Second edition

Children	Teenagers
Adults
Need to move	Starting to keep still for longer periods but stiil need to move	Abie to keep stili for longer periods
Can concentrate for shorter periods (short attention span)	Concentration developing	Can concentrate for longer periods
Learn through experience and doing	Beginning to learn in abstract ways, i.e. through thinking, as weil as experiencing	Can learn in more abstract ways
Are not very able to control and plan their own behaviour	Beginning to control and plan their own behaviour	Usually able to control and plan their own behaviour
Are not afraid of making mistakes or taking risks	May worry about what others think of them	May not be so willing to make mistakes or take risks

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Are not aware of themselves and/or rlieii actions	Sometimes uncomfortably aware of themselves and/or their actions	Aware of themseives and/or their actions
Pay attention to meaning in language	Pay attention to meaning and increasingly to form	Can pay attention to form and meaning in language
Have limited experience of life	Beginning to increase their experience of life	Have experience of life
Developing cognitive skills	Cognitive skills generally believed to be developed at around age 15	Have mature cognitive skills
Motivation to learn language is part of general motivation to communicate and learn	Motivation varies considerably and may not be fixed or may be absent	Motivation often conscious and controlled

Of course, every learner is different, so any one learner may not fit exactly into these descriptions. The descriptions are generalisations that show likely, but not fixed, characteristics. But from looking at these differences we can see that each age group generally needs to be taught in different ways.
Past language learning experience
Teenage and adult learners may have learnt English before. They may be used to learning in a particular way and have definite ideas about how to learn best. For example, an adult may have learnt English at school through learning lots of grammar and may have been successful in learning this way. If he then finds himself in a class where the teaching is done only through communicative activities (i.e. activities where learners communicate with each other in speaking or writing), he may feel he is not learning. But, he may, of course, prefer it. Another adult may have learnt by using translation at school and then come to a class in which translation is never used. He may or may not like this change. Teachers of adults {and sometimes teachers of teenagers) need to be aware of how their learners have learnt previously and how they want to learn now. The learners may welcome a change in method, but they may want to learn in the same way as they learnt before.
Other learner characteristics which can vary from learner to learner are their level of language, their motivation {see Unit 9), and their general personality. Are they, for example, shy, outgoing, patient, curious, sensitive, etc.? All these qualities will affect how and how much each learner engages in different kinds of activities in the classroom.


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Unit 13 Learner characteristics

и Key concepts and the language teaching classroom
Read these tips and tick the ones which are most important for you.
® It can be useful for teachers to become aware of their own learning styles, past learning experience and learning strategies, and to compare these with how they teach. Teachers sometimes teach in the same style in which they themselves like to learn. This is unlikely to be the same style as all their learners prefer.
• Some learner characteristics, such as past language learning experience and learning strategies, are more relevant to teaching teenagers and adults than to leaching children.
® We can find out what our learners' characteristics are by e.g. asking them, observing them, giving them questionnaires, asking at the end of a lesson whether they liked the activities done in class and why, and in what different ways they might like to work.
© We can train learners to become aware of and use different learning strategies. This is part of learner training. We can, for example, give learners a list of strategies for remembering words and ask them which they prefer and why; or we can ask them how they arrived at a solution to a problem to raise their awareness of useful learning strategies.
© Teachers may need to discuss their methods with learners who are unhappy with new methods. They may need to introduce the new methods gradually and explain the reasons for them. This is also part of learner training, i.e. helping learners adapt their own ways of learning. Teachers may also need to change their teaching to make the learners more comfortable and confident in their learning, if they see that learners can't or won't change their learning style.
m Teachers can build into their lessons activities which match different learning
styles, e.g. a listening activity followed by a reading activity followed by group work followed by a mingle (an activity which involves learners walking round the class talking to other students), followed by an exercise.
© When teachers consider their learners' maturity it will strongly influence their lesson planning and what they do in the classroom, e.g, how many activities they do in a lesson, the length of activities, how abstract the activities are, how much the activities involve experiencing and doing, how much to focus on meaning rather than form, what features of motivation to work with, how much they ask students to talk in front of others.
m It is not possible for the teacher to match the learner characteristics of each learner all the time. Across a number of lessons teachers can try to vary how they teach so that they can match the learner characteristics of a range of learners.
See Un/ts 19,20,21 for planning lessons that reflect learner characteristics. ¹





1 Look at these brief profiles of three learners of English. How might their learner characteristics influence how they like to learn and how successful they are at learning English?


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Module i

2


_
Hello. My name's Raquel. I'm from Portugal and I’m 6. i love sports and playing with my friends. I don't like reading - it's really hard.





__ - — -
Hi. I'm Mahmoud and I'm from Egypt, I'm 16 and I’ve been learning English for 10 years. I like studying hard and learning rules. Maths and physics are my favourite subjects. I don’t like English much as all we do is chat ~





Nice to meet you. My name’s Xiu Xiu and I’m from Shanghai. I’m 26 and I’m about to start a new job as a sales representative in an international firm. I speak a little English, because l learnt it at school. We learnt lots of words and lots of grammar rules. That was good, but now I need to speak to customers. Fortunately, I’m a very sociable person.





look at these classroom activities and at the list of learning styles on page 72. Match the activities with the learning styles they are most suitable for.
A Giving learners lots of thinking time to answer questions В Touching objects with your eyes dosed to describe them C Solving problems with others
D Looking at sentences containing the second conditional, and working out how to


form this tense


E Listening to songs and stories F Asking learners to decide on their own homework G Asking learners to brainstorm answers in one minute H Doing a role-play activity
f Asking learners to imagine a scene and describe it to you J Asking learners to label a picture


Which of these activities are suitable for both adults and young children?





Think about these teachers' comments. Which do you agree with and why?

1. 
   My learning style is auditory and I think most of my teaching is auditory, too.
   
2. 
   f spent two lessons explaining learning strategies to my students when they started secondary school. They just weren't interested, so 1 haven't tried it again.
   
3. 
   Some of my students are really good at learning things by heart, but 1 think that's old-fashioned.
   

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Unit 13 Learner characteristics





J Observe two 0Г your learners next week and work out which learning style(s) they have. Write a description of their learning styIe{s) and put it in your Teacher Portfolio.

2. 
   What is your learning style? Find out at: http://www.engr.nesu.edu/learningstyles/ilsweb.html
   
3. 
   Read more about learning styles at: http://www.Iearning-styles-online.com/
   
4. 
   Read more about learning strategies at:
   

http://www.onesiopenglish.com/seelion.asp7doeid~i 55562