Humanising Language Teaching
Year 2; Issue 2; March 2000
"Terrors or Teenagers"
By Marcelo Baccarin, Londrina, Brazil
| They are often sent to school by their parents. | That may be what they say but not what they feel. |
| You may try and find out what they're interested in and link that to English. | |
| You may simply tell them that life is full of unwanted moments. | |
| Some of them will often humiliate classmates and/or the teacher. | Put them in their classmates' shoes |
| Teenagers are undisciplined and unruly. | They are group-driven and naïve about the long term benefits of sticking to rules. In reality they want rules and want them enforced. |
| It is hard to find what interests them. | Any thing that has to do with their present or that will help them towards becoming as self-assured adult. |
| They do not respect set times for breaks, beginning of class etc.. | Their time references are emotionally driven: what they want is urgent- what they don't need can wait forever. |
| It is hard to make friends with them. | You may be trying the wrong approach. You're not one of them and they know it. Be a leader who promotes leadership. |
| Teenagers want songs but the ones you bring are never the ones they want. | Give them classics. They'll then stand a better chance of knowing the song that will be playing on the radio 5 years from now. |
| Teenagers just want to speak their mother tongue. | They don't want to feel exposed. They have a lot on their hidden agendas to feel shy about. |
| Teenagers want to bend every rule. | Bear in mind that their common sense is not fully formed. You need to emphasise the need for common sense. |
| Some teenagers are apathetic. | They want to become "normal adults". Things you ask them to do may seem far from this aim. | Teenagers copy from classmates. | They have been brought up in a system where the product is much important than the process. |
