Teaching English for Adults  2

I am Mr. / Girgis (Egypt).

1-What about teaching English to adults?

2-What are the differences between teaching English to adults and

teaching English to younger learners?

1-The biggest difference is that it is usually possible to use a wider

 range of texts and subject matter with adults than with younger

learners.

2-It is safe to use any subject matter when you are teaching adults.

3-Adults can concentrate for longer than younger students can.

4-Adults don't learn as fast as children do.

5-Adults are more motivated to learn than children.

6-You shouldn't play games with adults as they like to be serious.


Everyone has a preferred style of learning and some people do prefer

to learn by doing exercises, reading a book, and serious conversation.

But it is always a good idea to inject a little fun into the lessons to make

them less monotonous, and educational games are a good way to do

 this.

Other suggestions for teaching English to adults

I suggest that teachers should consider the following:

Get to know your students.

The better you know them, the better you will be able to provide

interesting, useful activities.

Make the resources you use relevant to your students.

For example, if the majority of them are looking for a job, use job

advertisements, applications and interviews in a lesson.

Have your students tell you subjects they want to cover in the lessons.

If students are involved with lesson planning, they are usually more

motivated to learn.

Vary the location as well as the activities if you can.

Lessons outside, in a coffee shop, or in a shopping mall or library can

be useful and interesting for adult learners.

Teaching English to adults can be really rewarding and it can also be

fun. It doesn't have to be boring at all.

How to Teach Practical ESL Lessons to Adults

 with Real-world English Needs:

Many of the adults who are learning ESL are what we call false

beginners.

They feel and act like they are beginners, but they have actually tried

to learn English before.

This post will help you figure out how to teach ESL to adults who

aren’t quite absolute beginners but still need a lot of guidance.

Contents

 

What are the differences?

1-Unlike carefree children, adults may be feeling quite stressed as

 they first poke their noses into your classroom.

2-As the teacher, you need to be aware that there could be all sorts

 of things in their lives that make these lessons extra stressful.

3-Maybe they had English lessons way back when they were still in

school, but somehow the lessons didn’t stick and now they need to

start again.

4-Maybe their whole school experience for some reason was

frustrating and unhappy.

5-Maybe they are generally skilled at their job but their boss insists

they need to learn English.

6-Maybe they have migrated or are planning to do so (possibly under

very difficult circumstances) and they need to learn English to be

successful in their new country. Their children and other family

members may have already gone ahead and learned faster than

them—or maybe the whole family is relying on this one person to

 learn English and help them adapt.

7-Maybe they are afraid that they are too old and therefore

unable to learn.

If they have taken the leap and put themselves “out there” enough to

have arrived in your ESL class, or if they are working one-on-one with

you, then they are trusting you to make sure that they are not wasting

their time.

While kids generally love surprises, adults often prefer to avoid

surprises because they are afraid:

    of seeming undignified.

    of being made to look silly in front of others.

    of “losing face,” which is a very important concept in some cultures.

    of failing—again.

That doesn’t mean that they shouldn’t have fun! It just means you do

not want to scare them off with too many spontaneous activities or by

putting them in the “hot seat,” answering questions in front of the

 entire class.

So how can you make sure that your adult students are having fun?

1-Make sure you provide an activity-based program—not just “chalk

 and talk.”

   
2-Make sure that they succeed in their learning by checking in

regularly.

3-Make sure that they notice that they are succeeding, and encourage

self-confidence.

4-Make sure you encourage them to keep going even if they feel like

they are failing. Mistakes are all part of the learning process.

5-Make sure that you have the right training. If they’re expecting

someone with TEFL certification, you should have it—and let them

know that you do. Luckily, nowadays it’s quite easy to obtain TEFL

certification online with a quality course like you'll find on Premier

TEFL.

Activities to teach adults:

 1-Take a Survey

 

Asking questions and giving answers provides a basis for many of our

conversations, but correctly phrasing questions can be tricky in

English, especially when you add various degrees of politeness and

indirect questioning, such as “I wonder if I could ask you about…,” etc.

Prepare questions or help your students to create questions around a

 particular topic, using vocabulary that you may be focusing on at the

time, for example, food, transport, reading books, hobbies, etc.

To start with, each student could have three related questions. It is not

 necessary for every student to have completely different questions,

but some variety will help to keep it interesting for everyone. You can

see some examples of surveys.

Tell your students to survey a number of other students—maybe 6 or

10, depending on your class size—and keep a record of their answers.

 They can also answer questions for each fellow student that they

survey.

This is easier to do if the questions are carefully worded to limit the

number of possible answers. Then they can collate what they have

found out and prepare a short talk for the class about their results.

*One-on-one:

 You can help your student prepare some questions to ask you, and

you could also ask them questions, more in the nature of an interview

rather than a survey. Then you could each give a “talk” (maybe in front

 of a camera) reporting on the interview.

You could also arrange some people for your student to survey

—maybe in your school hallways, or in a local shopping center or

library—and accompany them as they take their survey.

2-Reading Activities

Hopefully the adults you are teaching are already literate, able to read

and write in their own language. If not, then you will need to do some

very specialized work with them on basic literacy skills such as

phonics.

Even people whose first language has a different script—such as

Chinese—often also learn Roman script at school. So you are not

teaching them how to read, the mechanics of reading, like when you

learn reading in grade one at school. They are really just learning the

peculiarities of English spelling and pronunciation.

3-. Reading Aloud

Children in school are frequently asked to take turns at reading aloud.

 Due to their level of familiarity with it, adults often find this quite a

relaxing activity in the classroom. It shouldn’t be a competition, but

rather a cooperation.

Everyone should have a copy of the story or article and be following

along and engaged. This could be done as a whole class, in pairs or

 in small groups.

Depending on the material, if the students are interested, this could

lead to a role play or drama activity.

*One-on-one:

 With a one-on-one student you could take turns reading through a

story or article. You could each have a newspaper or magazine, and

take turns reading out short excerpts.

4- Scavenger Hunt Reading

This is particularly fun if you can get a bunch of free local newspapers,

 but you can use other texts as long as each student or pair has the

same. Get them to find a particular word/expression/answer to a

question on a particular page.

Again it is usually better to have cooperation rather than competition.

 It can be a lot of fun as everyone is engaged in scrambling through

 the paper and scanning pages for clues. They can also have turns

to suggest things for others to look for.

*One-on-one:

 In a one-on-one arrangement, you and your student could take turns

 to set items for the other to search for.

5-Dictionary Scramble

If you have enough (English to English) dictionaries to go around, see

 who can find and read out a definition for a particular word. Students

could select a word and set it as a task for everyone else to find and

read. Practice reading and correctly pronouncing difficult words using

the help provided in the dictionary.

You could start by reading together (silently) through an interesting—

but maybe slightly difficult—article and choose some words to look up

in the dictionary.

You can also use technology for this activity, with FluentU. Search

through the program’s many authentic videos, like movie trailers,

 news segments and commercials, and find a video that you think will

be engaging to your students but also slightly above their current skill

level. (You can do the latter by filtering by difficulty level, as FluentU

organizes all its videos into six skill levels from absolute beginner to

nearly fluent.)

You won’t need all those dictionaries if you use FluentU, since the

program has a built-in contextual dictionary. Students can simply click

on any word to see what it means, view other videos that use it or add

it to a flashcard list

6=-Writing Activities

Most of your adult students will not be wanting to write creative stories

in English, merely to get by on tasks that are relevant to their daily life

and work.

7- Reality Hour

Let your students decide what they need to learn. What kind of writing

will they be using most often at work or at school? Talk to them to find

out. Then, assign them a writing hour in class that lets them practice

that type of writing.

8-applications:

Find some authentic job openings on the Internet,

print them out and have students practice writing applications, cover

 letters and CVs.

9- News article:

This is great practice for describing an event that has occurred or

an imaginary event. Students can be required to bring in a news

article that is relevant to their lives or make up a news story that

matches their own interests. Then they’ll need to write their own

articles. Try making a class newspaper.

10-Class blog:

There are lots of options for setting up a free blog, such as Blogger

 and WordPress. Encourage your students to all write a post every

 week.

11-Emails:

 Encourage students to write emails to each other and to you.

Then have them answer those received emails.

For their own sake, to improve their learning skills, it is a really good

idea to encourage your students to keep a Reflective Journal. It could

 be handwritten in a notebook or kept on a device or computer

according to their preference. They could choose whether to share

what they have written with each other or with you.

To keep everyone engaged with their writing, display printed efforts

 on the classroom walls or make a series of books that they can flip

through to see what each other wrote in the interest of getting them

to encourage each other.

 

I wait dor your comments.

 

Thanks a lot.

 

Signature,

 

Mr. / Girgis.

My site Link

 www.bchmsg.yolasite.com

My Blog Link         

https://mrgirgis.blogspot.com/