How ESL Student Ages Affect Teaching Approaches

Though ESL students of different ages have different English proficiency and learning progress, Linguists' research shows that there are commonalities to the way they learn the language and there are rules to follow. Teachers and parents help them to accelerate the learning process with these commonalities and rules.

“Learning a language involves challenges to students’ cognitive abilities, for example, self esteem issues, and frequently their social skills.”

This sentence is easy to understand. Language learning is not just about language. If you impose content beyond the cognitive and social abilities of students, you will lose more than you gain.

Language learning and mental growth are closely related. When teaching languages, one should also pay close attention to the self-esteem of students. Students who have self-esteem issues will switch into shutdown mode and refuse to learn. Therefore, teachers and parents need to offer encouragement to promote students with strong self-esteem.

Another factor that affects ESL language learning is age. Methods used to teach young children and older children are different.

The best age to start learning another language is when a child reaches 3-year old. Students starting at this age can enjoy the advantages of being at this age. The first advantage is pronunciation. If his or her teacher is a native speaker, then the pronunciation of the student will be almost the same as that of the native. Older children, for example, those over 8 years old, who start ESL learning late, they may miss the golden period of imitating. Imitation is a child's natural ability, a process that is completed unconsciously at young age. This natural ability will slowly disappear. Therefore, starting ESL learning at a young age gives him or her a head start.

“However, apart from pronunciation ability，it appears that older children that is children from about age of 12 and through adolescence actually do better as a language learners than their younger counterparts.”

It is obvious that older ESL students do not have an advantage in pronunciation learning, but have an advantage in other aspects, such as cognition and learning ability, which makes language learning easier than younger children. Of course, for older ESL students, what they gain from learning also depends on their basic level and time spent in language learning.

Teachers and parents can divide young ESL students and older ESL students into two groups at the 10-year earmark. According to the expert's description of the characteristics of these two different age groups, ESL language is taught in a targeted manner. This age division is not strict, and it varies for specific cases.

Characteristics of children under 10:

• Younger children are enthusiastic about learning if it happens in a proper way.
• Younger children learn best through play and other enjoyable activities.
•  Younger children used everything in a physical world. They use what they see, do, hear, and touch to learn and understand things.
• Younger children use language skills without analyzing or being able to analyze why or how they use them.
• Younger children like to do well and enjoy being praised.
• Younger children have lively imaginations.
• Younger children cannot sometimes tell the difference between fact and fiction.
• Younger children have a shorter attention span. They can't concentrate on the same thing for a long time. They will talk and participate a lot if they are engaged.
• Younger children often do not understand. Add outer walls, but they don't say, I don't understand. They just go along with it.
• Younger children are very good at imitating people. So they pick up the teachers intonation.
• Younger children are self-centered. And they like playing by themselves.
• Younger children are comfortable with the idea that there are rules and routines for things.

With regard to above characteristics, teachers and parents can design classes in the following way:

• Intersperse lesson time with games
• Praise children often
• Stimulate their curiosity
• Arrange the content in advance, but don’t expect your child to follow all
• Allow children to dominate part of the learning content
• Encourage them to imitate
• Don’t force them to understand content beyond recognition
• Use visual aids such as pictures and body language to help students understand concepts

Characteristics of children over 10:

• Older children can make sense of the adult world around them.
• Older children have views about what they like and don't like.
• Older children ask a lot of questions.
• Older children are able to work solely with the spoken words without always needing a physical world to help.
• Older children can make some decisions about their own learning.
• Older children can understand abstract concepts and symbols and can generalize.
• Old children have a strong sense of what is right in fear.

For students of this age group

You don’t need to use pictures and body language to express a concept, but approach your lessons in the following way:

• Use words to describe
• Expand the content in depth
• Cultivate students' perception of right and wrong
• Share their opinions and don’t force students to accept the teacher’s point of view
• Support students to use their cognitions and skills in life to support their own views

Of course, the best way is to learn with MiraTutor!