A speech I had made in October 2013 during an online Conference for teachers in the Karagandy Oblast in October 2013

1. The differences between young
learners, juniors and young adults
[Introduce myself and the company]
Many teachers believe that teaching a range of different age groups is extremely difficult and hard on
the teacher. As a teacher who has been teaching students between the ages of 6 and 65 for my whole
career, I would like to explain to you why I think this is not the case, and to explain the differences
between these age groups.
It is no secret that these age groups are all extremely different from each other. This is because these
three age groups are all at very different developmental and psychological stages of their lives. Having
the opportunity to teach all of them is definitely challenging, but also extremely rewarding. As a teacher
of different age groups, one can more easily see and understand the differences between them, and the
different methodological aspects of teaching them. In short, being able to teach different age groups
helps you improve and grow as a teacher, and I tell you this from first-hand experience. My range of
experience with different age groups is one of my biggest assets as a methodologist.
Let’s start by defining the differences between the groups:
Young learners:Young learners, those who are in grades 1-4, are defined by their childishness,
creativity, imagination and energy. This means that any lesson given to young learners must take into
consideration that children are, by nature, immature and think in much more simple terms that
teenagers or adults. Each lesson given to young learners must be active and creative, because this
energy, which children have in so much abundance, can be used to motivate the kids and to help them
learn.
The student-teacher relationship in young learner classes is unique. At times they worship us, and at
other times they seem to completely ignore us. They can definitely be a challenge. I find that the best
approach to take with young learners is to be generally kind, enthusiastic and energetic; but to discipline
the students when needed. At this age it really does depend on the collection of kids and the teacher, as
now two classes are the same! They also have a lot of methodological needs which are unique when
compared to other ages.
Children need a lot of physical activities to learn. This is a natural part of a child’s learning process, but
many seem to forget this. Games that have children moving around and interacting with physical objects
are a necessary factor in their development; which is exactly why these activities work so well as
learning tools. Almost all children respond to kinesthetic activities exceptionally well.
Also, as Lynne Cameron, of Cambridge University Press, says in her20-page report “Teaching Language
to Young Learners”, children are often more enthusiastic and lively as learners. They want to please the
teacher more than they want to please their friends. They will try an activity even if they don’t really

2. understand why or how it’s done. However, they also lose interest more quickly, and are less able to
keep themselves motivated on tasks they find difficult.
This means that we must try to make each lesson as engaging as possible. We need to use activities that
include crafts, we need them to colour, to draw, to act, to sing, to dance and to laugh. It is no secret that
as the children get older, they will have fewer opportunities for lessons like these as their workload
increases. We should take this opportunity to not only help them learn, but to give them positive
feelings about the subject and education in general.
Succesful lessons for young learners are lessons that focus on what they need, more than what the
textbook dictates. Textbooks are amazing in that they give us a very real sense of direction for the
course. They help us organize language points into an order that is efficient and effective. They provide
us with a huge amount of resources and activities to help our students learn. But we also need to
supplement our lessons. We need to take resources from other books, from the internet and we should
adapt and design our own activities. This is important for learners of all ages, but most important for
young learners, as we need to make sure they have a completely solid education in the very basics of
the language, and are confident enough to try and practice using it.
Young learners, unlike older students, do not understand the difference between things like “grammar”,
“listening” or “vocabulary”. To them it is all just “English”. This does not mean that we, as teachers,
must ignore the different skills that we teach them, but we must always remember that children do not.
This affects how we plan and deliver our lessons. Every activity must flow naturally into the next. The
whole lesson must feel natural and engaging to the children, or their motivation and willingness to
participate will decrease.
Luckily, most textbooks released by international publishers keep this in mind. Textbooks like “Primary
Colours” and “Our Discovery Island” are sequences in a way that is completely organic and don’t create
any unnatural pauses between the activities in each unit.
Juniors: This is term we use to describe students between grades 5 and 8. These students are at
a really difficult age. They are going through a transition period between being “Young Children” and
“Real Teenagers.” At this age they have aspects of both of these age groups.
Students this age are stuck between having real world interests and imaginative thinking. They switch
between childish and mature thoughts, and it’s our job, as teachers, to try and give them lessons where
they can employ both of these types of thinking.
Because these students are at such a strange age, this makes our jobs much more difficult. If we treat
the students like children, they will loudly say “We’re not children, we’re 13!” However, if we treat them
like teenagers, they will loudly say “We can’t do this, we’re only 13!” We are put in an impossible
position, because we have to try and anticipate their feelings before the lesson even starts!
With juniors, I find that the best approach is to just be accessible. Make sure that they know that you
are the boss, but also let them know that you can be silly, funny and energetic. As you’ll see later, this is
a happy middle between our approaches to young learners and teachers. We need to be able to switch
between “serious teachers” who enforce the rules and “fun teachers” who will sing along with a song.

3. What we can do to make our jobs easier is remember that all these kids really need is reassurance.
These kids are really insecure because they’re at this horrible age. They need reassurance from their
teachers, their peers, their parents and from the media. We need to give them encouragement before
and after activities. They really need to feel that they are seen and appreciated.
Because of this self-esteem issue, we need to show the students that we care about them. An easy way
to do this is to adapt activities from textbooks. This is actually much easier than it sounds. All you need
to do is take the language being practiced in the activity, and present it in a different way. For example,
if your students are bored of doing reading activities where they have to predict the ending, turn the
text into a jigsaw reading by cutting it up into paragraphs and having them work together to put them in
the correct order.
One of the biggest differences between juniors and young learners is that they can now understand the
difference between types of skills and activities. At this age they start to feel self-conscious about their
grammar, so we need to provide them with the structures they need and to employ a lot of
communicative activities to help them practice their grammar. They need the tools to differentiate
between forms, and we can do this through gap-fills, re-ordering activities, role-plays and guided
discussions.
One thing which we must never forget is to use materials that offer both imaginative and serious
material. Those of you who are fewer with Cambridge and Pearson’s books know that we have books
that have exactly that, like “Messages.” You need to choose textbooks and supplementary materials that
provide a combination of these things, because at this age, this is what students need. Having a
combination also helps them transition into more “adult” material in a slower and natural way, which
helps prepare them for their time spent as “real” teenagers.
Teenagers: Now, I’d like to talk about the age group that has the worst reputation amongst
teachers: Teenagers. Teenagers happen to be my personal favourite age-group to teach. I know that
many of you might not believe me, but teenagers motivate me. This is largely due to three teachers who
especially motivated me when I was a teenager, and who helped me out a lot.
We all know that teenagers can be really difficult. No one is disputing that. However, my mother has
always told me one thing, and I try to live my life by this: “Nothing that is worth your time is easy. The
hardest things are the most rewarding.” And this is the attitude I bring to the young-adult classroom.
Teenagers are extremely different from young-learners and juniors. Young adult learners follow very
different rules. They do not want to please the teacher, they want to please their peers. The
biggestmistake a teacher can make when teaching teenagers is to try and become one of them.
Teenagers already have friends, and they are not us!
This might be surprising to some teachers, but research shows that teenagers actually prefer teachers
who enforce discipline. They aren’t mature enough to choose “fun” over “study”. We have to make that
choice for them. We need to show that we are firm and that there are rules and expectations in our
class. This does not mean, however, that we should be slave-masters or evil dictators. A disciplined class
and a class of students who hate the subject are very different things.
Once it is clear that we are not pushovers, and that we are in charge of the class, then we can start
having some fun. We cannot expect young adults to respect us simply because we are teachers. The age

4. when teachers were seen as “gods” has ended, and it ended quite some time ago. We must earn their
respect. We must show them that we are fair, supporting, accessible, stable and in control. We must let
them know when they are not meeting our expectations. We must let them know when their behaviour
is unacceptable. BUT, we must also let them know when they do well, when they are creative, when
they make us proud.
In the same way that we want to be respected by our managers, teenagers want to be respected by us.
We should explain to them WHY we choose to do things, and what our expectations of them are. When
they complete tasks successfully, we should reward them. When they work hard, we can joke with them
and have fun. Teenagers can surprise us in so many ways! I’ve spent so much time laughing with my
teenagers, sometimes at myself.
I understand that many teachers will disagree with me on this, but my teenagers do all of their
homework, pass all of their tests, and still manage to practice realistic language and have fun in class.
This tells me that my approach might be affective.
Teaching teenagers is not just about the teacher-student relationship, though. They also have their own
unique sets of educational needs. Teenagers will not respond to the same techniques that young
learners do. Teenagers feel too self-conscious to really allow themselves to “look silly” in class. They feel
like they’re too old for it.
We need to give them realistic language. By this point in their education, most of these teenagers have a
basic knowledge of English. They know how to tell you about their basic needs. They know how to
introduce themselves and to understand basic texts. They need to know how to order food in cafes, how
to ask for things in shops, how to talk to their friends about realistic topics. It is extremely important
that teenagers do not feel like they are wasting their time. If they do feel this, they will become
completely unresponsive.
Teenagers usually walk into our classrooms for the first time with almost zero motivation. The huge
academic workload they have pretty much kills all of their real enthusiasm for learning. They learn
because if they do not, they cannot even dream about starting a career. They learn to pass tests,
because that is what is expected from them. Most of them are not enthusiastic about education at all,
and most of us teachers weren’t at their age either.
We need to teach them how to talk about movies, their social lives, their plans for the future,
technology, sports and all the other things that they already want to talk about anyway. We also need to
teach them things like essay writing, which they’ll need for university applications. Cover letters and CV
writing, which they’ll need for jobs.
As you can see, these are VERY different age groups, with VERY different needs. Being a teacher of
multiple age groups is extremely challenging, but extremely rewarding. As a teacher, being able to teach
any age group gives you a lot of opportunities. Teachers who are limited to only teaching one age group
are usually very limited when looking for jobs or getting promotions.
As teachers, we must strive to be flexible, reasonable, creative and energetic. The best way to train
yourself to be all of these things is to teach multiple ages; as this forces you to employ all of those

5. aspects in very different ways. This also helps you understand the education process much more
thoroughly. You can more easily understand your own techniques and how to improve them.
For those who do not want to teach multiple age groups, knowing the difference between them is
essential when choosing which age group to teach. For some teachers, young learners are a nightmare,
while juniors seem like the perfect fit. For others, the opposite might be true. If you do want to stick to
just one age group, make sure that you choose the right one, because you’ll be seeing them every day.
I sincerely hope that I’ve helped all of you to get a deeper understanding of what sets these age groups
apart, and some possible ways to handle them. And I also hope, that through this understanding, you
can enjoy your jobs as much as I do. Teaching can be described as the most difficult profession in the
world; and we all certainly don’t do this because of the prestige or diamonds. We do this for our
students, and the piece of ourselves that can’t really live without them.
Thank you, and I trust that you’re going to have a great time with Assel now.