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This unit talked about teaching special groups. These groups are beginners, individual students, young learners, business English (or ESP) and multilingual and monolingual groups.
There are several categories for beginners: absolute, false, young, adult and beginners without the Roman Alphabet. While different, many students will fall into 2 and sometimes 3 of these categories. In general, when teaching beginners it's best to start slow (in both pace and speech), give clear instructions, be extra visual, use lots of group/pair work, encourage and do your best to build their confidence by not over correcting. Some potential problems were discussed (i.e. mixing false and real beginners).
Teaching individual students differs from teaching to a group in that the student is often highly motivated, you can cater to their specific language needs and interests, you can develop a closer relationship, and there are no mixed levels. However, the student is often tired and the benefit of a classroom dynamic is lost as the teacher will often have to be the partner in several activities. A list of suitable 1-1 activities was given.
Teaching English to children is said to be one of the most rewarding groups to teach. While not always motivated, their curiosity is often enough to fuel a lesson. With teaching children, the teacher will most likely need to be more visual, speak slower and simpler, will need to keep the lesson more varied so as not to bore them or lose their attention, and to prepare to be a bit more silly with the learners. The drawback with children is that there will potentially be some behavior issues that the teacher will have to deal with. These can be caused by a number of reasons (i.e. problems with family, peer pressure, etc.) but the teacher must do their best to attend to these issues as they arise. Some general Do's and Don't's (particularly with discipline) were given.
Teaching business English and English for Specific Purposes (ESP) are growing industries. You do not have to have a knowledge of business in order to educate this group. Clients will often be varied in both age and language level and the medium of which you instruct them can come in different forms (i.e. individual instruction, in-company or in-school). There are some things to keep in mind like the tiredness of the students and how that affects the lesson, the occasional sporadic attendance, diversity in the company hierarchy, and the varying degrees of motivation. That's why it's important to conduct a Needs Analysis before the beginning of the course to gather their specific language goals and priorities so you may conduct a course that best suits them. An example of a Needs Analysis was given as well as tips for what to do before, during, and after the course.
Multilingual and monolingual learners differ in that the former is usually found in a course conducted in an English speaking country with the students coming from all sorts of backgrounds and the latter is usually conducted in the students country of origin. Multilingual speakers are more exposed to the language and are more prone to use English in class as English would be their only common language. While their diversity can add variety to a discussion, their differences also may be reflected in differing issues with the language. Monolingual speakers, however, will usually have similar problems with English and the teacher can more easily provide common interests for class activities. However, they often resort to using their native language which is counterproductive. Some tips for avoiding the use of the mother tongue were given (i.e. keep speaking activities short, etc.).
This lesson was particularly useful in that it gave a small sample of the different avenues one could take with this career. All were important to cover, although you really won't know which you'd prefer until you start actually teaching. I like that there was so much discussed with business English as I feel it is the most intimidating group to teach. It was reassuring that this section reiterated several times that I do not have to be a expert in business to do well with teaching that group of learners.
