The advantages and disadvantages in teaching

The advantages and disadvantages in teaching English to Adult Learners The advantages and disadvantages in teaching English to Adult Learners in the Current Situation in Vietnam A brief look at the current English language teaching and learning context in Vietnam will show that the demand for English learning is very great. This is clearly seen in the multitude of institutions and centers that offer English courses as well as in the great number of learners who go to English classes. Among these learners adult learners form a big special group. Due to some of their characteristics the teaching of English to this group of adult learners has some advantages and disadvantages as follows. The first advantage is that adult learners have some degree of extrinsic motivation. They may study English for a variety of reasons but they all do so because they want to or need to. For some students, the motivation may be in the form of integrative motivation because they wish to integrate themselves into the culture of an English- speaking country like Britain, America, Canada or Australia. For others, the motivation is instrumental in the sense that the mastery of the English language is seen as an instrument that can bring them a better job or position. When these adult students go to class with some motivation they are easier to teach than those who bring no motivation to the classroom. The second advantage is that adult students can transfer those study skills and learning strategies they have acquired in their first language to their study of English. Unlike children and adolescents, adults are autonomous in some way. They have finished their studies or have undertaken at least some in their own language, so they must have gained some basic skills like reading, summarizing, identifying and applying formulae and information and such critical thinking skills as analyzing, synthesizing, hypothesizing, speculating, etc. Moreover, they may also have some well-established strategies for learning. Therefore, the English language teacher can make his job easier by creating conditions for adult students to reactivate these study skills and learning strategies and apply them to their study of a new language. One more advantage is that adult learners can make use of whatever kind of knowledge they have accumulated in their own language. Again this advantage cannot be seen in other groups of learners like children and adolescents. First, adult learners have extensive experience of using a language, which is their mother tongue. Now that they start learning English, they can remember the new langue ... - tailieumienphi.vn