Adults (18 – )
- They can engage with abstract thought – They like learning about the
language and they are interested in the reasons for certain linguistic phenomena.
- They have a whole range of life experiences to draw on (eg. negative
experience with learning Russian – Adults are not really confident because they
have had a lot of failures while learning foreign languages so teachers should find
new ways of motivation for them.
- They have expectations about the learning process so they are not open to new
ways and methods.
- Adults are more disciplined than some teenagers; they are prepared to
struggle on despite boredom.
- They are extrinsically motivated as they have clear understanding of why they
are learning and what they want to get out of it.
- Overt way of grammar teaching can be applied as their cognitive skills are
highly developed. On the other hand pronunciation is a weak point of adult
learners as their organic basis of speech is not flexible at this age.