{"id":767,"date":"2012-06-25T02:05:38","date_gmt":"2012-06-25T02:05:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/itdi.pro\/blog\/?p=767"},"modified":"2012-06-25T02:05:38","modified_gmt":"2012-06-25T02:05:38","slug":"motivating-our-students-cecilia-lemos","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/itdi.pro\/blog\/2012\/06\/25\/motivating-our-students-cecilia-lemos\/","title":{"rendered":"Motivating our students – Cecilia Lemos"},"content":{"rendered":"

Show Adult Students The Light In<\/em> The Tunnel\"\"<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

I\u2019ve been focusing my teaching on adult students lately — the ones who don\u2019t have extra time and try to balance English lessons with work, family and life. They\u2019re the ones who start the term motivated to learn and improve their English. But somehow they get lost along the way as they get distracted by all of their many things and responsibilities.<\/p>\n

At the beginning of the semester, adult students are pumped up and ready to learn \u2013 maybe motivated by a few weeks off, on holidays – who knows? All I know is that it\u2019s hard to keep that motivation going. Why? Possible reasons include: too many things happening at the same time, the slower pace at which adult students generally learn, the sense they get of not moving forward at the speed they would like to be moving \u2013 you name it.<\/p>\n

From my experience, though, I dare say the biggest problem adult students face is lack of time, followed by a perceived lack of progress. \u00a0<\/span>Adult students usually take longer to realize how far they have come in their language learning because they usually aim big \u2013 and fast.\u00a0 That comes from needing to see results immediately \u2013 like being able to do business or accomplish certain tasks after their first semester of studying English. When they can\u2019t do these things, they don\u2019t see their progress. With kids and teens it seems easier, but with adults it becomes more difficult to show them what they\u2019re learning, how much they\u2019ve improved and how much they can do.<\/p>\n

Because they aim big and fast, I aim them at the little things.<\/p>\n

For instance, with one A1\/A2 student who felt no progress had been achieved, I suggested he read texts that were relevant to him. He is a professor at the university, so I suggested he use academic texts related to his research as reading comprehension. It worked! He started including them in his portfolio and was excited about the new terms he had learned from researching. More importantly, he was able to put to immediate use the English he was learning \u2013 and build from there. This student told me how thrilled he was to actually understand what was being said in the texts he read. Focus on that!<\/p>\n

To help you<\/em> focus, here are a few ideas I\u2019ve tried with adult students:<\/p>\n

\u2022 Show them they don\u2019t need to sound native to be understood.<\/p>\n

\u2022 \u00a0Tell them results are proportional to effort. Be honest.<\/p>\n

\u2022 \u00a0Try to find immediate relevance and use for their English.<\/p>\n

\u2022Suggest extra-class activities like listening to audio books or podcasts while stuck in traffic<\/p>\n

\u2022 Encourage them to speak English on their own.<\/p>\n

(Ok, that last one sound weird, I know, but as a language learner I do that a lot, talking to myself in different languages – and it helps me. I have long conversations with myself in French and Spanish \ud83d\ude09<\/p>\n

If you do these things, if you help adult students find their personal angle and show them what they can do with what they\u2019ve already learned, they will see the light in the end of the tunnel. They will see a reason for attending classes and doing things. The only thing a teacher needs to do is lead the way.\u00a0 I tell them, \u201cYou can do whatever we set our minds and hearts on. You just have to believe you can. I do.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Show Adult Students The Light In The Tunnel I\u2019ve been focusing my teaching on adult students lately — the ones who don\u2019t have extra time and try to balance English lessons with work, family and life. They\u2019re the ones who start the term motivated to learn and improve their English. But somehow they get lost … Continue reading Motivating our students – Cecilia Lemos<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":75,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-767","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-motivating-students"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/itdi.pro\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/767","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/itdi.pro\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/itdi.pro\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itdi.pro\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itdi.pro\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=767"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/itdi.pro\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/767\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itdi.pro\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/75"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/itdi.pro\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=767"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itdi.pro\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=767"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itdi.pro\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=767"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}