Young Learners

Episode Thirty

Interview with Andrew Watson: Differences in Teaching Adults and young Learners and Strategies for Teaching YLs Online

Show Notes

In this week's episode of Expand Your Horizons, we're talking with Andrew Watson about strategies for teaching young learners online. Andrew has great insight on working with young learners as well as extensive experience in the ELT industry. He got his first teaching job in South Korea in 1994, and since then, he’s held a variety of EFL jobs including teacher, IELTS oral examiner, young learners’ coordinator at the British Council, CELTA and ICELT teacher trainer and developer. He holds a DELTA certification and an MAEd in Applied Linguistics.

In our conversation, Andrew and I discuss the key differences between working with adults and working with children in the ESL classroom, and Andrew shares a wealth of practical tips for teaching YLs both in the physical classroom and online.

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In this Episode

  • The key differences between adults and young learners

  • The fact that most teaching around the world is of young learners

  • Attitudes and motivation of adults vs. children

  • The factors that influence young learners in their learning and development

  • How developmental differences, even in the same age group, may affect young learners in the classroom

  • The division of young learners into age groups: how they’re typically categorized

  • Differences between main age groups of young learners

  • How very young learners who are still learning their first language may start to learn English

  • The learning history that adults bring to the classroom vs. the “blank slate” of young learners’ educational experience

  • The difference in the speed of progress between adults and YLs

  • The importance of incorporating other learning (social skills, critical thinking) with language learning

  • Areas in which children are superior to adults in their language learning ability

  • The importance of giving young students lots of input and clear models

  • Advice on bringing creativity to your YL classroom

  • How to reduce your workload: getting mileage out of your material

  • A helpful resource for teaching young learners: Carol Read’s site

  • What the abbreviation “SOS” means in terms of teaching strategies

  • Fun activities to try with students in online classes

  • Further tips for teaching children in online classes, including giving them options, dealing with shorter attention spans, and scaffolding activities

  • A very helpful tip on balancing activity types and aims in your lessons

  • Bloom’s Taxonomy


Interested in more in-depth teacher training? Check out the fully online CELTA course at IH Mexico.

And sign up for our next free webinar workshop here!