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)