Teaching young learners usually involves more interactive imagery. Young learners associate a new word by creating images through their five senses. Adult learners tend to be less integrated with their senses, creating less vivid images than young learners. With the limited time for repetition, adult learners’ comprehension usually is inhibited compared with their younger counterparts. Because of the image-based system of learning for younger students, they tend to decipher synonymous words more easily as well.
Teachers must present a grammatical template to their students. Adult learners usually can create their own sentence structure based on what is most logical to them – because they are already familiar with concepts of grammar in their native languages. Young learners, on the other hand, usually must be explained the basics of grammar. Teaching English grammar to adults usually proves to be more challenging than teaching it to young learners, especially because it requires overcoming previous grammatical concepts.
Pronunciation is also much easier to teach to young learners as opposed to adult learners. Unlike their adult counterparts, young learners do not have previous notions regarding sounds. Adult learners tend to speak with an accent, attempting to overcome their native language accent. Because of this, monitoring basic diction with adults plays a much more significant role in the curriculum.
When teaching young learners, teachers often must force kids to perform routine exercises or to pay attention in class. Examples also often tend to be very elementary. Adult students tend to me more studious, because they usually are learning English for a practical reason. These two types of students require teachers with different personality types. Young learners' English teachers need to be more patient, while adult teachers can be more detailed and sophisticated in their approaches.