Different types of young learners

While young learners might all look quite similar from the outside, there are some important differences that you should be aware of before walking into a young learner class. Not all students will be studying English for the same reasons.

Common types of young ESL student:

Bilingual families

Some students might have parents from different countries, each with their own native language. This is something we refer to as being from a “bilingual” family.

Such students might be facing the task of learning two languages for intensive use at home.  These students are likely to progress much quicker than other students as they will have more exposure to the language.

It’s rare to find full classes made up from these types of students. Instead, it’s common to have just one or two students from such families inside a normal ESL class, with the rest of the students being from monolingual families. This presents certain difficulties in terms of managing the different rates of progression. Having activities with a degree of flexibility can help in these situations.

Imagine giving your students a fill-the-blank worksheet suited for the overall skill level of your class, and 15 minutes to complete it.

Most of your students might take between 10-15 minutes to complete it, and some might need a little longer. However, students from bilingual families might be able to finish it in perhaps five minutes. This would leave them bored and restless.

Instead, it could help to finish the worksheet with a more open-ended question, something that would require more freely writing down an answer instead of filling a blank.

This could have the potential to engage both types of students for the whole time period. The majority of the class might spend 10 minutes completing the fill-the-blank activity and writing a simple 1-2 sentence answer for the final question, while the bilingual students could produce a much more complex answer, perhaps a short paragraph of writing.

Using a mixture of activities, or giving the potential for students to add more to an activity can be a helpful way of managing this dilemma.

 

Immigrant families

Contrasting with bilingual families, you might also have students whose families have recently immigrated to the country that they now live in.

It’s relatively rare to find such students in your average class in China, Vietnam, Japan, etc. This type of student would be more likely to be found in native English-speaking countries such as the US, Canada, the United Kingdom etc. It’s common for families to relocate for work or perhaps asylum reasons, and then need to build up their English-language skills in order to integrate with their new communities.

If you find yourself teaching an ESL class of immigrant young learner students, your lessons will more than likely focus on teaching language skills that can help the students directly in their daily lives.

 

Native students

Perhaps the most common scenario would be that of a student in their native country (for example China, Korea, Japan etc.) with native parents, and learning English either in their ordinary schooling or through additional private tutoring lessons. The vast majority of students around the world fall into this category, and most teaching approaches are tailored towards these kinds of students.

However, when teaching such classes you shouldn’t automatically assume all students will fall into this group. Keeping in mind the two groups above can help you to identify any unusual patterns of behavior so that you can adjust your lessons accordingly.

 

In the next lesson, we’ll look at some more factors to keep in mind when teaching young learners.

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