What Age Group Do You Want to Teach

In the first lesson of my training for TESOL this was the first question asked. After looking at the options available and an explanation of each of the age groups you might pick up that this is a two part question. What I mean is you a little of the good and bad of each age group and the new student may realize they don’t want to teach to any of them and it’s best they find out right away.

Children age Five to seven years old is the first group. Basically children in this age group can talk about what they are doing and can tell you what they have done or heard. Children of this age group have vivid imaginations and sometimes these imaginations and reality clash. They are also very logical in that they will do what you say first. An example would be you “Before you turn off the light, put your books away.” To this age that may be understood as “Turn off the light and put your books away.” Young children may have a problem with sharing and will want to work alone but be around people and they love to play and learn best when they are in an enjoyable atmosphere.

Eight to ten year olds are relatively mature and most of their basic concepts like the difference between fact and fiction are formed. They will ask questions all the time but not the simple questions of the previous age group. These questions may catch you off guard at some time or another. Some of the other basic concepts they have developed are decision making, definite views of what they like and don’t like, and a sense of fairness. Children in this age group have some language awareness, in other words they know about words and structures of sentences so that will make teaching much better.

As far as above ten years of age most of the language skills of their own language have developed and also the maturity factor is to the point that we can teach a foreign language using the same techniques all the way to adulthood.

My answer to what age will you teach was the eight to ten year olds because I really am interested in this group. The children I have known in this age group were fun to talk to especially my nieces and nephews in the Philippines. I just seem to get along better with children of this age but I also would like to work with students at the college level. The children will be a blessing to teach and help to discover the English language and the college level I plan on teaching business English to help them in the job market. I hope I haven’t bored you too much with this post and I promise from here on in the site will be more personal than technical. If you’d like to learn more about my views on the different age groups you can link to a report I did for school here. Also I am leaving two links below to the textbooks I used while attending certification training for TESOL.

The Cambridge Guide to Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (Applied Linguistics Non Series)

Teaching English to Children (Longman Keys to Language Teaching)

My Journey Begins

I am always prepared for the next thing in my life. Maybe it comes from being a Boy Scout and heeding to the motto of “Be Prepared” or possibly my training in the Navy where we slept with a full set of clothes next to our rack in case of a General Quarters. I like to think that it is not just being prepared but to have a plan or a goal. Proverb 29:18 in the bible loosely translated says “Where there is no vision, the people will perish.” I have taken that verse to heart and always had a plan or vision in my life.

I retired from the Navy after 20 years and went right into corporate America landing a job with a major aerospace company. I worked there for 5 years and then they let me go, my position was no longer needed, but I was prepared. At the time, I was attending college and with a small part time job was able to support my family while receiving GI Bill assistance for school. After graduation I applied and got a new position with the same company but always had in my mind that I would not be with this company or any company of this type until retirement. I was right, and after 5 years at the company I was again let go but this time I had a college degree to fall back on and a plan. I now wanted to be a teacher as I saw when attending college that corporate America was spitting out an alarming number of people who were approaching retirement age for the younger folks who would be less of a burden and would work cheaper. Guys, age discrimination is out there and I think it will only get worse. The smart ones became college professors after they were let go.

So my new plan was to teach, something I had done and enjoyed while serving in the Navy. I love children and want to interact with them and see the smiles on their faces and the looks in their eyes when they learn something new. I have a love for English and literature so I had to find a way to teach English. Since my wife and I both wanted to retire in the Philippines we built a house and I decided to teach English in the Philippines. My next step was to find out how to get certified to teach English and where I could teach English in the Philippines. In future posts I tell you how I come to pick the TESOL route, so stay tuned to this blog.

What is TESOL

The acronym TESOL stands for Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages. There are other acronyms like TESL (Teaching English as a Second Language), EFL (English as a Foreign Language), and others that I may use within this site. But basically the TESOL will be the school of thought I will use the most. Hopefully you’ve picked up that this will be about teaching English whether it is to adults or children or ages in between. The students are at various levels of English speaking and comprehension from no English to a limited vocabulary. I will be going over techniques I plan on using and techniques that I have used. But I’ll try to keep the technical stuff to a minimum as this site is about my journey and not just my classes. After all I’m not trying to put you to sleep with the boring stuff.

In my journey, I will take you from my decision on what age group I wanted to teach, to what countries are available for teachers. Many countries need teachers of English, some more than others, and some countries are even sending their children to other countries to learn English. An example is the influx of Korean students to the Philippines because English is the common second language in the Philippines. There are schools for teaching English to Korean students popping up all over that country. So the opportunity for me to find a job is very good especially in the Philippines where I hope to be based. I will talk about this in a later post.