Learning to teach adults

This post is about the third book I've read this days and it is called "Learning to teach adults" by Nicholas Corder.












First of all Nicholas Corder shows us some points of view about defining adult. He presents some entries in which we could define What is an adult, like age, maturity, and life cycle, but we can't define what adult is by these concepts because we could find them in different kinds of people with different ages as well.
Like Nicholas says: "We are all products of our environment, our genes and our experiences" their ages, tastes, perceptions, politics, attitudes, knowledge, experience, aptitude, ability and intelligence are all different.

How will I attend to the individual learning style needs of the students, both instructionally and personally? 

The book show us that there are different kinds of learning styles like :
* Activist learning style.
* Theorist learning style.
* Reflector learning style.
* Pragmatist learning style.

We have to take into account all of them, because every single person learn from different ways and we have to pay specially attention to that.
Recognizing students' needs we'll be able to create a better learning environment for our students, specially adults. We have to motive them with themes of their interest in order to catch their attention.
We have to be prepared instructionally and personally for a good learning of our students and in order to satisfy their necessities in education.

How will I see growth in the learners according to their stated needs/goals, as well as my course goals?

We will see that growth by the results of our students' evaluations, and in their performance in the class as well. Assessment is the right answer, assessment is part of any course and is vital for both you and your students to make judgments about their progress.
Students assessment begins at the very first session, there are 3 types of assessment:

* Formative
* Summative
* Continuous Assessment.

Formative assessment is the kind of assessment that you will do as the course progresses. Summative assessment, on the other hand, takes place at the end of a unit or a course and continuous assessment is the combination of formative and summative assessment, instead of saving everything up for one big final  test, students are assessed at various stages of the course.

Something important is that we have to know that adult students like continuity of assessment. It enables them to set a series of shorter-term goals.

How do I use the learner's experiences within the instruction?

We have to catch our students attention and one important and valuable thing would be using their own experiences, in that way they will feel that their experiences are so important because we take them into account.
Using them in order to have a better learning, that's what a good teacher knows. Topics of their interest and according to their ages is something that we have to know when looking for information and when creating our classes. We as teachers can teach them how to apply English in their everyday life as their own experiences.
Something important: We have to get to know our students....