The advantages and disadvantages in teaching ppt

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

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

system better by making use of what they know about

their own language It is not uncommon to see learners

comparing and contrasting their first language with the

foreign language they are learning to find out areas in

which the two languages are different or similar so that

they can learn the new language more quickly Second,

adult students’ life experience, world knowledge and

specialist knowledge can contribute much to their learning

a foreign language It can help them a lot when they have

to read about or discuss complex or controversial topics in

English So the English teacher can engage adult learners

more easily if he knows how to tap the knowledge they

have gained over time

On the contrary, there are some disadvantages to the

teaching of English to adult students as well The first

disadvantage is that English learning makes a strong

demand on adult learners in terms of time As a matter of

fact, it is really difficult for adult students to make time to

learn English As most institutions and centers teach

English in the evening adult students have to study after

work Three one-hour-and-a-half sessions or three

three-hour sessions a week seem not to add up to a lot of time

but not all adult students can manage to set aside that

much time for study purposes The simple reason is that

they all have their own lives to live outside the classroom

or they all have other commitments in life than learning

English As a result, some students fail to invest as much

time and effort in learning as they should Of course,

teachers will have difficulty in monitoring the performance

and progress of those students who cannot attend class

regularly

Another factor that can interfere with or even impede adult

students’ learning English is their fear of failure and

frustration with lack of progress As can be seen, some

adult students are very successful professionals or have a

high status at their work place And now, at school they

are just normal students coping with tasks, assignments,

examinations, etc as they have been successful in their

career, they do not want to fail to achieve their desired

goal of mastering English They may therefore put

themselves under unnecessary stress if they do not give

themselves enough time to achieve their goals or if they

set themselves unrealistic goals Other students may be

hard on themselves in a different way For example, adult

intermediate and advanced students, those who already

know a lot, may find progress difficult to perceive In this

case, the teacher has more work to do: they must help

these students get the level of challenge right or view

success in a broader sense

In addition, the lack of well-qualified teachers and the poor

physical conditions of the classrooms at some English

language schools and centers can be damaging to student

motivation Currently, in Vietnam a great number of

institutions and centers provide English courses and they

range form universities and their satellite centers,

joint-venture centers, privately-owned centers to privately-run

home-based classes Such proliferation of schools and

centers is useful in the sense that it offers students a wide

variety of programs to choose from However, because of

a lack of quality control, the reality of some schools and

centers may fall short of student expectations Some

teachers are untrained or inexperienced, delivering boring

or uninteresting lessons; the physical classroom

conditions and resources for learning are just basic All

this cannot of course supply students in general and adult

students in particular with any intrinsic motivation, a crucial

factor for successful language learning

In general, this analysis of the current teaching context for

adult learners of English in Vietnam in general and of the

characteristics of this group of learners in particular partly

reflects the increasing need for English language learning

and mainly shows the advantages and disadvantages that

adult students have in their English study Both teachers

and students need to be aware of these findings of the

analysis so that they can find ways to maximize the

advantages and minimize the disadvantages Only in this

way can teachers deliver quality English language

programs for students to benefit from