678. Teaching to different ages




One day teacher of English B said to teacher of English A, “I naturally use miming in the classroom, with both adult students and youngsters. Also I use varied kinds of gestures, acting out too, smiling or making faces, all within a discreet way (I try so; acting out, I think, should take into account different cultures). Eye-contact is essential: I sweep the class by looking in their faces. In this way I’ve noticed that the atmosphere in the class helps make the learners more focused and the class itself more human, or the like.



One example to make them understand me – I’m referring now to my older students, from fifty-something up to seventy or like that – is: I address all of them with my hand and then I tap on my ear, saying ‘Listen, just listen, listen... to me’, then I tap on my chest, a few times.



Now, realia, look. In the classroom where I was teaching a few years ago – actually it was the library of the center – there was a suitcase, in a corner. The students: older ones. I hadn’t planned this, but turned out very useful: I presented vocab and expressions about The Airport by utilizing that baggage – I was teaching practical conducting in English in a foreign country, and the first place they would encounter would be the airport. I think I taught words like check in, baggage, check out, hand bag, questionnaire, something about the personnel at the airport... Albeit they might understand hardly anything, I considered sound to speak in English for rather long, for them to listen to the language, ‘touch’ the foreign language, and familiarize with it.” / Photo from: IMG_4232 family gentes me


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