ELT News Think Tank

This Month's Think Tank Panel

Peter Viney

Curtis Kelly

Chris Hunt

Panelists: Curtis | Peter | Chris
Date: February 2004
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Topic: "Why must we teach adults differently?"

Peter Viney

I've been doing articles on teaching adult beginners elsewhere this month, so to avoid covering the same ground, I'll devote my piece to general description of the area.

Teaching adults is what I've always done. I've taught young teenagers too, but not for long and not often. I define adults in much the same way as publishers define course book levels. You get young adults. For publishers and authors this means schools course material with a long term view. The material assumes a long non-intensive course, stretching out over years. Perceived interests in topics defined the younger sectors:

Primary - doggies and ditties
Secondary - penfriends and pop music
Young adult - pollution and poverty

Adult material was anything after that. It might also stretch out over several years, but assumed a different dynamic and pace, and was more concerned with immediate communicative relevance. Even though they are still within the education system, students in tertiary education were part of this group because their interests are adult.

Now in the last few years, adult is being used in a narrower way to refer to 'lifelong learning.' So what is lifelong learning (apart from the theme of this year's JALT conference)? There are tens of thousands of Internet references and it is a buzz word for educational conferences.

On the positive side, you would say that it is a recognition that education does not stop at the end of school, nor university, but continues through life. But there are degrees of adult education.

The traditional ELT sector is people in work, or higher education (ouside the English faculty) or seeking work, who choose to study English. They are probably revisiting it. They may seek exams, but for many of them the ability to use language is more important than a piece of paper. This sector blends into ESP and work-related English. It's basically "adult ELT" as we have always known it.

There is a different group, that is people who didn't get the chance to study English at school at all, and in their "post education" years find a need or wish to study it. There has been a strong connection to political changes. Post-1989, Central and Eastern Europe was full of people with a good education who had studied Russian at school and who now wanted English. This is also a basic traditional "adult ELT" group. There have always been particular countries, nationalities and social groups who 'missed out' on English and come to it later.

“Many people look to adult education as a chance to socialize, a chance to get out of the house in the evening.”

In Western Europe the fastest growing sector in ELT has been retired people (which many lifelong learning articles are referring to). I had a letter recently from a teacher in France saying how much her retirees loved the ELT versions of Wallace & Gromit videos. She said most of the class were grandparents and far preferred animated animals to boring businesspeople. For these groups learning is a leisure activity and they can be a joy to teach. There is no exam pressure, no tension. I have to say that the oldest student I've personally taught was 93, a Breton religious minister who spoke Breton (a Celtic language) in preference to French and who was near deaf. I wouldn't say he achieved a great deal. But he did have a smile on his face.

English as a leisure activity extends across the whole adult range. Many people look to adult education as a chance to socialize, a chance to get out of the house in the evening. For them, English is an alternative to pottery, painting or pilates. They don't seek to achieve a particular goal. They might have chosen English out of a nagging feeling that it would be useful, and the vague idea that it might enhance their planned trip to DisneyWorld in Florida. Whatever, they're also a fun group to teach.

The other use of 'adult learning' and 'lifelong learning' which I detect in the many non-ELT articles is mildly euphemistic. They are targetting people who were excluded in some way or other from tertiary education. This may be due to social disadvantage or ethnic background and this is their second chance at education. It covers areas as diverse as asylum seekers, single parents who had babies young and missed higher education, economically disadvantaged groups, prisoners, Romany travellers. English teaching is a popular subject, with some (such as asylum seekers) an essential subject. In Britain the teaching of asylum seekers and other immigrants is calling itself ESOL.

An article in the right-wing press last year (I wish I'd kept it for reference) lampooned the whole 'adult' lifelong learning area, suggesting that the teaching establishment, having vastly expanded tertiary education over the years, was seeking pastures new in order to feed the expansion of its professional empires, so lifelong learning was directed at anyone who'd missed their educational net. It mentioned the groups I've discussed above, but added another 'those too thick to learn in the first place.' The argument was that thirty years ago, only the higher streams in schools studied foreign languages, and therefore people not in those elite streams had never been taught foreign languages. Abilities in linguistic, logical and factual intelligences will lead to good results in a secondary school system. The writer of the article would have discounted the other intelligences among our array of multiple intelligences, and like schools, measured human beings by limited traditional scales and found them wanting.

I would make a distinction between English for an Academic Goal (which I don't do) and English for Adults (which is my job). There is a difference in approach. If you assume that your beginner will go ever onwards to eventually reach the dizzy heights of Cambridge Proficiency or its equivalent, then the course will carefully balance reading and writing skills in the equation and teach the whole system as thoroughly as possible. It will also ration learners over the language that's taught: 'We can't teach them this structure at this level, because if we do, we won't have anything fresh at the next level.' Material will be biased towards more academic students who are in for the long haul.

In my travels I've spent many hours speaking with Directors of Studies and other course leaders. In a typical discussion, I'm told that a school has ten beginner groups. I will then be told that all ten groups use the same coursebook because teachers find this more convenient. Now among those ten groups there might be short courses, long courses, students who will study for years, those who'll only do the first level. But they all get the "One Size Fits All" coursebook for teacher convenience. Inevitably, the course chosen will be the one most suited to the academic groups. This also happens in secondary and tertiary education. The "A" stream in English will so often dictate the choice of textbook, and that textbook will then be used for the other streams too. The reason, I'm sorry to say, is that the A stream and the more academic groups are the most likely to complain if they don't like it, and are the most articulate in doing so. Also, teachers find the convenience of one textbook outweighs the advantages of separate books for different courses. I've watched lower streams in European schools being taught from academically-biased coursebooks which tell them all about Charles Dickens. I can't think of anything less motivating. The same applies when the same course books are used to teach less academic adult groups.

If you assume, as I do, that the adult learner will be making a series of decisions at frequent intervals about whether to continue in the process, then the approach differs. Adult learners need these things from their courses:

• To achieve goals at frequent intervals.
• Motivation has to be maintained.
• Speaking and listening outweigh the other skills, certainly in the early stages.
• Communicative relevance must be apparent.
• Material must appeal across a wide range of our multiple intelligences. This means a wide variety of teaching strategies.
• The course has to be efficient in its use of the student's time. Every hour of contact time in the classroom is measured and weighed. This last one is too often forgotten.

Panelists: Curtis | Peter | Chris

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Peter Viney, Freelance ELT Author

Co-author of New American Streamline & Grapevine. Peter's Web site

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