LET'S TALK ABOUT A LITTLE BIT OF HISTORY!
Anyone who has taught secondary school students has had lessons, even days and weeks, when the task seemed difficult, and on especially bad hopeless. Yet if, as the methodologist Penny Ur suggests, teenage students are in fact overall the best language learners.
When Herbert Puchta and Michael Schratz started to desing material for teenagers in Austria they, like many before them, wondered why teenagers seemed to be less lively and humorous than adults. Why were they so much less motivated, they asked, and why did they present outright discipline problems (Puchta and Schratz 1993)
WHAT ABOUT THE GROUP?
It is widely accepted that one of the key issues in adolescent, especially perhaps in the west, is the search provides the key challenge for this age group. Identity has to be forged among classmates and friends: peer approval may be considerably more important for the student than the attention of the teacher wich, for younger children, is so crucial.
THE BEHAVIOUR AND THE ENVIROMENT
nowadays there are a number of reasons why students and teenage students in particular may be disruptive in class. Apart from the need for self esteem and the peer approval they may provoke from being disruptive, there are other factors too, such as the boderom they feel not to mention problems they bring into class from outside school. However, while it is true that adolescent can cause discipline problems, it is usually the case that they would be much happier if such problems did not exist. They may push teachers to the limit, but they are much happier if that challenge is met, if the teacher actually manages to control them, and if this is done in a supportive and constructive and constructive way so that he or she “helps rather than shouts” (Harmer 1998).
However, we should not become too preoccupied with the issue of disruptive behaviour, for while we will all remember unsatisfactory classes, we will also look back with pleasure on those groups and lessons which were successful. Teenagers, if they are engaged, have a great capacity to learn, a great potential for creativity, and a passionate commitment to things which interest them. There is almost nothing more exciting than a class of involved young people at this age pursuing a learning goal with enthusiasm. Our job, therefore, must be to provoke student engagement with material wich is relevant and involving. At the same time we need to do what we can to colser our students” self-esteem, and be conscious, always, of their need for identity.
MOTIVATION: (A FACTOR VERY IMPORTANT)
Herbert Puchta and Michael Schartz see problems with teenagers as resulting, in part, from “...the teacher's failure to build bridges between what they want and have to teach and their students' worlds of thought and experience” (1994). They advocate linking languages teaching far more closely to the students” every interests through, in particular, the use of “humanistic” teaching. Students must be encouraged to respond to texts and situations with their own thoughs and experience, rather than just by answering questions and doing abstract learning activities. We must give them tasks which they are able to do, rather than risk humiliating them.
LOOKING FOR A CORRECT METHOD TO TEACH...
We have come some way from the teaching of young children. We can ask teenagers to address learning issues directly in a way that younger learners might not appreciate. We are able to discuss abstract issues with them. Indeed part of our job is to provoke
intellectual activity by helping them to be aware of contrasting ideas and concepts wich they can resolve for themselves though still our guidance. Now, it is important to take account there are many ways of studying language, most of which are appropriate for teenagers.
