Students come with a range of abilities and attitudes. After teaching in Thailand and Vietnam for 16 years, I’ve come across the whole spectrum. In this book on teaching English, there’s a description of the various students a new teacher may come across. Here’s an extract:
If you think teachers come in a range of shapes and sizes, just wait until you witness the range of students you’re going to teach.
Some students are eager, some are recalcitrant; some are delightful, some are dire. However, the good news is that to a large extent the kind of student you get is related to the kind of teacher you are. Plan well, think how to engage with students and there’s a good chance they will react positively.
Go somewhere like South Korea and you’re likely to meet students who live in a society where work and education are paramount and so they’ll have their heads in their books from dawn to dusk. Head to Japan and you may be met with willing, charming students who don’t want to interact for fear of making a mistake.
Land in a Thai classroom and you will need to be as much an entertainer as you will a teacher. If you make a lesson anything there, make it stimulating. The first complaint Thai students usually have is that lessons aren’t ‘sanuk’, or fun.
Depending on where you are teaching, students’ levels of English may vary wildly. At the top of the ladder are international schools, where students only study ESL until they ready to join mainstream classes. And on the bottom rung are government schools, sometimes with classes of 50-plus.
Traditional teaching methodology in government schools environments often focuses on reading and writing, with plenty of drilling. The results are students who can recite the formula for the Passive Future Continuous Tense, but may have few speaking and listening activities. As well as various types of schools, the various ages of students will also affect how you teach. Below is a breakdown of the basic student groups you can expect.
Young Children
Trying to find teachers to work in kindergarten can be like attempting to count the stars in a night sky -.exhausting work. The idea of attempting to teach a foreign language to children who can barely master their mother tongue can seem daunting. Yet young learners are among the quickest to pick up a new language and the most willing to please a teacher.
Up to the age of about six, experts reckon that children are the most receptive to new languages. On the plus side, young children will want to get acceptance and approval from their teacher. They will also respond enthusiastically to what you want to do, and will be happy to try new things. On the down side, their attention span is short, so you’ll need to be using several short activities rather than one long one for a lesson.
Teenagers
Anyone who has seen ‘The Breakfast Club’ knows how this can go. Lethargy, disinterest and apparent amnesia when it comes to bringing books to class are just some of the complaints.
The one difference between teenagers and young learners is that the former prefer to please their friends, whereas the latter looks for approval from their teacher. Despite this, teenagers can be the most rewarding group to teach. Once you establish some ground rules and they know who the boss is, teens tend to be inquisitive, open to challenges and happy to take on new concepts.
For the full article, go here.
