Learner differences

We, all know that the learners are not the similar in the
classroom. They differ from one to another in terms of age,
level, attitude, abilities, knowledge, learning style, educational
and cultural background, interest etc. Harmer (2008) is of the
opinion that, Whatever their reasons for learning (or the
circumstances in which it takes place), it is sometimes
tempting to see all students as being more or less the same.
Yet there are marked differences, not only in terms of their
age and level, but also in terms of different individual abilities,
knowledge and preferences. A good teacher, therefore, should
Study deeply these different aspects found in the learners and
plan how to teach addressing all of them. The learner
differences given by Harmer (2008) are as follows.
1 Age
Learners are often described as children, young learners,
adolescents, young adults or adults. Within education, the
term children are generally used for learners between the
ages of about 2 to about 14. Students are generally described
as young learners between the ages of about 5 to 9, and very
young learners are usually between 2 and 5. At what ages it is
safe to call students adolescents is often uncertain, since the
onset of adolescence is bound up with physical and emotional
changes rather than chronological age. However, this term
tends to refer to students from the ages of about 12 to 17,
whereas young adults are generally thought to be between 16
and 20.
We will look at three ages: children, adolescents and adults.
However, we need to remember that there is a large degree of
individual variation in the ways in which different children
develop. The descriptions that follow, therefore, must be seen
as generalizations only.
Children
We know that children don’t just focus on what is being
taught, but also learn all sorts of other things at the same
time, taking information from whatever is going on around
them. We know that seeing, hearing and touching are just as
important for understanding as the teacher’s explanation. We
are conscious, too, that the abstraction of, say, grammar rules,
will be less effective the younger the students are. But we also
know that children respond well to individual attention from
the teacher and are usually pleased to receive teacher
approval.
Children usually respond well to activities that focus on their
lives and experiences. But a child’s attention span - their
willingness to stay rooted in one activity - is often fairly short.
A crucial characteristic of young children is their ability to
become competent speakers of a new language with
remarkable facility, provided they get enough exposure to it.
They forget languages; it seems, with equal ease. This
language-acquiring ability is steadily compromised as they
head towards adolescence.
Adolescents
One of the greatest differences between adolescents and
young children is that these older children have developed a
greater capacity for abstract thought as they have grown up.
In other words, their intellects are kicking in, and they can talk
about more abstract ideas, teasing out concepts in a way that
younger children find difficult. Many adolescents readily
understand and accept the need for learning of a more
intellectual type. At their best, adolescent students have a
great capacity for learning, enormous potential for creative
thought and a passionate commitment to things which
interest them. Adolescence is bound up with a search for
identity and a need for self-esteem. This is often the result of
the students’ position within their peer group rather than
being the consequence of teacher approval.
Adults
Older learners often (but not always) have a wider range of life
experiences to draw on, both as individuals and as learners,
than younger students do. They are often more disciplined
than adolescents and apply themselves to the task of learning
even when it seems fairly boring. They often have a clear
understanding of why they are learning things, and can sustain
their motivation by perceiving (and holding on to) long-term
learning goals. On the other hand, adult learners come with a
lot of previous learning experience which may hamper their
progress. Students who have had negative learning
experiences in the past may be nervous of new learning.
Students used to be failure may be consciously or
subconsciously prepared for more failure. Older students who
have got out of the habit of study may find classrooms
daunting places. They may also have strong views about
teaching methods from their past, which the teacher will have
to take into account. Because students at different ages have
different characteristics, the way we teach them will differ too.
With younger children we may offer a greater variety of
games, songs and puzzles than we would do with older
students. We may want to ensure that there are more
frequent changes of activity. With a group of adolescents we
will try to keep in mind the importance of a student’s place
within his or her peer group and take special care when
correcting or assigning roles within an activity, etc. Our choice
of topics will reflect their emerging interests. One of the
recurring nightmares for teachers of adolescents, in particular,
is that we might lose control of the class. We worry about
lessons that slip away from us, and which we can’t manage
because the students don’t like the subject, each other, the
teacher or the school - or sometimes just because they feel
like misbehaving, or because issues in their life outside the
classroom are affecting their behavior and outlook on life. Yet
teenagers are not the only students who sometimes exhibit
problem behavior (that is behavior which causes a problem for
the teacher, the student him- or herself, and, perhaps, the
others in the classroom). Younger children can, of course,
cause difficulties for the teacher and class, too. Adults can also
be disruptive and exhausting. They may not do it in the same
way as younger learners, but teachers of adults can experience
a range of behaviors such as students who resist the teacher’s
attempts to focus their attention on the topic of the lesson
and spend the lesson talking to their neighbors, or who
disagree vocally with much of what the teacher or their
classmates are saying. They may arrive late for class or fail to
do any homework. And, whatever the causes of this behavior,
a problem is created. Teachers need to work both to prevent
problem behavior, and to respond to it appropriately if it
occurs. We will discuss how the teacher’s behavior can inspire
the students’ confidence and cooperation, and we are to find
out the ways what to do if students exhibit problem behavior.
2 Learning styles
All students respond to various stimuli (such as pictures,
sounds, music, movement, etc), but for most of them (and us)
some things stimulate them into learning more than other
things do. The Neuro-Linguistic Programming models (often
called NLP) takes account of this by showing how some
students are especially influenced by visual stimuli and are
therefore likely to remember things better if they see them.
Some students, on the other hand, are especially affected by
auditory input and, as a result, respond very well to things
they hear. Kinaesthetic activity is especially effective for other
learners, who seem to learn best when they are involved in
some kind of physical activity, such as moving around, or
rearranging things with their hands. The point is that although
we all respond to all of these stimuli, for most of us, one or
other of them (visual, auditory, kinesthetic) is more powerful
than the others in enabling us to learn and remember what we
have learnt. Another way of looking at student variation is
offered by the concept of Multiple Intelligences, first
articulated by Howard Gardner (mentioned in Harmer (2008).
In his formulation (and that of people who have followed and
expanded his theories), we all have a number of different
intelligences (mathematical, musical, interpersonal, spatial,
emotional, etc). However, while one person’s mathematical
intelligence might be highly developed, their interpersonal
intelligence (the ability to interact with and relate to other
people) might be less advanced, whereas another person
might have good spatial awareness and musical intelligence,
but might be weak mathematically. Thus it is inappropriate to
describe someone as being ‘intelligent’ or ‘unintelligent’,
because while we may not have much of a knack for, say,
music, that does not mean our abilities are similarly limited in
other areas. What these two theories tell us (from their
different standpoints) is that in any one classroom we have a
number of different individuals with different learning styles
and preferences. Experienced teachers know this and try to
ensure that different learning styles are catered for as often as
is possible. In effect, this means offering a wide range of
different activity types in our lessons in order to cater for
individual differences and needs. Nevertheless, we need to
find out whether there are any generalizations which will help
us to encourage habits in students which will help all of them.
We might say, for example, that homework is good for
everyone and so is reading for pleasure. Certain activities -
such as many of the speaking activities are good for all the
students in the class, though the way we organize them (and
the precise things we ask students to do) may vary for exactly
the reasons we have been discussing.
3 Levels
Teachers of English generally make three basic distinctions to
categorize the language knowledge of their students:
beginner, intermediate and advanced. Broadly speaking,
beginners are those who don’t know any English and advanced
students are those whose level of English is competent,
allowing them to read unsimplified factual and fictional texts
and communicate fluently Between these two extremes,
intermediate suggests a basic competence in speaking and
writing and an ability to comprehend fairly straightforward
listening and reading. However, as we shall see, these are
rough and ready labels whose exact meaning can vary from
institution to institution.
Other descriptive terms are also used in an attempt to be
more specific about exactly what kind of beginner,
intermediate or advanced students we are talking about. A
distinction is made between beginners (students who start a
beginners’ course having heard virtually no English) and false
beginners to reflect the fact that the latter can’t really use any
English but actually know quite a lot which can be quickly
activated; they’re not real beginners. Elementary students are
no longer beginners and are able to communicate in a basic
way. They can string some sentences together, construct a
simple story, or take part in simple spoken interactions.
Pre-intermediate students have not yet achieved intermediate
competence, which involves greater fluency and general
comprehension of some general authentic English. However,
they have come across most of the basic structures and lexis
of the language. Upper-intermediate students, on the other
hand, have the competence of intermediate students plus an
extended knowledge of grammatical construction and skill
use. However, they may not have achieved the accuracy or
depth of knowledge which their advanced colleagues have
acquired, and as a result are less able to operate at different
levels of subtlety.
If we remind ourselves that terms such as beginner and
intermediate are rough guides only (in other words, unlike the
Association of Language Testers of Europe(ALTE) levels, they
do not say exactly what the students can do), then we are in a
position to make broad generalizations about the different
levels:
Beginners
Success is easy to see at this level, and easy for the teacher to
arrange. But then so is failure! Some adult beginners find that
language learning is more stressful than they expected and
reluctantly give up. However, if things are going well, teaching
beginners can be incredibly stimulating. The pleasure of being
able to see our part in our students’ success is invigorating.
Intermediate students
Success is less obvious at intermediate level. Intermediate
students have already achieved a lot, but they are less likely to
be able to recognize an almost daily progress. On the contrary,
it may sometimes seem to them that they don’t improve that
much or that fast anymore. We often call this the plateau
effect, and the teacher has to make strenuous attempts to
show students what they still need to learn without being
discouraging. One of the ways of doing this is to make the
tasks we give them more challenging, and to get them to
analyze language more thoroughly. We need to help them set
clear goals for themselves so that they have something to
measure their achievement by.
Advanced students
Students at this level already know a lot of English. There is
still the danger of the plateau effect (even if the plateau itself
is higher up!) so we have to create a classroom culture where
students understand what still has to be done, and we need to
provide good, clear evidence of progress. We can do this
through a concentration not so much on grammatical
accuracy, but on style and perceptions of, for example,
appropriacy (using the right language in the right situation),
connotation (whether words have a negative or positive tinge,
for example) and inference (how we can read behind the
words to get a writer’s true meaning). In these areas, we can
enable students to use language with more subtlety. It is also
at this level, especially, that we have to encourage students to
take more and more responsibility for their own learning.
Although many activities can clearly be used at more than one
level (designing newspaper front pages, writing radio
commercials, etc), others are not so universally appropriate.
With beginners, for example, we will not suggest abstract
discussions or the writing of discursive essays. For advanced
students, a drill (where students repeat in chorus and
individually) focusing on simple past tense questions will
almost certainly be inappropriate. Where a simple role-play
with ordinary information questions (‘What time does the next
train to London leave?’, ‘What’s the platform for the London
train?’, etc) may be a good target for beginners to aim at, the
focus for advanced students will have to be richer and more
subtle, for example, ‘What’s the best way to persuade
someone of your opinion in an argument?’, ‘How can we
structure writing to hold the reader’s attention?’, ‘What
different devices do English speakers use to give emphasis to
the bits of information they want you to notice?’
Another obvious difference in the way we teach different
levels is language. Beginners need to be exposed to fairly
simple grammar and vocabulary which they can understand. In
their language work, they may get pleasure (and good
learning) from concentrating on straightforward questions like
‘What’s your name?’, ‘What’s your telephone number?’,
‘Hello’, ‘Goodbye’, etc. Intermediate students know all this
language already and so we will not ask them to concentrate
on it.
The level of language also affects the teacher’s behavior. At
beginner levels, the need for us to rough-tune our speech is
very great: we can exaggerate our voice tone and use gesture
to help us to get our meaning across. But at higher levels, such
extreme behavior is not so important. Indeed, it will probably
come across to the students as patronizing.
At all levels, teachers need to ascertain what students know
before deciding what to focus on. At higher levels, we can use
what the students already know as the basis for our work; at
lower levels we will, for example, always try to elicit the
language (that is, try to get the language from the students
rather than giving it to them) we are going to focus on. That
way we know whether to continue with our plan or whether
to amend it then and there because students, perhaps, know
more than we expected.
4 Educational and cultural background
We have already discussed how students at different ages
present different characteristics in the classroom. Another
aspect of individual variation lies in the students’ cultural (and
educational) background.
Some children come from homes where education is highly
valued, and where parental help is readily available. Other
children, however, may come from less supportive
backgrounds where no such backup is on offer. Older students
- especially adults - may come from a variety of backgrounds
and, as a result, have very different expectations of what
teaching and learning involves.
Where students have different cultural backgrounds from the
teacher or from each other, they may feel differently from
their classmates about topics in the curriculum. They may
have different responses to classroom practices from the ones
the teacher expected or the ones which the writers of the
course book they are using had anticipated. In some
educational cultures, for example, students are expected to be
articulate and question (or even challenge) their teachers,
whereas in others, the students’ quietness and modesty are
more highly prized. Some educational cultures find learning by
rote (memorizing facts and figures) more attractive than
learning by doing (where students are involved in project work
and experimentation in order to arrive at knowledge). And it is
worth remembering that even where students all live in the
same town or area; it is often the case that they come from a
variety of cultural backgrounds.
In many English-speaking countries such as Britain, the US,
Australia, etc, multilingual classes (classes where students
come from different countries and therefore have different
mother tongues) are the norm, especially in private language
schools. As a result, students are likely to represent a range of
educational and cultural backgrounds.
As teachers, we need to be sensitive to these different
backgrounds. We need to be able to explain what we are
doing and why; we need to use material, offer topics and
employ teaching techniques which, even when engaging and
challenging, will not offend anyone in the group. Where
possible, we need to be able to offer different material, topics
and teaching techniques (at different times) to suit the
different individual expectations and tastes.