How Do You Teach English to Adults?

Video Transcript

"Hello, my name is Mike Mitchell, and today I'd like to explain a little bit about how to teach English to adults. Normally, when people learn foreign languages, or English as a foreign language, they learn as children or young adults, and this makes it easier for them as their brains are still absorbing new material. It's much more difficult when you're an adult, because it's...the learning areas in your brain have already stopped, or have slowed in accepting new information. Thus, it's important to keep the learning of a foreign language or English, as much as possible, to the existing world of the learner. This is why, when you're teaching English to adults, especially as a second language, you want to choose topics and vocabulary and expressions that they will already use in their normal, daily life. So they are using the same situations and the same expressions, but they're learning them in English. The easiest way to do this is with communication. And speaking practice. This is something, unfortunately, that normally requires two people to do, so if you can get two or more adults together, they can practice speaking back and forth to each other. And then they can choose common daily activities that they would speak about. This helps them to understand what the other person is trying to say, even if they don't understand everything that the person is saying in this foreign language. The writing is something that they can do at home, this also includes reading. But this requires a bit of a more advanced level before they can do this as they need to know the written vocabulary and understand the grammar. The communication in speaking is generally the easiest, but you have to start at a very simple level from the beginning."