Teaching Adults a Foreign Language

Video Transcript

Hello my name is Hakeem Lavelle I am here on behalf of Expert Village to do a how to video on teaching a foreign language. Now we are in portion where you have to teach a adult. A adult is unique compare to a child. A child doesn't pay attention, doesn't want to be there, and learns very fast. An adult for the most part wants to be there, can pay attention, but doesn't learn as fast as a child or maybe he doesn't have the ability to processes information or adapt as well as the child. They say that you can put a child in a foreign country and within a year span he can speak the language fluently. Put a adult there and he may come out with a basic vocabulary in a year span. Why is that? The reason being as I pointed out before when we were talking about a child is that a child's mind is like a empty sponge he doesn't have a whole bunch of stuff in his mind so it is easy to feed him information. It is like kind of you have a computer you have a computer it is a fresh computer you have not use all of your giga bytes well find you can put on just about anything and as you are putting it just goes in very fast. A adult is more like dial up. It takes a minute to get in there and it could be aggravating and frustrated sometimes. Well you have to make a pass you have to make it in to comfort zone with a adult. You have to give him the confidence that it could be done. I'm the person that can do it for you and you have to get pass through so many different things. Maybe you have an adult who has a ego problem doesn't want to admit that he can't do it. Well you are going to have to find a way to kindly let this person know look you don't know this I do,I can get this in your head, but, you have to put whatever your problem is to the side. You have to deal without offending the person. Or you may have a person who doesn't have that confidence and thinks man this is absolutely impossible I can't learn this. You have to get in that person head that you can do this, I can help you learn it, I believe in you, you have to believe in your self and then you have to do the real hard part you have to convince them and the only way that you can convince them is by production. By results you have to get them to the point where they see progress. This could be best illustrated in my scenario. When I first went into Arabic, Arabic was very difficult for me initially even before i step into a class room. Why because I had it in my head I can't do this I walked in there I saw a language that was completely foreign from anything that I ever seen before and i told myself I can't do this. Then I learned my first letter and I was prompt. I can do it ever since then and now I have to get adults in whatever...meaning in the initial stage,somewhere in the middle, somewhere towards the end I have to get them to feel exactly how I felt when I learned that first letter. Thank you!

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