Teaching across Age levels…

People who are Native American Speakers are always confused because they tend to misunderstood that if they know how to speak English they can teach that language but they are completely wrong.  Teaching English means have a lot of knowledgement and also a lot of techniques and approaches. It also means go step by step. Start since the very beginning. With novices and finish with almost experts in the language.

There are some levels that educators and learners must follow in order to have good learning:

Teaching Children: it is common people who say that children can learn a second language faster than older persons. And can be maybe the half of the truth. Why? Because children are more spontaneous; instead, teens or adults are aware of what they’re learning.  But this is not the matter.

To teach children a second language requires specific skills and intuitions that differ from those appropriate for adult teaching.  Here you have those specific skills;

1)      Intellectual Development: teacher must increase student’s intellectual levels by correcting the student In what the student is doing wrong or something like that

2)      Sensory Input: Children need to have all their five senses stimulated or activated. You as teacher must prepare classes more physically in order to involve students in actions during the classroom to improve their senses. Your own nonverbal language is important here because children will be able to know your gestures, your facial features, and touching.

3)      Affective Factors:  children’s egos are still being shaped. Children in many ways are much more sensitive than adults because they could ask themselves what other people think about them at the time they are speaking English or their target language and some other questions. So, you as a teacher must help your students those kinds of preoccupations of students by making them laugh at the time they all are making mistakes, by be patient, by building children’s self-esteem and some other things. Another important thing is that you must develop on students as much oral participation as you can, especially the ones who are very shy. They must have plenty of opportunities in order to try things out.

These are some skills that are very important to the teacher when he or she is dealing with kids. As you can see, dealing with children is even harder than dealing with adults in some points .It is not what the people think about dealing with children in a learning process.

Teaching Teens: It is clearly that at the age of twelve and upon, we say that children are not children anymore and they begin to be teens. Since that age, educators tend to confuse whether which kind of technique should he apply; for children or teenager. But, learning process must go slow. Teacher must mix some techniques of children and teens but with the time teacher should incorporate the techniques of teens.

In order to have good results when teaching teens, teachers must apply some techniques that involve teens’ communication with each other.

For example there are some topics for discussion, action, and research.

(I)                 Will be for individual work.

(g)         Will be for group or pair work.

(c)         Will be Whole-Class discussion.

1.       (g) Direct small groups or pairs in order to discuss a topic seen in class. That is adult class. After that, teens will find some solutions to issues that are presented on the topics that they have seen.

2.       (c) Engage the entire classroom in a discussion of a social problem. A problem that are happening in real life. So that, they will have contact with each other, they will think about the problem, and then they will give their opinions about the problem in the target language.

Proficiency levels….

Proficiency levels referring to the following terms: Beginning, Intermediate or advanced.

According to some institutes, they define some activities that are useful in these levels.

1-      The oral interview: this is a carefully designed set of structured tasks that elicit pronunciation, fluency and integrative ability, grammar, and vocabulary.

2-      The role of the teacher: students are highly dependent of the teacher in the levels; Teacher- Centered or Teacher-Fronted classroom is appropriate in some time.

3-      Teacher Talk: Teacher’s English needs to be clearly articulated so that, for an easier comprehension of students at the time the teacher is giving a speech. But the teacher does not have to slow his speech. It will sound naturalness. Instead, teacher must use simple vocabulary and structures.

4-      Authenticity of language: teachers must use the language in a proper way. Not because students are in basic levels teachers will speak with them, as if they are speaking with upper students. Instead teacher must use the language according with students’ level. This will become language more understandable.

Teaching Intermediate Levels: at intermediate stage some automatic processing has taken hold. Sentences structures, phrases, and conversational rules have been practiced and are increasing in number, forcing the mental processes.

The role of the teacher: In this level you are not the only one who begins language. Students are encouraged to ask questions, to make comments, and negotiate certain options in learning. As you can see, students are more prepared in the target language, so you must get ready for the things that will come in your way.

Teaching Advanced Levels:  these are called Advanced Students; and they are at the very top of the target language, they are supposed to have good fluency, grammar, and some skills in writing, listening and speaking; they are in a superior level. They are getting closer and closer to their goals, developing fluency along with a greater degree of accuracy.

They are supposed to have better contact or interaction with the teacher because they manage almost “the one hundred percent” of the target language; so that, they will feel more free to express what they think to the teacher and even to their classmates.

The Lexical approach method.

"LEXICAL APPROACH"

What i liked of  the method I talked is that everything is focused on speaking, how to use the proper native target language in order to have good pronunciation, a vast vocabulary of your target language. the most important point in this method is that the teachers that apply this method teach you the target language with the famous "chunks", word combinations, collocations and also Idiomatic expressions.

the main objective in this method is that you as a student will be able in the future to speak as a native-like

what i dont like of this method is that teachers are only focused in speaking, they dont care about important things in english like grammar, good writing or things like those, i think that is one of the most bigger Cons that this method has, because as you can see english in our case is our target language and we need to develop some skills, Writing, Speaking, Listening, Reading. thats the problem.

i think that the teachers have to make a combination of these methods in order to improve pupil's learning.

"Cognitive Approach"

what i  liked of this method is that we as learners use our mental activities in order to understand and connect concepts.

when we talk about cognition, we refer to those mental activities for example; thinking, remembering and learning.

this are those mental activities that help us to memorize the concepts in certain subejcts...

but what i did not like of this method is that students use this mental activities but i think they only improve their short-term-memory, and that's a big problem. For instance, you will have a test next week, you study, you learn some concepts by hearth, and of course, those concepts will be usefull for you at the time you do the test, but some days later you will forget about the concepts. so in my oppinion thats a big problem of this method!!.... 

Thanks!!

My Favorite Quote:

Hello! dear classmates, here you can see the Quote i liked, I chose this one because as you can see nobody was born expert, during time passes it teachs you about how to do the things, at the beginning everything is hard because you don't know how things happen, but experiences are the ones that teach you as I already said.

Like a rap song says: Started from the bottom now I'm Here, you don't have to be upset of yourself  if you  make things wrong at the beginning, with the time you will become an expert in a certain field; for example, during our years of study at university, we begin since Basic English... Why? because we are beginners, with the time, we go upstairs one by one, getting the things correct and making our hability perfect, at the end of our major, we are like experts, but this Doesn't mean that we know everything becuase we learn new things everyday.

So if you think that you won't be an expert in the future, don't give up, the beginning is always the hardest, hit the books, take advantage of your time, make an effort, do your best and pay attention to all the little details that are around you in order to make yourself an expert in whatever field you want. we start since the bottom and if we want, we can touch the sky, Remember if you want to be a mediocre person you won't go beyond. but if you want to be a successful person won't give up and do the things by hearth in order to be an expert.

When we have a degree and we start to work, we won't begin as experts, we begin doing the things maybe incorrect or bad, but while we are working we gain experience, and experience makes you a successful and expert person, like a quote says: Practice makes the teacher, in this case the more you practice the more experience you get and then you become an expert. remember every single person that is an expert in one thing was a beginner in the past, but that person did the best in order to get what he or she wanted.

If you're worried about the things that you make wrong, don't be dissapointed, Just take a breath, think for a moment and remember this..... Nobody Was Born Expert or Even Perfect. Thanks