Describing Learners
By: Nilay Dede
Tags: English Learning, Teaching English, Learner, Age, English

There are a lot of factors in language teaching and age is one of them. We can not teach both adults and young learners or teenagers in the same way. Different age groups differ in terms of needs, competences and cognitive skills. For example, children may have difficulties while they are learning abstract thoughts so we use plays or role-play activities, songs, puppets etc. while we are teaching them. It is commonly believed that children learn faster than adults, but we can not say it is completely true apart from the pronunciation. The articulation system of children does not complete the process of developing so they pronounce better than adults. Older children are even better to pronounce, they are faster. So, younger children can not acquire a second language, but they develop a significant competence. There are some criteria that we can count as young learners’ learning style like:

They are curious and enthusiastic about the world that they live and see.

They can not deal with abstract topics such as grammar.

Teachers of young learners should pay attention individually and should approve of them.

They can easily bored. So there is a need to find attractive activities.

“While pupils who are 10 and 11 years old like games, puzzles and songs most, those who are 12 and 13 years old like activities built around dialogues, question-and-answer activities and matching exercises most” (Keşkil, Cephe, 2001: 61)

There are theories about children language learning. For instance, Piaget suggests there are stages in language learning like “sensorimotor stage (they started), intuitive stage (they proceed) concrete-operational stage and formal operational stage (abstraction is possible). “During the latter part of this period, children develop a sense of object permanence and will begin to search for the objects that they have seen hidden” (Clark, 2009). “According to Wyatt (1965), he describes the speech transmission between adult and child in Piaget theory namely:

· Psychological level: the feelings of speech partners for each other, their relationship, their

mutual expectancies, and the respective levels of maturation, which determine the choice

of words by the speaker and the interpretation of their meaning by the listener.

· Linguistic level: the process of word-finding; selecting the correct sounds and putting them

into correct sequences; putting words into correct grammatical order to form sentences.

· Physiological level: Neural activities affecting the speaker‟s perceptual and motor

mechanisms and activating the hearing mechanisms of speakers and listener.

· Acoustic level: Sound waves travelling through

the air between speaker and listener.

There is not much

evidence of the

effects of the presence of

siblings on children‟s

language. On the other hand, Lieven (1994)

reviews a report on young children”

The outcome of cognitive development is thinking, “the intelligent mind creates from experience

Leo Vygotsky suggests that engaging child which we called as “scaffolding” when they are in Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) and Reuven Feuerstein is closer to this approach saying that children’s cognitive structures can be modified by the help of a modifier. According to Erik Erikson and Abraham Maslow, confidence and self-esteem are a requirement. In general, teachers of young children should know their students and act or teach according to them. Group work activities and the relationship of students with each other may be so important, but the relationship between the student and the teacher is the most important one. Each of the children has different capacity and interest, so when they hear something about their interest they will be willing to learn and listen, teachers should benefit from this. Oral skills and accordingly pronunciation is so important at this stage because children imitate. These were the technical issues when it comes to physical ones classroom design should take into consideration in terms of being bright and colourful, with windows which are a student can see the outside and the like. The children‟s ability makes the task of learning a first language easier than it would otherwise be (Crain & Lillo-Martin, 1999). Pinker (1994, p.26)

The teacher role starts when the issue is adolescents because when a teacher engages or triggers a student who is a teenager, the result can be expected. They need to feel good, so positive reinforcement is so important. Peer approval is also important in this age, hence peer edition or group activities can be organised. Everyday vocabulary and daily life should be integrated with classes. “.. the teacher’s failure to build bridges between what they want and have to teach and their students’ worlds of thought and experience”(Putcha, Schratz 1993: 4)

Unlike young learners and adolescents, adult learners are aware of the abstract thoughts and they have their own experiences which help them make connections during their learning process. They know why they are learning and the possible outcomes or pros and cons of the learning. However, we can not say they are problem-free because of their awareness and age because they have other problems related to their experiences such as failure or criticism at school that affects their self-confidence. So, a teacher of an adult learner should minimise the earlier bad effects of past learning experiences. They can express themselves, thereby we can listen and act according to their needs and mood.

All the groups above can be our students in a class. When we entered the class we should just think that each of learner that we will teach is different in terms of aptitude and intelligence, character, style and strategies.

Let’s start with aptitude and intelligence. It affects the time of the learning process or quality of it. Some tests are to measure it but they don’t help to generalise. “What distinguishes exceptional students from the rest is that they have unusual memories, particularly fort he retention of things that they hear.” (Skehan, 1998:234) “Learners with a wide range of intellectual abilities can be successful language learners. This is especially true if the emphasis is on oral communication skills rather than metalinguistic knowledge.” (Lightbown and Spada 2006: 185)

When it comes to the characteristic of learner we should identify it as “good learner characteristic. As teachers, we should take into consideration the cultures, background information and learner character. ” We can list good learner characteristics as “willing and accurate guesser, tries to get a message across even if specific language knowledge is lacking, willing to make mistakes, constantly looks for patterns in the language, practises as often as possible, analyses his or her speech of others, attends to whether his or her performance meets the standards he or she learned, enjoys grammar exercises, begins learning in childhood, has an above-average IQ, has good academic skills, has a good self-image and lots of confidence” (Lightbown and Spada 2006: 55) These are general beliefs, a student can be successful without acting like this, of course.

The other point is learner styles and strategies. Each of our students has different personalities. Individual differences are so important. Learners are categorised as convergers (avoiding groups, tend to be pragmatic, confident in their own abilities) conformists (non-communicative classrooms, preferring well-organised teachers) concrete teachers (enjoying games and group work in class) communicative learners (operating without the guidance of a teacher). These are learning styles based on Willing (1987)

Brains are different so it leads to individual variations. NLP occurs here with the system ‘VAKOG’ (visual, auditory, kinaesthetic, olfactory, gustatory) To coding students in the same way as neurolinguistic the practitioners use ‘three-position thinking’ to think in someone else’s shoes.

MI theory: It is a theory that stands for multiple intelligences. It is listed as musical, verbal, visual, kinaesthetic, mathematical, intrapersonal and interpersonal. According to Havard Gardner, all people have these all types, but one of them is the most dominant. As a teacher in our classes, we will have a lot of students that are different from each other in terms of both capacity and perception. So, we should shape our language skills activities according to them. Since it came as an alternative approach to traditional teaching, MIT has been embraced by educators looking for what it offers: a variety of teaching strategies and reaching more learners. What the MI theory suggests is not that a particular set of strategies is always successful with all learners; but that a particular strategy is likely to work better with a particular group than another (Armstrong, 2000)

To deal with them “…there is an urgent need to devise ways in which this gap could be bridged, also keeping in mind that research in some areas, such as working memory, may be less relevant to everyday concerns of practitioners than research in other fields, such as learning styles, learning strategies, communication strategies, motivation, anxiety, beliefs or willingness to communicate” (Biedroń, Pawlak, 2016).

“…need to be knowledgeable about the strengths and limitations of the model they are using; to be aware of the dangers of labelling and discrimination, and to be prepared to respect the views of students who may well resist any attempts to change their preferred learning style.” (Coffield, 2004: 133)

Apart from their characteristic and perceptional ability, their language levels differ as well such as beginner (real beginner and false beginner), elementary, intermediate (lower intermediate-mid-intermediate-upper intermediate), advanced. These are also known as A1 A2 B1 B2 C1 C2. ALTE (Association of Language Testers in Europe) produced a ‘can do’ statements for the levels. This can help to the measuring proficiency, linguistically, semantically ability and competence.

“We will give students more support when they are at beginner or intermediate levels than we need to do when they are more advanced.”

s teachers, we should adjust the language and techniques that we use for the level and goals of our students. Of course, we can not say all of our students have a goal like young children.

There are a lot of factors that are independent of the teacher like the society in which we live in, the people around us, curiosity. A teacher should provide a good image from the beginning of the lessons to avoid other factors. In other words, a teacher should be a “motivation angel” It affects the student. When the student feels that his or her teacher thinks and cares about them they will be motivated. The motivation affects their success and achievements and this will motivate them again. They feel both successful and supported by their motivation angel. Since everything related to each other, it reflects their attitude towards both teacher and their peers. And most importantly to the lesson. Activities are also important. They should trigger the students and should be suitable for their interests, age, cultural background.

Lastly, we may talk about agency. “Agency is a term borrowed from social sciences”. “Wherever possible students should be allowed to make decisions. He wants to give students ownership of class materials, letting them write on the board or control the CD player, for example.” (Wilson, 2005)