Whether you have a whole class of seniors or a few elder students sprinkled into your classes, you will want to take careful consideration of your older learners. They are a joy to teach and a welcomed addition to any classroom.
Follow these tips and you will have a great time learning from, as well as teaching your older learners!
Use Their Life Experience
Older adults have a lot of life experience under their belts and also have well-developed learning strategies that have served them well in other settings. They can use these strategies to their advantage in language learning, too. As with all learners, you want to tap into their experiences and expand upon those whenever possible.
Understanding their motivation
Teachers should be flexible enough to allow different approaches to the learning tasks inside the classroom. This also connects to their motivation. Older learners almost always have a very pointed reason why they are studying, and that reason will be their primary motivation. It is a good idea to get to know them and their story so that you have a good basis for what types of lessons and themes will attract their attention and motivation.
Learning Styles
Older learners will bring a lot to your classroom, but you also need to be flexible and patient with their learning patterns and styles.
They often prefer to be presented with fairly analytical formal grammar and need to be given a lot of controlled practice, before moving into more fluency-based communication activities. It may take seniors some time to adapt to spontaneous oral practice, and they may request a lot more explicit explanation and detailed grammar presentations. You will have to bend a bit more than usual to accommodate what works for them.
Build Their Confidence
If you are big on constant error correction, you may want to lighten that as well. Older learners are particularly sensitive to making mistakes and often don’t take too kindly to consistent error correction. They generally aren’t used to being corrected in front of a group, and even if your style is unobtrusive, give them time to acclimatize to this type of correction.
Recognize the Challenges
Be aware of the challenges that your older learners are facing, such as health or personal issues. If this is the case, listen to them if they are willing to share, and help the class become a support system for the student. However, if the challenge is about feeling lonely or disconnected from society there is not much to do here. But be aware of their situation, offer support and understanding, and provide the sense of community that they are looking for.