Adolescence: Between Two Worlds

Adolescence begins with puberty, the time when hormones cause the sex organs to mature and secondary sexual characteristics, such as breast for women and beard for men, to appear. This change typically begin between ages 8-14 for girls and between 9-15 for boys. Adolescence is the period between the appearance of these sexual characteristics and, roughly, the end of the teenage years. Teaching young learners can be a challenging process. Adolescents are not children nor are adults.  They are capable of taking care of themselves, yet their role in society is not clear defined. This can result in them being treated both like children and adults. 

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The adolescent's ability to reason can become dramatically more powerful, but nevertheless be plagued with bias and distortions. The major cognitive development of adolescence, achieved by some bot not all adolescents, is the ability to reason abstractly. Some of the most important psychological changes young people experience are cognitive changes, which involve changes in thinking and learning patterns. They begin to think logically, abstractly, and to reason. This is important to remember when planning lessons as artificial learning situations will hinder these cognitive abilities and will also cause boredom. The ability to reason will also cause them to questions the authority of adults in their lives, and that means us, their English Teacher. Piaget's period of formal operations covers the cognitive achievements of these adolescents. According to Piaget, formal operational thinking allows the person not only to think abstractly, but also to think systematically about abstract concepts and possible scenarios. Moreover, one might speculate that this ability emerges at this time because it depends on the final stages of brain maturation (and the brain does, in fact, continue to develop well into adolescence -Sowell et al., 1999). But thinking is more that using logic or knowing how to grapple with abstractions. Emotion is often involved in our reasoning, and such as processing relies on the lower middle part of the frontal lobes. Evidence suggest that this brain area is not fully maturate during adolescence, and thus emotions do not guide teenager's thinking effectively (Hooper et al., 2004). It is tempting to speculate that this maturational lag may sometimes explain a lack of "common sense" during this stage of life. 

A bridge between childhood and adulthood, adolescence is a time of transition. The adolescent must forge a new identity, which emerges as he or she negotiates a new place in the world (Marica, 1993). This negotiation involves not only coming to grips with changing roles in the larger society, which requires obeying new set of rules, but also learning to live with cognitive and biological changes that affect interactions with others in many ways. 

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Some theorist, Freud included, believed that personality stops developing in childhood. But Erik Erikson (1921-1994) proposed three stages of adult psychosocial development, due to effects of maturation and learning on personality and relationship, in addition to five stages of psychosocial development through childhood and adolescence. The adult stages were defined by issues that adults are most likely to confront and need to resolve. 

The culture that these young learners are immersed in has a strong influence on how they will handle biological and psychological changes. Teachers need to be aware that their perception of adolescents in their country may not be the same as in other countries. The expectations and roles of the adolescents will vary from culture to culture, depending on the influence of family, society and socialization (gender roles) Try to discover what your students are interested in; do not assume that their interests will be similar to adolescents from our country. 

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Even as adolescents begin to realize their personal goals and desires, their parents still have a very strong influence on their lives. Your students may or may not be learning English because they want to. Try to understand why your students are learning English. Most often it is because they need to pass an English proficiency examination to attend a secondary or post-secondary educational institution either in their home country. Knowing why your students are learning English will help you plan your lessons.  

Teaching Adolescents: Helpful Hints

• Adolescents, just like children's need to be physically active in the classroom. Plan tasks that incorporate physical activities and different learning styles. 
• Adolescents need to have a firm and fair discipline and need to be rewarded. Have a set of rules for your classroom and use an age appropriate positive reward system.
• Adolescents, just like adults need to ask questions, work in groups/pairs and understand the relevance of activities. Allow your students to questions you and feel like they are in control of what they are learning. 
• Respect any key to understand young people. Be aware and perceptive to the changes they may be going through. 
• The classroom should not be overly restrictive or punitive. Allow your students to express themselves freely. 
• Make sure to address all success in the classroom. Words of encouragement go a long the way to help build self-confidence. 
• Give students the opportunity to apply what they have learn to real-life situations either through role-playing or field trips. 
• Sometimes "power struggles" can be an issue with adolescent students. Do not let this affect your classroom. 

  

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