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Teaching English as a Foreign Language to Adults
Teaching English as a Foreign Language to Adults
Teaching English as a Foreign Language to Adults
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Teaching English as a Foreign Language to Adults

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For adults, learning a new language can be painfully slow and often a frustrating experience. While everyone would like to quickly acquire the ability to converse in a foreign language, the reality is that it is not easy - there is a whole new set of rules to learn, let alone thousands of new words and expressions. It can be very burdensome to have to, in effect, go back to grade 1 and start all over again.
Teachers also have to be aware that adults do not learn the same way that children do. Sure, there are times when learning is the same, but often it is very different.
Adult learners are comfortable with abstract thought patterns. They like to call on their life experiences and know what they expect from an ESL course. Adults have developed methods of learning that work best for them and, when they apply those methods. Their discipline is far more evident than one sees in children. Partly, this is because their brains are fully developed but they also have better motivation.

LanguageEnglish
PublisherRobert Taylor
Release dateJan 25, 2014
ISBN9780991696567
Teaching English as a Foreign Language to Adults
Author

Robert Taylor

Robert Taylor was formerly Director of the Centre for Chinese Studies and Reader in Modern Chinese Studies at the University of Sheffield. He is the author of a number of studies and academic articles relating to Chinese business management and China’s foreign policy, including Greater China and Japan and the edited volume, International Business in China: Understanding the Global Economic Crisis. He also contributed a chapter on China to the volume, edited by H.Hasegawa and C.Noronha, Asian Business and Management: Theory, Practice and Perspectives.

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    Good and effective and easy to teach my students in Bangkok
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    Thank you! very educational book and useful for my research.
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    Exactly what this new overseas teacher needed! Practical and easy to use.

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Teaching English as a Foreign Language to Adults - Robert Taylor

Theories about adult learning are predicated on the assumption that adults learn differently from children and adolescents. The belief is that these differences should be taken into account when structuring learning environments for adults. Age of the learners, existing knowledge level, motivation, social conditions, determination and student situation are factors that will be different from younger learners and that must therefore be considered when developing an ESL/EFL program for adults.

Most principles of learning derived from studies of children and adolescents also can be applied to adults. Those who design adult learning environments should consider both the general principles of learning that apply to learners of any age and those factors mentioned above that are unique to adult learners.

Motivation to Learn

1. Adults seek out learning experiences in order to cope with specific life-changing events--e.g., marriage, divorce, a new job, a promotion, being fired, retiring, losing a loved one, moving to a new city.

2. The more life change events an adult encounters, the more likely he or she is to seek out learning opportunities. Just as stress increases as life-change events accumulate, the motivation to cope with change through engagement in a learning experience increases.

3. The learning experiences adults seek out on their own are directly related - at least in their perception - to the life-change events that triggered the seeking.

4. Adults are generally willing to engage in learning experiences before, after, or even during the actual life change event. Once convinced that the change is a certainty, adults will engage in any learning that promises to help them cope with the transition.

5. Adults who are motivated to seek out a learning experience do so primarily because they have a use for the knowledge or skill being sought. Learning is a means to an end, not an end in itself.

6. Increasing or maintaining one's sense of self-esteem and pleasure are strong secondary motivators for engaging in learning experiences.

Curriculum Design

1. Adult learners tend to be less interested in, and enthralled by, survey courses. They tend to prefer single concept, single-theory courses that focus heavily on the application of the concept to relevant problems. This tendency increases with age.

2. Adults need to be able to integrate new ideas with what they already know if they are going to keep - and use - the new information.

3. Information that conflicts sharply with what is already held to be true, and thus forces a re-evaluation of the old material, is integrated more slowly.

4. Information that has little conceptual overlap with what is already known is acquired slowly.

5. Fast-paced, complex or unusual learning tasks interfere with the learning of the concepts or data they are intended to teach or illustrate.

6. Adults tend to compensate for being slower in some psychomotor learning tasks by being more accurate and making fewer trial-and- error ventures.

7. Adults tend to take errors personally and are more likely to let them affect self-esteem. Therefore, they tend to apply tried-and- true solutions and take fewer risks.

8. The curriculum designer must know whether the concepts or ideas will be in concert or in conflict with the learner. Some instruction must be designed to effect a change in belief and value systems.

9. Programs need to be designed to accept viewpoints from people in different life stages and with different value sets.

10. A concept needs to be anchored or explained from more than one value set and appeal to more than one developmental life stage.

11. Adults prefer self-directed and self-designed learning projects over group-learning experiences led by a professional, they select more than one medium for learning, and they desire to control pace and start/stop time.

12. Nonhuman media such as books, programmed instruction and television have become popular with adults in recent years.

13. Regardless of media, straightforward how-to is the preferred content orientation. Adults cite a need for application and how-to information as the primary motivation for beginning a learning project.

14. Self-direction does not mean isolation. Studies of self-directed learning indicate that self-directed projects involve an average of 10 other people as resources, guides, encouragers and the like. But even for the self-professed, self-directed learner, lectures and short seminars get positive ratings, especially when these events give the learner face-to-face, one-to-one access to an expert.

Chapter 2-Learning Environments

There are some important practical considerations which all ESL teachers need to address. Three such topics are discussed below. However, it is important to understand that, especially those teachers who are working in overseas, you may not have control over these things. They may very well be preset for you and you will have to do the best you can with what you are given.

For example, a colleague of mine in Thailand was charged with the task of teaching English to class after class of high school technical students. He was only given 20 minutes per class and each class had about 50 students. Not much can be accomplished in 20 minutes - perhaps one or two phrases or simple concept.

In the Classroom

1. The learning environment must be physically and psychologically comfortable; long lectures, periods of interminable sitting and the absence of practice opportunities rate high on the irritation scale.

2. Adults have something real to lose in a classroom situation. Self- esteem and ego are on the line when they are asked to risk trying a new behavior in front of peers and cohorts. Bad experiences in traditional education, feelings about authority and the preoccupation with events outside the classroom affect in-class experience.

3. Adults have expectations, and it is critical to take time early on to clarify and articulate all expectations before getting into content. The instructor can assume responsibility only for his or her own expectations, not for those of students.

4. Adults bring a great deal of life experience into the classroom, an invaluable asset to be acknowledged, tapped and used. Adults can learn well -and much - from dialogue with respected peers.

5. Instructors who have a tendency to hold forth rather than facilitate can hold that tendency in check--or compensate for it--by concentrating on the use of open-ended questions to draw out relevant student knowledge and experience.

6. New knowledge has to be integrated with previous knowledge; students must actively participate in the learning experience. The learner is dependent on the instructor for confirming feedback on skill practice; the instructor is dependent on the learner for feedback about curriculum and in-class performance.

7. The key to the instructor role is control. The instructor must balance the presentation of new material, debate and discussion, sharing of relevant student experiences, and the clock. Ironically, it seems that instructors are best able to establish control when they risk giving it up. When they shelve egos and stifle the tendency to be threatened by challenge to plans and methods, they gain the kind of facilitative control needed to effect adult learning.

8. The instructor has to protect minority opinion, keep disagreements civil and unheated, make connections between various opinions and ideas, and keep reminding the group of the variety of potential solutions to the problem. The instructor is less advocate than orchestrator.

9. Integration of new knowledge and skill requires transition time and focused effort on application.

10. Learning and teaching theories function better as resources than as a Rosetta stone. A skill-training task can draw much from the behavioral approach, for example, while personal growth- centered subjects seem to draw gainfully from humanistic concepts. An eclectic, rather than a single theory-based approach to developing strategies and procedures, is recommended for matching instruction to learning tasks.

Adults want their learning to be problem-oriented, personalized and accepting of their need for self-direction and personal responsibility.

Options for designing an ESL Program

There are two basic approaches to designing the overall ESL program. One is a system in which students enroll in classes and attend the classes at prearranged specified times. We shall refer to this as the classroom model. A second approach is the center model, in which the students are allowed to come into a learning center, work as long as they wish and leave when they want to. In this type of program, the students usually spent most of their time working individually or in small groups with the teacher. Given the fact that this type of program usually has a full-time trained ESL teacher, this manual will concentrate primarily on the first model.

Within the classroom model there are various types of classes. The most common type, and the one for which this manual in primarily designed, is the situation in which there is more than one class and the students are divided into classes according to proficiency levels. In this kind of class, even though the students are grouped according to proficiency, there will always be some students who are more advanced than others.

In addition to these differences which exist at the beginning of the class, the program will usually have a policy called open enrollment. This means that students can continue to enroll after the class begins. This makes it necessary to play the instruction so that lessons are as nonsequential as possible, that is, each lesson can be taught independently of the previous ones. While this is not entirely possible, it is desirable to have lessons which can accommodate new students as well as those who have attended previous lessons.

The differences in students mean that the teacher will need to plan activities which allow for different levels of performance in each thing being taught. The best way to do this is to break the class frequently into small groups for part of the class time and work with each group on their level. This is particularly true if the class has students who do not read in their native language.

What type of ESL class do you want?

Once you have decided what place your class is to have in the overall program, you are ready to begin the arrangements for the actual class. The following section is designed to help you make and carry out those arrangements as easily as possible.

ESL classes are taught in all kinds of classrooms under all kinds of conditions. However, there are some features of a classroom that are desirable and which can contribute to the learning of the students.

The Physical Environment

It is desirable to have a classroom that has movable desks. This is important so that you can use a variety of smaller size groups whenever you desire. Students can simply be told to pull their desks to a particular area of the room and into a particular arrangement. If individual movable desks are out of the question, the next best set-up is tables with movable chairs. If you have to use a room with chairs or desks attached to the floor or each other in long rows, your problems of getting students to interact will be greater.

Other desirable features for an ESL classroom include a large whiteboard, a bulletin board at the front where you can tack things for all to see, a large table at the front of the room where you can place real objects to work with, good lighting (particularly if you have any elderly students), and a means for controlling the air and temperature. It is also desirable to have a room that is not penetrated by lots of outside noise.

Learning a language under optimal circumstances can be trying; learning a language to the accompaniment of outside motors, traffic, and talking can be almost impossible.

Setting class times

Experiments have shown that little language learning takes place in classes that meet less than three times a week. The ideal situation for an adult education ESL class would probably be one that meets every day for an hour or an hour and a half. Second best would be a class that meets three times a week for two hours.

Meeting less often, even for longer periods at a time, often becomes counterproductive because so much is forgotten between class meetings. If you have control over the length of the class term (semester, quarter), you might try about an eight week course. Courses approximately this long allow students to feel a sense of accomplishment, and at the same time making it possible for new students to join and feel that they are not intruders.

Chapter 3-Building Confidence

There are many ways in which you as the teacher can build confidence in your adult students and trust in your ability. Let's face it - when you enter the class for the first time, your students likely will know nothing about you. You are an unknown entity as they are to you (unless you have done some pre-testing).

The following factors will affect what your students will think and how much trust you will gain from them:

What and how you teach

As we noted before, adult students prefer experience-based lessons; stuff they can apply in their daily lives. What you teach therefore must relate to them. Also, what is your teaching style? Do you stand up and lecture the students? Do you get them up and participating? Do you vary the content and style? Do you warm up the class (use ice breakers)? Do you tell them at the start what the lesson will be about and why it is important to them? Keep the class interesting and you will keep your students interested, enjoying your classes and wanting more.

How this relates to the goals of your students

You must know why your students are in your class in the first place. Once you know that, you can gear lessons and materials to ensure you are giving them what they want or need.

How well they understand your teaching (level of difficulty compared to their ability)

If you are teaching at a level that is too easy for them, they will quickly lose interest. Similarly, if it is too difficult, they may very well tune out, lose interest and not come to class. The level of their ability should be determined initially if possible through an entrance test to determine that they are in the right level. You may not always have the ability to test and may find yourself with a class of widely varying comprehension levels. This adds to the difficulty and you will have to strive to strike a happy medium yet still keep the advanced learners interested.

The speed of your teaching is critical. If you teach too fast, you will lose them...especially the slower learners. Students do not necessarily hear what you say. They hear what they think you said - and it is this that they remember.

Equally important as the speed, is the number and length of pauses you allow between statements. ESL students need more time to process new information and to relate it to what they already know. Longer pauses help this process and improve understanding.

How you handle the class

Do you start and end on time? Do you have a lesson plan? Do you maintain control of the class or let others take over discussions? Do you go off on tangents...digress from the lesson plan? If you do, students may get bored or not feel that you are an effective teacher. What usually happens then is that they stop coming to class.

How you respond to questions

Native-English students are taught to ask questions. Many other people are brought up the same way. On the other hand, Asian students do not. They have a completely different mindset. In some Asian cultures, questioning a teacher opens up the possibility of a double 'loss of face'. Asking a question can mean either that the teacher did not explain the concept sufficiently for you to understand (loss of face for the teacher in front of the class) or you were to dim-witted to have understood (loss of face for you in front of your peers). Since neither of these is desirable, it is better not to invite them by asking a question. Asian students may however catch the teacher after class or later to ask the question in private.

How good your knowledge is of the English language

English has many rules and just as many exceptions. Native speakers often cannot tell you why something is said or written the way it is. We just grow up with it and it becomes part of us. It is only when we become teachers and others ask Why is 'enough' pronounced 'enuf' and yet 'through' is pronounced 'thru'? that we have to go searching for rules. This comes with practice. You should have several grammar books - British and American English, British and American dictionaries, a Roget's Thesaurus, and Fowler's Modern English Usage as references. Add any other books you can find - including one on etymology of the English language. You are the expert in the eyes of your students. That you know your subject inside out is expected.

What the other students think (peer agreement)

Students listen to their peers...their classmates. While they are not as influenced by them as teenagers, the views of their peers still act as reinforcements of their own thoughts. If others in the class find your teaching boring, the word will spread. It will also spread if others really enjoy your classes.

Encouragement and Reward

Nothing builds confidence in a student more than having the teacher acknowledge the progress a student is making especially if this is done in front of the whole class. When a student believes that he or she is making progress, it instills the confidence needed to continue and trust in the teacher's ability to provide the assistance the student needs.

Chapter 4-Motivation

Motivating Adult Students

There is a definite correlation between building trust in the teacher as discussed in the previous lesson and motivation. Because students come with specific purposes for learning, one of the best ways to keep them motivated is to help them feel progress towards their goal. In order to do this, you will have to determine somehow what those goals are. One way to proceed is to conduct an informal discussion to determine their goals. This may require the assistance of interpreters because of the variety of the students' native languages.

Once the goals have been determined, materials and activities should be selected which will be relevant to the goals. For example, a student wants to learn English so that he or she can work towards a General Education Diploma (GED) or Adult Basic Education Diploma (ABE), the materials that are chosen should provide vocabulary and language patterns that are used in basic secondary textbooks.

Students will be further motivated if you remind them how each of the activities that you are doing will help them move towards their goals (e.g., We're doing this activity so that when you are taking a math class, you will be able to . . .).

One of the most important factors which motivates students is a sense of progress. There should be clear markers of success so that students can look at what they are doing well. This means that there should be fairly frequent measurements (questioning individual students, short quizzes, corrected homework, etc.).

Too often teachers avoid measurements because they are time consuming or because the students have an inordinate fear of examinations. However, a wise teacher will build in easy, convenient ways of showing the students their progress.

One simple way of doing this is a simple checklist of tasks which the students would want to be able to accomplish in order to reach their overall goal. As they do the tasks one by one, they sense their progress and feel that the class is worthwhile. This will keep them coming until they reach their major goal.

A second factor which will maintain and increase motivation for your students is enjoyment. Activities should provide opportunities for real social interaction and getting to know other people in a relaxed and, sometimes, even humorous ways.

If activities are exciting enough, students will not want to miss class because they know they will be missing the action. If you help your students develop feelings of respect and friendship for one another, those ties will also draw them back to the class.

Relevance is probably the most important motivating factor for adult students. If the students are exposed to and study life-coping skills, e.g. balancing a checkbook, applying for a job, etc., their interest will never waiver.

Let's take a look at two of the more common reasons for learning English and what might work well for achieving learning goals.

I'd like to improve my English in order to find a better job.

In this case, it is important to ask yourself the questions:

1. Will a certificate help the chances of getting a job?

2. Is job specific English required?

3. Who will I (the students) be speaking English with, native speakers or other English as a foreign language speakers?

This is very important as the need for a certificate will dictate what is required learning:

Grammar, Functional English, Listenin ,Reading,Writing, Speaking

If a certificate is required, the student should focus

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