Learner’s characteristics.

Knowing the age of our students is a pretty important factor in our decision about how we are going to plan our class. Due to the fact that “people from different ages have different needs, competences and cognitive skills” (Ur,1992,130)

Around how people learn depending on their ages exist many beliefs the most common one is that children learn a new language faster that adults because children can acquire almost in a natural way. The belief that teenagers are less motivated is also very common.

However teachers have to consider each student as a individual and “much also depends upon individual learner’s differences and motivation”. (Harmer,1983,37)

Young learners

In a class with children you need to be creative and try to include activities that keep your students attention and maintain them doing something interesting for them and be able to be flexible to move on to the next activity because they tend to get bored easily.

Three very important sources of interest for children in the classroom are pictures,stories and games: the first being obviously mainly a visual stimulus;the second both visual and aural; and the third using both visual and aural channels as well as activating language production and sometimes physical movement. Penny130

Children take information from all sides, everything around them rather than only focusing in the specific topic they are being taught, also tend to understand better if they have the chance to interact with.

Adolescents learners

Teenagers in the classroom may be disruptive and sometimes less motivated because of the boring that they find the class or when they bring problems into the class from outside the classroom.

As a teacher it is important to bring to the class relevant material and that is according to your students tastes to make it interesting for them because when teenagers are engaged, have a great capacity to learn, a great potential for creativity and a passionate commitment to things which interest them.

Adults

Adults represent a good type learners because they are more disciplined and have better expectations of the learning process. They possess a wide range of experiences that can be involve in the class and they a clear understanding of why they are learning and are able to keep a high level of motivation.

On the other hand they may present some problems such as being critical of teaching methods because of their past experience in which teachers used to apply different ones.

WHAT TO DO ABOUT INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCESWe have to start with the recognition of students as individuals as well as being members of a group, not everyone in the group will have the same knowledge of English. Some will be better writers than others and some will have greater oral fluency than others. We need to establish who the different students in our classes are.

To ascertain their language level, for example, we can look as their scores on different test, and we can monitor their progress though both formal and informal observation. This might involve the way we organize groups in order to satisfy people who prefer working on their own or, people who benefit most from interaction. We will want to offer activities which favour, at different times, students with different learning styles. They will almost certainly change in some way as a result of their learning environment and the task they perform.

MOTIVATIONMotivation is some kind of internal drive which pushes someone to do things in order to achieve something.

Marion Willians and Richard Burden suggest that motivation is “a state of cognitive arousal” which provokes a “decision to act” as a result of which there is “sustained intellectual and/or physical effort” so that the person can achieve some “previously set goal”. They go on to point out that the strength of that motivation will depend on how much value the individual places on the outcome he or she wishes to achieve. Adults may have clearly defined or vague goals. Children´s goals, on the other hand, are often more amorphous and less easy to describe.

There are extrinsic and intrinsic motivations. Extrinsic motivation is caused by any number of outside factors, for example, the need to pass an exam or the possibility of future travel. Intrinsic motivation comes from within the individual. Thus a person might be motivated by the enjoyment of the learning process itself or by a desire to make themselves feel better.

Sources of motivation

The society we live in: some views of language learning will affect the student´s attitude to the language being studied, and the nature and strength of this attitude will, in its turn, have a profound effect on the degree of motivation the students brings to class and whether or not that motivation continues. Apart from the culture of the world around students, their attitude to language learning will be affected by the influence of people who are close to them.

Teacher: clearly a major factor in the continuance of a student´s motivation is the teacher but is vital that both teacher and students have some confidence in the way teaching and learning take place. When either loses this confidence, motivation can be affected.

Initiating and sustaining motivation

A student´s initial motivation need not stay the same for ever. Increasing and directing student motivation is one of a teacher´s responsibilities but it does not mean that the teacher is responsible for his students’ ´motivation. However, there are three areas where teachers´ behavior can directly influence their students´ continuing participation.

Goals and goal setting: we have said that motivation is closely bound up with a person´s desire to achieve a goal. A distinction needs to be made here between long- and short- term goals. Teachers need to recognize that long-term goals are vitally important but that they can often seem too far away. When English seems to be more difficult than the student had anticipated, the long-term goals can begin. Short-term goals are by their nature much closer to the student´s day-to-day reality. If the teacher can help students in the achievement of short-term goals, this will have a significant effect on their motivation.

Learning environment: when students walk into an attractive classroom at the beginning of a course, it may help to get their motivation for the process going. When they come to an unattractive place motivation may not be initiated in this way. The teacher can decorate even the most unattractive classrooms with all kinds of visual materials, or change the atmosphere trough music. All of this is important that teacher is able to sustain.

Interesting classes: if students are to continue to be intrinsically motivated they clearly need to be interested both in the subject they are studying and in the activities they are presented with. Teachers need to provide them with a variety of subjects and exercises to keep them engaged. The choice of material to take into class will be as important as its use in the lesson.