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Teaching Across Age Levels.

One of the main focus and concerns that teachers must keep in mind,when teaching English are probably the content to be taught, and the type of learners. This factors, in some cases, can be considered as disadvantages or weaknesses . This two implicants can lead us to think about our labour especially if we are not native speakers. On the other hand, how do I approach these students to make them feel secure and comfortable during my classes. According to the text, teachers mus be aware about the individual needs of their learners. Considering this, the age range of the learners is a key point to develop an specific. Every single strategy has to consider the interests, the meaning of the content, and how the learner will learn. These are the main focus of the text, which is divided according to the different age levels and type of learners. Teaching Children. During several studies and researches, it is not surprising that young children are capable to grasp more information in less time than ever in their entire life. Young learners can develop communicative competencies and language abilities in less time and more skilfully that in elder stages. Due children's nature is more interactive and curious, a good teacher has to use these innate qualities to achieve a good language acquisition, but this is not only applicable on teaching English as a Foreign Language or as Second Language. This nature quality can be use in almost every other subject. The interactive children's nature is commonly use to achieve a considerable learning level, so the approaches has to be interesting and usually, full of activities that involve imitation and games. When we teach children we have to adequate our methods considering their age, for example a four-year-old speaking can easily acquire another language than the native one in a better way and also in less time than a twelve-year-old. Although that many points of view can be different about the approaches that we can use to work with young learners, the text consider intellectual development, attention spam, sensory input, affective factors,and authentic meaningful content as the cornerstone of learning.

Intellectual Development. Physical and learning development goes hand-in-hand with the stage when a new language is introduce to the learners. Based on this, there are many different methods to achieve the language learning and further acquisition. Is well known that children at that age are not able to comprehend the complex structures of grammar or have an idea about present progressive or relative clause, remember that they don't have those concepts in their mother tongue. Same thing happens with any other abstract concept. In this stage it is important to consider the new vocabulary acquisition by drilling and the use of pictures that can contextualise their meaning, but also we have to consider how interesting will be our activities, this is the opening for the second important point of view, the attention span.

Attention Span. Due the curious nature of children, the attention span can be significantly diminish by external factors that can interfere directly on their learning. The attention span increases its difference between young and elder learners, because of the willing for learning. But the attention span can not be more than forty five continuous minutes and in every stage this is affected by external factors. The key concept is the commitment to learn which is develop in the future stages. Sensory Input. Sensory input, the key in teaching to young learners, is how the senses are stimulated. That's a reason why teachers needs to be focuses on stimulate the five senses, but the teacher needs to achieve a balance between the audio visual content and participative activities that can be also physical. The physical activities can also help to maintain focused during the learning process, specially in role played situations.

Affective Factors. Children and their unlimited imagination, can develop innovative ways to communicate, usually this new forms are meaningless, but useful in terms of comprehend how they communicate their way to see an understand the world. Based on this, teachers have to be able to surpass the language barrier. How can be possible? Easy, developing a bond between the teacher and the young learners.

By doing this, the teacher can be part of their world and be able to interact in a close manner giving a comfortable environment where they can express their ideas without the fear of failure. Because young learners doesn't understand the concept of mistake, if a teacher can not develop the affective bond the learning can be miss focused and would be not as effective as it should. Authentic, meaningful language. Probably one of the key concepts in the teaching labour, the contextualization of the contents, in every level, is the golden rule to follow. If a teacher can use examples that are familiar for the learners, in this way the language and the learning process turns familiar. The main idea of this contextualization is create real life-like situations that make the learning relevant to them.

Teaching Adults. Due to superior learning abilities of adults it is more easy to succeed in teaching complex structures of grammar and language. In this level we also can apply the same keys that are used on teaching to children. Every stage is different from each other in terms of interests, cognitive competences. The downside of teaching adults is, in some cases, the difficulties to teach them not as they were children, so the teacher has to customise their methods and the meaning of the content and try to maintain a certain distance to not involve with the learners. Teaching Teenagers. Considered one of the mos problematic and difficult group to teach, teenagers. Psychologically unstable and with a disrespectful attitude against the adults and figure of authority. Due their attitude and the fact that they are not adults yet but neither children, the topics and interest to chose content can be particularly difficult, but the use of multimedia technologies and ICT can catch their attention span which is similar to small children's span. Another important characteristic of teenagers is their ego, so teachers must be careful with the use of corrections or enhancement to participate, because there are most aware of pair criticism rather than teacher. A good way to use the ego in favour of the class, is develop the cooperative learning and a competitive way of think. In this way, teenager learners can improve by themselves and the teacher will be their guide on the learning and not the visible face of a restrictive system that only instruct.

Conclusion

To conclude, a teacher must always consider the personal implicants and cognitive stages of their learners. The similarity on the approaches is something to consider, but as was mentioned before, every approach has a different target, in this case children, teenagers, and adults. The main focus of this documents is to prove the several differences and how the teachers has to adapt themselves to achieve the full potential hidden in every learner.

Student name: Freddy Acevedo Villaseca Subject: Taller de Planificacion Professor: Veronica Leon Lagomarsino

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