1.5 Teaching Seniors

[Niko]

Senior Students (age: 51+)

Teaching senior students can be a lot of fun due to their relaxed attitude and non-competitive nature. These students are content with maintaining their current English level whilst at the same time developing friendships with fellow students.

Students are a teacher's customers. So it's important to give the student what they are asking for. Senior students participate in English classes to:

• Create new friendships
• Keep the brain active
• Gain confidence when traveling abroad

Senior students generally seek the following:

Textwork

The New Interchange Series is perfect as it contains a wide variety of everyday situations with listening exercises, activities and role playing.

Avoid grammar and overly difficult textbooks. Senior students are more interested in light study and learning English for enjoyment rather than for test taking.

Role Playing

Role playing allows students to build both speaking and listening skills.

Team up pairs or small groups to engage in simple tasks as acting out a situation or discussion on a specified topic.

Ensure accurate instructions are given prior and choose tasks that:

1. review previous lessons
2. complement text work
3. are at or below the students' level.

It's important to discourage the use of dictionaries or text books as the focus is on communication and not sentence accuracy.

Social Events

Senior students are very interested in the lives of their peers. Hence, social events are perfect for getting to know each other from a different perspective outside of the classroom.

It's likely that once or twice a year the teacher will be invited by students to social lunches and dinners. Students will likely organise these events and invite their teacher as guest of honour.

Free Conversation

It's always a good idea to encourage free conversation at the start of a lesson. Students gain a lot of satisfaction by talking about the daily events in their lives, general society, the news and so forth.

Do have a time limit allocated for free conversation. For a 1 hour class, 15 minutes would be reasonable.

Show and Tell

Even the most beginner students will welcome the opportunity to stand in front of the class and give a presentation. Recent travels and personal hobbies are a good start for topics to present.

Encourage students to bring in photos and other props to aide their presentation. Props not only make the task of public speaking easier, but also shifts the focus from the speaker to the prop.

To Summarise

• Senior students seek fun and light learning for their English lessons.
• Avoid teaching English for test taking. Instead concentrate on daily conversation and communication.

[Tutor]

The enviroment and surroundings are very important while teaching seniors. The teacher has to remember that the seniors are more mature and knowledgeable in many areas due to their experience in life.

Also to remember is seniors are very sensitive and they might be tough many times to handle. They may not accept many things as they are not very flexible.

Also

[reviewer]

When it comes to seniors, or indeed all adults, you need to present material in a way that gives them the opportunity to show their skill. Being able to give a presentation and work out things on your own definitely helps.