OLDER STUDENTS HAVE DIFFERENT NEEDS. (Teaching Languages to The Older Student.)

Member Name: thingywhatsit

Product:	Teaching Languages to The Older Student.
Date:	10/03/06 (140 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Helps students to grasp spoken French

Disadvantages: None whatsoever.

The purpose of writing this review is that it may act as a guide to those wishing to teach language to students of limited ability. Taking my experience in the UK of helping a school with children who had “Special” needs, what the experience taught me was that not all children learn by the same methods. For those less academic, explaining things in another manner that is relevant to that child can indeed make the learning process easier and achieve similar results. Here, to illustrate, in order to teach a non academic student, I used demonstration with items that were relevant to his lifestyle. For example, teaching fractions with the use of a Mars bar, split between perhaps brothers and sisters, or marbles being used to demonstrate division. It worked. What teachers forget sometimes is that if a lesson does not hold the interest of the student, then the likelihood of failure is increased. Taking children that enjoyed television, I taught them reading from a TV magazine, again, material that was relevant to them, enabling them not just to switch on the television willy nilly, but to understand times and when programs would be shown, and encouraging parents to reinforce the use of reading as a pleasure instead of an academic nightmare.

I found that the same was true with gifted children who also fall into the category of “special” needs, in that the National Curriculum does not always provide detail or course study work that is stimulating to a more gifted student, and whilst simple explanation may work with many students, the gifted student feels frustrated because the simple structure of lessons doesn't cater for their curiosity. I learned this lesson early in my life, and to a certain extent my education was a fortunate quirk, in that I was tutored individually on all subjects, on a one to one basis. Of course, in an ideal world, perhaps this would be seen as idyllic, but in reality what it meant was that my curiosity made me question and whilst some teachers adequately explained the relevance of lessons, many failed, even on a one to one basis.

Using my own background experience, I decided that my knowledge of the French language was sufficient to teach those people who came to live in France that had little or no knowledge of spoken French. In these circumstances, it was alarming to note that amongst my students, ranging in age from 60 to 82, very few of them had any knowledge of the structure of grammar, and had given up traditional lessons because they simply did not understand the relevance to their lives. These are people that have chosen to live in a foreign country. They don't want to learn conjugation, although of course this is the essence of the French language, and where other classes failed, I researched ways in which I could teach elderly students a new language in a way that was relevant to their needs, and that could be put into practice by the student on a day to day basis.

Looking at needs made subject matter quite simple. Many wanted to learn the niceties of politeness. Simplistic subject matter helped, although here, little by little I interspersed the lessons with smatterings of conjugation, explained simply, so that the overall effect was that the student learnt. Many had complained that their worst nightmare was indeed talking the language. The pronunciation of words was alien to them, and their need to speak in French, urgent, as it played a part in the life they live and communication on a simple basis with neighbours and villagers alike.

Little by little, I developed a technique that I believe is better in cases of teaching older students, and its success rate has been favourably compared against the traditional classes in language. My students are confident to talk the language because my system takes the learning process, and I produce lessons which are not only appropriate to the lifestyles of individual students, but also produce sheets of paper with correct French written words or phrases, followed by the English meaning, and then in bold type the actual phonetic pronunciation. I wasn't sure how this would work, though it worked very well, and over the period of the last two years, has helped many people that came to live here without knowledge of the language to integrate and talk to local people.

The most important verbs in the French language are Aller (to go), Avoir (to have) and Etre (to be). With a knowledge of conjugation of these irregular verbs, the student grasps the future tense, past tense and present tense respectively, and there are cheats to the French language that do not require the complexity that traditional language courses teach, which are too highbrow and difficult for students of this age, whose need is now, not in five years' time.

Let's demonstrate how phonetics works. Take a word like “fois”. An elderly person looks at a word like this and is baffled. Taken phonetically to be spoken as “Fwa”, they instantly understand the phonetics and the way in which it is said. Of course purists would argue that it is important to learn the complexities of a language, though it is worth bearing in mind that the people whom I teach are mature students who don't have the background to be able to understand traditional methods, and from the point of view of written work, every class that I give is followed by written homework in correct French.

Introducing the “La”, “Le” and “Les”, and the possessive “Mon”, “Ma”, “Mes” etc., was simple as the course I wrote took into account that people of this age range will at some time in their future need medical help. I introduced the parts of the body, and then went through the process of being able to say “My leg, My arm, My head”, demonstrating how the possessive pronoun changes with the sex of the noun, and it worked.

Further introducing phrases that will help the elderly to answer questions that they do not understand was dealt with in lessons, asking directions was dealt with, knowing how to approach that first polite contact with their neighbours and being able to explain in simple terms that their French was limited but that they were trying actually enhanced their lifestyles here.

We play games with the masculine and feminine, and it works. I try at all times to make the lessons tailored to each individual and have developed my phonetic system to almost perfection, and with people from all kinds of backgrounds and with all manner of accents from different areas of the UK, the system works.

French numbers are extremely complex when first learning them, and here I started by explaining to students how to pronounce their own telephone numbers. This was extremely helpful and they never had to write them in correct French to begin with, and has been a valuable lesson as it is a question that is asked so many times in France. Another thing that I taught them phonetically was to be able to spell their names and addresses.

The point of this advice is that many teachers stick to traditional teaching because it is what they were taught, and put up with the failure ratios. Personally, I believe in my circumstances, failure ratios are a reflection of my ability to communicate with my students, and if it means developing a system of my own, which it has, then it was worth the extra work to have the satisfaction of seeing people learning to speak a language that they need to speak.

Flexibility is the key to success. Academic lessons have to be made not only relevant to the students' lifestyle, but to their level of intellect and interest. Make a lesson dull, and as a teacher, you fail and since developing my system of teaching, I honestly believe that other teachers of mature students may wish to try this method of teaching that is simple but works.

As I sign off, I sign phonetically so even you can spell my name in French.

AIR AH SEE ASH UGH ELL.

Summary: Being flexible helps.