C: Teaching Adult Learners

General Guidelines for Teaching Adult Learners

"We must be willing to listen, to learn, to see the world through their eyes and, step-by, step, to offer our hand where they do not know the road and we do, being careful to let them choose the journey. We must honour their choices" ⁵

• Create an atmosphere where the learner is actively involved.
• Have learners chose what they want to learn.
• Have learners set their own goals.
• Use activities in the lessons to help learners achieve their goals.
• Start lessons with what learners already know and build on their strengths.
• Encourage learners to judge what helps them learn and what does not.
• Design a program that changes when learner's needs change.

Accelerators 6		Roadblocks
It's easier when ...		It's harder when ...
	The purpose of using language - reading, writing, speaking and listening - is real and natural.		The reasons given or situations created for using language are artificial.
	The focus is on communication.		The focus is on the form, not communicating.
	Talk is about interesting topics.		Talk is dull and uninteresting.
	Mistakes are part of learning.		Mistakes are bad, and it's more important to get it right than to get a message communicated.
	Language is used or studied within a context.		Language is studied out of context.
	Concepts and activities are relevant to the learner.		The particular use of language studied or assigned is irrelevant for the learner.
	Sufficient time is provided.		Students are pressured to complete work or make progress.

⁵Virginia Sauvé, Voices and Visions: An Introduction to Teaching ESL (Don Mills, Ontario: Oxford University Press Canada, 2000), p. 11. By permission of Oxford University Press Canada.
⁶ Barbara Law and Mary Eckes, The More- Than-Just- Surviving Handbook: ESL for Every Classroom Teacher. (Winnipeg, Manitoba: Portage & Main Press, 2000) p. 56. Copyright © 2000 by Barbara Law and Mark Eckes. Used by permission of Portage & Main Press.