers, on the other hand, are a different story.

Your first couple of lessons with teenagers are when you need to be the most assertive.

This is especially true if you are a replacing a previous teacher who they were used to and
respected.

Just like much younger learners, teenagers enjoy playing games and tend to work more
efficiently during the class if everyone has got moving and interacting from the start.

It is important to engage the teenagers and not allow them to sit next to the same person every
week which helps to avoid any sluggish behaviour in the classroom.
It is also necessary to adjust the topics every week so they are relevant to what they are
interested in.

It is vital to ask questions and let them express opinions on topics they like. This way you get a
positive response in the target language.

The differences between young, teenage and adult learners

1. The differences between young learners, juniors and young adults [Introduce myself and the
company] Many teachers believe that teaching a range of different age groups is extremely
difficult and hard on the teacher. As a teacher who has been teaching students between the
ages of 6 and 65 for my whole career, I would like to explain to you why I think this is not the
case, and to explain the differences between these age groups. It is no secret that these age
groups are all extremely different from each other. This is because these three age groups are
all at very different developmental and psychological stages of their lives. Having the
opportunity to teach all of them is definitely challenging, but also extremely rewarding. As a
teacher of different age groups, one can more easily see and understand the differences
between them, and the different methodological aspects of teaching them. In short, being able
to teach different age groups helps you improve and grow as a teacher, and I tell you this from
first-hand experience. My range of experience with different age groups is one of my biggest
assets as a methodologist. Lets start by defining the differences between the groups: Young
learners:Young learners, those who are in grades 1-4, are defined by their childishness,
creativity, imagination and energy. This means that any lesson given to young learners must
take into consideration that children are, by nature, immature and think in much more simple
terms that teenagers or adults. Each lesson given to young learners must be active and creative,
because this energy, which children have in so much abundance, can be used to motivate the
kids and to help them learn. The student-teacher relationship in young learner classes is
unique. At times they worship us, and at other times they seem to completely ignore us. They
can definitely be a challenge. I find that the best approach to take with young learners is to be
generally kind, enthusiastic and energetic; but to discipline the students when needed. At this
age it really does depend on the collection of kids and the teacher, as now two classes are the
same! They also have a lot of methodological needs which are unique when compared to other
ages. Children need a lot of physical activities to learn. This is a natural part of a childs learning
process, but many seem to forget this. Games that have children moving around and
interacting with physical objects are a necessary factor in their development; which is exactly
why these activities work so well as learning tools. Almost all children respond to kinesthetic
activities exceptionally well. Also, as Lynne Cameron, of Cambridge University Press, says in
her20-page report Teaching Language to Young Learners, children are often more
enthusiastic and lively as learners. They want to please the teacher more than they want to
please their friends. They will try an activity even if they dont really

2. understand why or how its done. However, they also lose interest more quickly, and are less
able to keep themselves motivated on tasks they find difficult. This means that we must try to
make each lesson as engaging as possible. We need to use activities that include crafts, we
need them to colour, to draw, to act, to sing, to dance and to laugh. It is no secret that as the
children get older, they will have fewer opportunities for lessons like these as their workload
increases. We should take this opportunity to not only help them learn, but to give them
positive feelings about the subject and education in general. Succesful lessons for young
learners are lessons that focus on what they need, more than what the textbook dictates.
Textbooks are amazing in that they give us a very real sense of direction for the course. They
help us organize language points into an order that is efficient and effective. They provide us
with a huge amount of resources and activities to help our students learn. But we also need to
supplement our lessons. We need to take resources from other books, from the internet and
we should adapt and design our own activities. This is important for learners of all ages, but
most important for young learners, as we need to make sure they have a completely solid
education in the very basics of the language, and are confident enough to try and practice using
it. Young learners, unlike older students, do not understand the difference between things like
grammar, listening or vocabulary. To them it is all just English. This does not mean that
we, as teachers, must ignore the different skills that we teach them, but we must always
remember that children do not. This affects how we plan and deliver our lessons. Every activity
must flow naturally into the next. The whole lesson must feel natural and engaging to the
children, or their motivation and willingness to participate will decrease. Luckily, most
textbooks released by international publishers keep this in mind. Textbooks like Primary
Colours and Our Discovery Island are sequences in a way that is completely organic and
dont create any unnatural pauses between the activities in each unit. Juniors: This is term we
use to describe students between grades 5 and 8. These students are at a really difficult age.
They are going through a transition period between being Young Children and Real
Teenagers. At this age they have aspects of both of these age groups. Students this age are
stuck between having real world interests and imaginative thinking. They switch between
childish and mature thoughts, and its our job, as teachers, to try and give them lessons where
they can employ both of these types of thinking. Because these students are at such a strange
age, this makes our jobs much more difficult. If we treat the students like children, they will
loudly say Were not children, were 13! However, if we treat them like teenagers, they will
loudly say We cant do this, were only 13! We are put in an impossible position, because we
have to try and anticipate their feelings before the lesson even starts! With juniors, I find that
the best approach is to just be accessible. Make sure that they know that you are the boss, but
also let them know that you can be silly, funny and energetic. As youll see later, this is a happy
middle between our approaches to young learners and teachers. We need to be able to switch
between serious teachers who enforce the rules and fun teachers who will sing along with a
song.

3. What we can do to make our jobs easier is remember that all these kids really need is
reassurance. These kids are really insecure because theyre at this horrible age. They need
reassurance from their teachers, their peers, their parents and from the media. We need to
give them encouragement before and after activities. They really need to feel that they are
seen and appreciated. Because of this self-esteem issue, we need to show the students that we
care about them. An easy way to do this is to adapt activities from textbooks. This is actually
much easier than it sounds. All you need to do is take the language being practiced in the
activity, and present it in a different way. For example, if your students are bored of doing
reading activities where they have to predict the ending, turn the text into a jigsaw reading by
cutting it up into paragraphs and having them work together to put them in the correct order.
One of the biggest differences between juniors and young learners is that they can now
understand the difference between types of skills and activities. At this age they start to feel
self-conscious about their grammar, so we need to provide them with the structures they need
and to employ a lot of communicative activities to help them practice their grammar. They
need the tools to differentiate between forms, and we can do this through gap-fills, re-ordering
activities, role-plays and guided discussions. One thing which we must never forget is to use
materials that offer both imaginative and serious material. Those of you who are fewer with
Cambridge and Pearsons books know that we have books that have exactly that, like
Messages. You need to choose textbooks and supplementary materials that provide a
combination of these things, because at this age, this is what students need. Having a
combination also helps them transition into more adult material in a slower and natural way,
which helps prepare them for their time spent as real teenagers. Teenagers: Now, Id like to
talk about the age group that has the worst reputation amongst teachers: Teenagers.
Teenagers happen to be my personal favourite age-group to teach. I know that many of you
might not believe me, but teenagers motivate me. This is largely due to three teachers who
especially motivated me when I was a teenager, and who helped me out a lot. We all know that
teenagers can be really difficult. No one is disputing that. However, my mother has always told
me one thing, and I try to live my life by this: Nothing that is worth your time is easy. The
hardest things are the most rewarding. And this is the attitude I bring to the young-adult
classroom. Teenagers are extremely different from young-learners and juniors. Young adult
learners follow very different rules. They do not want to please the teacher, they want to
please their peers. The biggestmistake a teacher can make when teaching teenagers is to try
and become one of them. Teenagers already have friends, and they are not us! This might be
surprising to some teachers, but research shows that teenagers actually prefer teachers who
enforce discipline. They arent mature enough to choose fun over study. We have to make
that choice for them. We need to show that we are firm and that there are rules and
expectations in our class. This does not mean, however, that we should be slave-masters or evil
dictators. A disciplined class and a class of students who hate the subject are very different
things. Once it is clear that we are not pushovers, and that we are in charge of the class, then
we can start having some fun. We cannot expect young adults to respect us simply because we
are teachers. The age

4. when teachers were seen as gods has ended, and it ended quite some time ago. We must
earn their respect. We must show them that we are fair, supporting, accessible, stable and in
control. We must let them know when they are not meeting our expectations. We must let
them know when their behaviour is unacceptable. BUT, we must also let them know when they
do well, when they are creative, when they make us proud. In the same way that we want to be
respected by our managers, teenagers want to be respected by us. We should explain to them
WHY we choose to do things, and what our expectations of them are. When they complete
tasks successfully, we should reward them. When they work hard, we can joke with them and
have fun. Teenagers can surprise us in so many ways! Ive spent so much time laughing with my
teenagers, sometimes at myself. I understand that many teachers will disagree with me on this,
but my teenagers do all of their homework, pass all of their tests, and still manage to practice
realistic language and have fun in class. This tells me that my approach might be affective.
Teaching teenagers is not just about the teacher-student relationship, though. They also have
their own unique sets of educational needs. Teenagers will not respond to the same techniques
that young learners do. Teenagers feel too self-conscious to really allow themselves to look
silly in class. They feel like theyre too old for it. We need to give them realistic language. By
this point in their education, most of these teenagers have a basic knowledge of English. They
know how to tell you about their basic needs. They know how to introduce themselves and to
understand basic texts. They need to know how to order food in cafes, how to ask for things in
shops, how to talk to their friends about realistic topics. It is extremely important that
teenagers do not feel like they are wasting their time. If they do feel this, they will become
completely unresponsive. Teenagers usually walk into our classrooms for the first time with
almost zero motivation. The huge academic workload they have pretty much kills all of their
real enthusiasm for learning. They learn because if they do not, they cannot even dream about
starting a career. They learn to pass tests, because that is what is expected from them. Most of
them are not enthusiastic about education at all, and most of us teachers werent at their age
either. We need to teach them how to talk about movies, their social lives, their plans for the
future, technology, sports and all the other things that they already want to talk about anyway.
We also need to teach them things like essay writing, which theyll need for university
applications. Cover letters and CV writing, which theyll need for jobs. As you can see, these are
VERY different age groups, with VERY different needs. Being a teacher of multiple age groups is
extremely challenging, but extremely rewarding. As a teacher, being able to teach any age
group gives you a lot of opportunities. Teachers who are limited to only teaching one age group
are usually very limited when looking for jobs or getting promotions. As teachers, we must
strive to be flexible, reasonable, creative and energetic. The best way to train yourself to be all
of these things is to teach multiple ages; as this forces you to employ all of those

5. aspects in very different ways. This also helps you understand the education process much
more thoroughly. You can more easily understand your own techniques and how to improve
them. For those who do not want to teach multiple age groups, knowing the difference
between them is essential when choosing which age group to teach. For some teachers, young
learners are a nightmare, while juniors seem like the perfect fit. For others, the opposite might
be true. If you do want to stick to just one age group, make sure that you choose the right one,
because youll be seeing them every day. I sincerely hope that Ive helped all of you to get a
deeper understanding of what sets these age groups apart, and some possible ways to handle
them. And I also hope, that through this understanding, you can enjoy your jobs as much as I
do.