1. Describing Learners Age
The age of our students is a major factor in our decisions about how and what to teach.
People of different ages have different needs, competences and cognitive skills.
Some people say children learn languages faster than adults do.
They say: ‘this might have to do with plasticity of a young brain’.
Another belief is that adolescence are unmotivated and uncooperative and therefore they might be poor language learners.
Adults have so many barriers to learn ( both because of slow effect of age and of their past experience) and they have rarely any success.
However, teaching children, teenagers and adults depends upon individual learner differences and motivation

2. Describing Learners Young children
Especially those up to the ages of nine or ten learn different from older children, adolescence and adults.
Here are some characteristics:
They respond to meaning even if they do not understand individual words.
They learn indirectly rather than directly- that is they take in information from all sides. Learning from everything around them.
Their understanding comes not just from the explanation, but also from what they see and hear, crucially have a chance to touch and interact with.
They generally display on enthusiasm for learning and a curiosity about the world around them.
They have a need for individual attention and approval from the teacher.
They have a limited attention span; unless activities are extremely engaging they can easily get bored.
However, teachers at this level need to have a good experience to encourage them to get information from variety of sources.
They need to work with their students individually and in groups developing good relationship and they also need to be flexible with exercises.

3. Describing Learners Adolescence
Anyone who has taught secondary school students knows that the task was difficult and sometimes even hopeless.
For the methodologist Penny Ur. - Teenagers are in fact the best language learners.
When Herbert P. And Michael. S. Started to design materials for teenagers they wondered why teenagers seemed less lively and humorous than adults and they were so much less motivated.
It is widely accepted that one of the key issue in adolescence is the search for individual identity.
Some of the reasons why teenage students are disruptive in class are need for self-esteem, boredom, and the main reason the problems they bring from outside.
Teenagers if they are engaged, have a great capacity to learn and a great potential for creativity.
Herbert. P and Michael. S see problems with teenagers as teacher’s failure to build bridges between what they want to teach and their student’s word of thought and experience.
They link language teaching with student’ everyday interests and this has to do with “ humanistic” teaching which means their own situations, thoughts and experiences.

4. Describing Learners Adult learners 1
They have a notable special characteristics:
They can engage with abstract thoughts and their learning has to do with conscious exercise.
They also have a very big life experience to draw on.
It is widely accepted that one of the key issue in adolescence is the search for individual identity.
They have expectations about the learning process.
They tend to have more discipline.
Adult experience allows teachers to use a wide range of activities with them.
They often have a clear understanding of why they are learning and what they want to get out of it.

5. Describing Learners Adult learners 2
However, adults are never entirely problem-free learners and sometimes make learning and teaching problematic.
They can be critical to teaching methods especially their previous learning experiences
They may have experienced failure or criticism at school which makes them anxious and under – confident about learning a language.
Many older adults worry about their intellectual power.
Good teachers take all these factors into accounts and involve their students in a more indirect learning through reading, listening, and communicative speaking and writing.
They also allow them to use intellect to learn consciously.
They encourage their students to use their own life experience in the learning process too.

6. Describing Learners Why is it difficult to describe a good learner?
Many factors need to be taken in consideration when we speak about the qualities of a good learner:
Background ( their past experiences).
Why is one method appropriate for student A but not for student B ( because each student brings a unique personality to the classroom.
Another fact is the number of hours the students practice in the class and especially at home.
However there are some cases when student who did not do the homework and later were the best student.
What we need to know is whether there are any generalizations which will help us to encourage habits in students which will help them, individually and collectively

7. Describing Learners How important is the students’ motivation?
Whatever we think of a teaching method used motivation is the power for learning including a fear of failure.
The desire to learn can come from many causes.-( the students may love the subject or may be practical reason, for English can be to communicate or work with English people.
Gardner and Lampert suggested student who wonted to be integrated into a foreign culture were more motivated than students who were learning only to get a job. It means that Integrative motivation was more powerful than Instrumental motivation.
Teachers are not the only responsible for their students motivation they can only encourage by word and deed. ( this is called Behaviorist motivation).
However, there are some cases when real motivation comes from within each individual ( this is called cognitive motivation).

8. Describing Learners Who is responsible for learning?
There are many schools which have “self-study”. It means there are a lot of books , exercises, tapes, CDs and video recorders, reference books grammars, fiction and on-fiction books and magazines. All these are for good learners who take responsibility for their own learning.
Of course not every school has self-access facilities because they are expensive but still students should be prepared to take responsibilities for self-learning.
However, it is teachers role to encourage their students to learn by giving them homework, and different tasks.
Moreover, the teacher should try to teach students how to learn and to force some meta-cognitive techniques in their learning.

9. Describing Learners
What characteristics do good classroom learners share?
A willingness to listen: a good learners listen to what is going on, paying attention with eager and intelligence.
A willingness to experiment: they are not afraid to take risks to try thing out and urge the use of language.
A willingness to ask question: Sometimes asking questions is sometimes irritating for teachers. However, teachers frequently ask and invite students to ask questions and a good learner does this.
A willingness to think of how to learn: good learner brings and invents their own skills when they come to a lesson like vocabulary, best way to read text best way of writing etc.
A willingness to accept correction: they are prepared to be corrected if it helps them. They want to get feedback and act upon what they are told.

10. Describing Learners What are the different levels?
How to teach different levels?
Beginners simple language and sometimes mother tongue.
The most difficult for the teachers is when they have to deal with different levels at once as they forget the king of language to use and the king of pace, tone, rhythm and word to use.
We should be careful with choice of the activities and exercises.
We should know exactly what is good and suitable for every level possible.

11. Thank you for your attention!