Saturday, May 2, 2009

Which do you choose to teach? Children or Adults?

Hello there! 
The first HOT TOPIC about "BEAUTY" has received lots of sharings last week and coming this week is a hotter one.

I had a chat with my friend. He asked me whether I would love to teach children or adults. What is your answer? :D Before revealing your answer, I would like to share a minute of our chat:

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Do you agree with me? Let's watch this for more illustration of the opinion that teaching children costs much more effort than teaching adults:



Totally convinced by me? :P I guess not all of you are.

So let's share our ideas on:
1. Do you like teaching? Why? 
2. You are supposed to be a teacher. Which one will you choose to teach? Children or Adults? Why?
3. What is your goal in your teaching career? In other words, what is the most important to you in teaching career? :D


Other ideas are embraced as well. 

Do come, do share, do widen our world.

Posted by Eli at 6:00 AM
Reactions: 

8 Comment or Q&A:

  1. 1. Do you like teaching? Why?
    Two years ago when i was second year student, i was not confident to say that I like teaching. But now i love that. I love to see the moment i teach students, get close to them, understand them. I enjoy the moment with young sts who always make me feel happy, useful and younger than my age:).
    Lots of people do not like teaching as they said teachers are poor compared to businessman. I know money is important. Yet, whenever you do something inspiring you, you receive much more things valuable than u expect in terms of finance and spirits.
    2. You are supposed to be a teacher. Which one will you choose to teach? Children or Adults? Why?
    Children or Adults---uhmr...Kind of hard as each of level of age will have different teaching approaches and fun. However, i would like to be flexible to teach both. sometimes teaching adults is so hard because they are at different levels with many distractions outside like family, business or relationships. But they have reasonably good language proficiency in mother tongue which helps. In the other side, children at the same time have to develop mother tongue and second language system. Yet, as their mind is blank with new language so teachers do not have lots of such difficulties like adults.
    3. What is your goal in your teaching career? In other words, what is the most important to you in teaching career? :D
    Something important i've learned in my school are:
    - Teachers should know and understand students' background because teachers' expectations are extremely important to learner' progress
    - Devotion and love for teaching.
    - Teachers should be the guide to help students be on track and discover the world themselves. Teachers are no need to know everything but the ones to show students how to find the answers.

    By the way, i think you can earn and gain lots of money, lots of things out of your expectation when you are devoted and inspired about your work. You enjoy life and your work at the same time:)
    ReplyDelete
  2. I choose teach English both of them, especially anyone don't like to learn Engliah. I like to try to make them like English, also like me. JHhjhjh. It's my dream.
    ReplyDelete
  3. Hi, can you share with us more about your dream and your methods to make English-haters into English-lovers?
    ReplyDelete
  4. I'm not teaching Enlish now, but as I experienced, it's easier to motivate children than adults with CLT.
    ReplyDelete
  5. Anonymous 1 ans: I'm the first-year student. I believe that if you love teaching English, you can make others love English. The first. Do you teach English for money or your dream? I think almost chose both. If you have dream, please pass it from you to others, please show that you love English. With your knowledge and dream, you can create your lecture, contact your students, etc. so that your students love your lesson, love you, love you way to make a lecture. It's my dream and I always, day by day try to make my dream come true. Thanks
    ReplyDelete
  6. Hi! I agree with you that having a dream will make your teaching easier and less sweaty. However, let me tell you about my case. I love English. But this term, I HAVE to study Chinese. I don't hate Chinese, my Chinese teacher is passionate about Chinese, but the thing is that I DON'T favour Chinese more than English. In my case, my English teacher is kind-of "hand-tied" with me. What other thing can she do, in your opinion, to make me love Chinese? :D

    Well, difficult right? Then I'm in favour of the idea of someone there: children is easier to be motivated than adults. Because adults often follow reasonable choices in life and children does not, actually, they often choose sth they like.
    ReplyDelete
  7. I have been working as a tutor of English since my very first year, and I must say that it's really hard to teach this language to children (in my case). I think the matter here may lie in kid's level of development of critical thinking, which I believe helps them connect separate items systematically. So it's quite hard for them to remember aspects of a second language such as subject, onject, noun, verb, auxiliary... Why they are there and how to distinguish.... sort of that. Because their command of mother tongue and the way they absorb their first language is quite different from that in English, so they can't compare to make things easier to memorize. I keep explaining things but they seem to forget all my words. Yet that's what they are faced up to at class, so I get stuck here.
    I also am torn between whether to teach young students something different from in-class stuff and to teach the same thing. If I teach them new things then they find it no connection with what they really learn in class. Their marks degrade. If I teach them the same thing, both of us get bored.
    You know, as a tutor, I have only a few hours per week and most of the time I have to send on fixing leakages in their knowledge of Enlgish, and of course, a satisfying result is almost impossible here. There are some factors that count. Sometimes, kids are too busy with other subjects and thus neglect Enlgish. In other cases, they are limitedly exposed to the language, so they can't remeber what they learn. Everytime I come to help, I have to repeat the thing I told them weeks ago. The learning process slows down since most of the time is spent on revision of past knowledge. I get bored and feel extremely discouraged.
    May be I am a bad teacher, or possibly an inexperienced one so I don't know how to activate their command of English. I would love to invite your opinio on this issue to help me out with my little students. I don't hate them but they just make me crazy sometimes.
    Thanks a lot!
    Lemonkhoa with love!
    ReplyDelete
  8. oh my God! How beautiful these kids are!!! :XXX
    ReplyDelete

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