Learners 45+yrs old please help me!

[hannah1985]

Hi everyone. I am a young Australian currently doing my Masters in TESOL. I teach adults so I often find myself teaching students who are older than me. I particularly find it hard to teach students who are middle-aged or elderly. I would like to learn about other teachers' experiences with these groups. What advice can you give me? What stories can you tell? Please tell me anything and everything as I am keen to develop my skills in this area

[gfell]

I've never had a problem with teaching older students. I have taught students up to the age of 80 something and have found the experience quite positive. These classes were typically 5 or so students. Not once did these older students look down on me or cause me troubles.

What are you teaching these older students? You have to alter your lesson plan to suit older students. Just asking them to play games or talking about stuff that they cannot or do not comprehend wont help your lesson. Eg: You wouldn't discuss the internet with older students.

Try asking your students what topics they want to discuss. I always found it good to get 1 student each lesson to do a "show and tell" at the front of the class. After this, we would all discuss the topic presented.