Teenagers are good learners

If you teach English to teenagers, this work may seem challenging, as the important thing to achieve success is to motivate your teens. How can we do this? First, we need to understand teenagers, especially twenty-first-century teenagers. 

Working with teenagers may be hard due to the awkward age. 

We should also bear in mind that teens are different. First of all there are younger and older teenagers who are different and who different needs. 

If we speak about young teenagers, we should take into consideration that they are new comers in a new school. They have just moved to a secondary school and they need time to adapt to a new environment, to new teachers and classmates, to the fact that they have now more responsibilities. 

According to Dr Jones, an educational psychologist, the main difference between younger and older teens is one of autonomy. "17- and 18-year-olds are about 70% more independent than 12- and 13-year-olds.  As teenagers get older they’re more and more likely to want to think for themselves and do things on their own.  However, even older teenagers prefer a team approach to tasks. Of course there are teenagers who prefer to be on their own, but generally they like being part of a team. But, of course, all team members should be equal! they’d make all decisions together – with no adult to tell them what to do or when to do it. Parents and teachers often tell teenagers to do things ‘because I said so’. All teenagers hate this, but especially older ones. As their brain becomes better at reasoning they want the opportunity to use it! That’s why if you explain to teenagers why you want them to do something, they’re far more likely to cooperate. So, in summary, although most teenagers want to be independent, this becomes much more important to them as they get older." 

So, let's have a look at some features of teenagers. 

·                     Short-term memory gets better during the teenage years;

·                     Teens can do complex tasks as well as adults;

·                     Teenagers have more emotional responses to situations than adults

·                     Teenagers are unpredictable and have mood changes not only due to hormones or ‘growing pains’, but also because their brains are being upgraded and rewired;

·                     The teenage brain is developing very quickly;

·                     What we do as a teenager will influence what we do as adults;

·                     The growing teenage brain allows teenagers to learn more, this means that we can teach more too!

 Features of most twenty-first-century teenagers:

 ·                     Interest in themselves 

Teenagers like taking photos of themselves. In the classroom it's a good idea to give them activities that are about their lives. However, even if they like talking about themselves, they don't always feel like telling it to their teacher.

·                     Importance of friends

"Being rejected by your friends is as bad as not having any food". That's why they behave in such a way in the classroom.

·                     Their right to succeed

Teenagers always say that they can do anything.

·                     Importance of communication 

For teens texting and communication on Facebook is an essential part. This is a way to make friends and to keep in touch with them.

·                     Multitasking

Teens can do their homework while they watch a movie and text to a friend. However, if they concentrate only on their homework, they will do it better. The thing is that teachers need to prove it to them and not only using words.

·                     Limited concentration

They can do well small tasks and if you need to do a big one, a teacher need to be creative and to split it into small parts.

So, to help teenagers a teacher can do the following:

·                     break long tasks into smaller activities to help your teenagers to concentrate;

·                     do any activity to show them that multitasking can make things take longer and increase the chance of mistakes;

·                     failure can be difficult for today’s teenagers, so you can plan activities that support them and help to succeed;

·                     personalise activities and use the types of technology they love to use;

Links:

http://www.cambridgeenglishteacher.org/courses/details/19104/motivating-teenage-learners