The readings for this week deal with the differences between adults and children with regard to five factors and how to accommodate such differences in our teaching. These five factors are intellectual development, attention span, sensory input, affective factors, and authentic, meaningful materials. Compared to children, adults are more able to handle abstract rules and concepts, have firmer egos and longer attention spans for activities which may not capture their immediate interest as well as better understand a context-reduced segment of language. In addition, the need of sensory input is not always as varied as children’s.
In addition, the readings also refer to the early stages of English writing skill. English has so many rules for predicting the correspondences between letters and sounds, which is important for effective reading and writing skills as well as pronunciation. Hence, it is important to engage learners in recognition activities to help establishing the basis of it at their initial stage of learning. In addition, more advanced writing tasks are focused on in order to help learners move from letters and words to meaningful sentences and larger unites of discourse.
In addition, the readings also refer to the early stages of English writing skill. English has so many rules for predicting the correspondences between letters and sounds, which is important for effective reading and writing skills as well as pronunciation. Hence, it is important to engage learners in recognition activities to help establishing the basis of it at their initial stage of learning. In addition, more advanced writing tasks are focused on in order to help learners move from letters and words to meaningful sentences and larger unites of discourse.
One of the things that I like about teaching kids is that they will try anything and are usually not to hung up on the results. The older we get, the more we are aware of and concerned about how others see us.
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