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Motivating adults with truly adult content

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Rachael Roberts has been an ELT teacher, trainer and writer for over 20 years, with experience in both the private and public sectors, in the UK and abroad. Her publications include General English coursebooks for adults and upper secondary, as well as coursebooks for IELTS. 

Some adult learners of English, especially in more advanced classes, are incredibly highly motivated, with a strong love of learning.  However, perhaps the majority of adult learners find motivation a bit more of a struggle. They have busy lives and a range of other commitments, and they may lack confidence in their ability to learn a new language to any degree of proficiency.

An adult approach to learning

Our approach to adult learners needs to be quite different from teaching younger learners, and even teenagers. The term ‘andragogy’, popularised by Malcolm Knowles in the early 70s, provides a contrast to ‘pedagogy’, which comes from the Greek words ‘paed’, meaning ‘child’ (as in paediatrics), and ‘agogus’ meaning ‘leader of’.  According to Knowles, one of the key ways in which andragogy should be different from pedagogy is that it should take account of the greater life experience of adults.

Adults may have experience of work, relationships, children, different cultures, and of difficulties and challenges that younger students have yet to encounter.

Materials aimed at the ‘young adult’ market will often avoid such topics but, as Knowles says, while ‘to children experience is something that happens to them, to adults, experience is who they are.’

He goes on to say that ‘The implication of this fact is that in any situation in which the participants’ experiences are ignored or devalued, adults will perceive this as rejecting not only their experience, but themselves as persons.’ (Knowles, Holton and Swanson 2015:45)

Choosing the right material

Adults will be motivated by material which allows them to use their greater life experience. A truly adult course should provide an opportunity to explore topics which might not be appropriate or engaging for younger learners. For example, in Navigate B2:

Lesson 6.2 looks at new trends in living, such as one person households and co-housing, where resources and facilities are shared with neighbours.

Lesson 7.2 looks at work-life balance and the recent decision by some companies to ban emails outside of working hours and lesson

Lesson 12.1 looks at the question of family size, considering how many children is optimum, including the option of not having any.

Engage through experience

However, not all the topics we deal with in the classroom need to be adult specific. The key thing is to ensure that we engage adults by making their own experiences a central part of the lesson. This doesn’t mean that we can’t deal with something new to them. For example, another lesson in Navigate B2 is built around an interview with Amna, originally from Pakistan, now living in Norway, where it can be light for 24 hours in summer and dark for 24 hours in the winter.  Students may not have actually experienced this phenomenon, but they will have enough life experience to imagine what it would be like, and to answer questions such as ‘If you moved to another country would you prefer to live somewhere very different to your home country or quite similar? Why?’

While teenagers may dislike too much personalisation, feeling unwilling to share too much in case of ridicule by peers, adults generally value the opportunity, provided that we give them options. For example, a set of sentences where students have to fill in the gaps with vocabulary can be personalised if we ask students to choose 3 of the sentences (so they can avoid anything uncomfortable) and change them so they are true for them.

A class of ten year olds are likely to have had quite broadly similar life experiences (unless, of course, some have been refugees or experienced other major challenges). A group of adults is likely to have a much greater range of individual differences.  This is challenging, because it means the need for individualisation is even greater, but it also provides a wonderful opportunity for students to communicate about something real.  I have never forgotten a class on the topic of extreme sport, where one class member suddenly told the class about his experience of playing Russian Roulette.  No-one even noticed the bell for end of class.

Every learner comes to class with a lifetime of experience, but for a group of adult learners that experience is likely to be particularly full and wide ranging. So let’s use it.


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Why enter the Headway Scholarship competition?

There’s only one month left to submit your Headway Scholarship entry and have the chance to win a 2-week all-inclusive teacher training course at Oxford University.

But why should you enter? We asked some of last year’s winners to share their top 7 reasons why you should apply for the Headway Scholarship.

The top 7 reasons why you should apply for the Headway Scholarship:

Gloria-NewGloria Rossa

  1. Professional development and personal growth
  2. Experiencing life in an English-speaking country
  3. Studying in a renowned Oxford University college, with top yet humble tutors
  4. Increasing self-esteem and feeling a sense of accomplishment
  5. Meeting teachers from different countries and sharing teaching experiences with them
  6. Meeting one of the inspiring Headway authors, Liz Soars, and sharing teaching anecdotes with her
  7. Practising English in an academic environment and getting used to a variety of accents

Gloria also writes her own blog, My English World, in which she discusses her Headway experience in more detail. A great resource for anyone considering applying for the Scholarship!

Marianne ChavarriaMarianne Chavarria

  1. First of all, Oxford is a magical place, full of ancient buildings and stunning colleges, with colorful gardens and parks that invite you to relax and enjoy nature.
  2. Second, having the opportunity to meet teachers from all over the world, developing friendship ties, partnership and creating a great chance for learning from everyone’s culture.
  3. Third, improving my professional development by learning new techniques and tools to apply in my teaching practice.
  4. Fourth, developing my language skills by practicing everyday with people with different accents and backgrounds.
  5. Fifth, having the reliability that all members from OUP, The Department for Continuing Education from Oxford University and IP Teachers’ Team will do a great job in organizing a pleasant journey, an optimal stay and a worthy experience for teachers.
  6. Sixth, the workshops are given by professional teacher trainers that are very well prepared, full of expertise and willing to share their knowledge and promote our professional growth.
  7. Last but not least; learning to trust a little bit more in myself, in the fact that I am capable to participate and win in this kind of competitions, and be a proud ambassador for two weeks for my country.

Magya DygalaMagya Dygala

Magda couldn’t pick just 7 reaons, so here are her 8 top reasons!
As it comes to these 7 reasons, I guess I could enumerate at least 20 of them but I will try to make it shorter… Oxford was, is and always will be a place where my heart belongs. I will quote here Aung San Suu Kyi who described Oxford in such a beautiful way:
‘The past is always there, it never goes away,
but you can select what is best from the past
to help you go forward to the future…’

  1. Having a chance to meet the incredible and warm person, the author of Headway – Liz Soars
  2. Getting professional experience and knowledge from amazing Oxford tutors.
  3. A chance of a lifetime – meeting new people from all over the world and sharing teaching experience with them.
  4. Making friends for life
  5. Having a chance to experience being ‘out of the box’ (out of your country) in an English speaking country.
  6. Having a pleasure to have classes and dine at 700 year old Exeter College.
  7. Experience living in a place where past meet present, and every building has its own history.
  8. Last but not least, make your DREAMS come true and believe in yourself more

IrinaIrina I. Krestianinova

Well, it’s been twice Headway was a turning point in my both professional and personal life.

The first time was when I started teaching with it twenty years ago. That is where the FIRST reason why I applied for the Headway scholarship 2014 comes from. My essay was meant to be a thank-you to Liz and John Soars and the Headway team. I mean people who do the extraordinary work should know there is at least one person who highly appreciates the significance of this work. I mean it!

The second turning point was a two-week course at Exeter College, Oxford in Aug 2014. And this is the SECOND, as well as the THIRD, the FOURTH, the … reason why I would strongly recommend taking part in the competition.

  1. Just at the moment you arrive in Oxford and open the heavy old oak door to Exeter College, you feel you are in the right place and at the right time;
  2. You become a part of the community, the fellowship of 60 people from 33 countries from all over the world. People who come from absolutely different social, political, religious, and cultural backgrounds, but who, in just two weeks, manage to create their own tiny world full of patience, tolerance, and love. People who you might not see ever again, but who have come into your life and will stay forever;
  3. Every day in the course, though thoroughly planned and scheduled, is absolutely unpredictable. Every day with a lecture, workshops, social activities, free time, and whatever, is an amazement, even for a person who is hardly prone to be amazed;
  4. Great, inspiring and motivating lecturers, course  tutors and students who shape you in some way. You try to pick up something from everybody. You then introduce it into your classroom back home and realize that both you and your students really love your new shape;
  5. taking part in the competition for the Headway scholarship, no matter if you win or not, is sure to give you the greatest sense of achievement: you’ve managed to come out of your comfort zone to find out the new surrounding is much more comfortable;
  6. and in the end you feel you’ve lived another life, no way better or worse than your usual one, but, anyway, different. You’ve been an Oxford student for at least two weeks and in that way you’ve become at least some tiny part of its tremendous history.

Do you still need convincing? Liz Soars, author of Headway, explains why she and John set up the Headway Scholarship 11 years ago:

Start your entry today by visiting our Headway Scholarship competition page! Deadline: 8th March 2015.

The Headway Scholarship is made possible through the generosity of John and Liz Soars.


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‘Mind the gap’ – Supporting students beyond Intermediate

Robin Walker, freelance teacher, teacher educator, and materials writer, looks at ways of supporting students who are beyond Intermediate but not yet ready for Upper Intermediate level. Robin discussed this topic in his webinar on 20th February, entitled ‘Mind the gap’ – Helping your students to cross the intermediate threshold with confidence. View the recording here.

When I started teaching English in the early 1980s, adult coursebooks from all of the leading publishers ran to three or four levels – Beginner, Elementary, Intermediate and Advanced. This 4-level learning was a reflection of the limited strength of the then emerging ELT publishing industry, rather than the reality for the learner in the English language classroom, and inevitably there was a gap between what was available and what learners needed.

To bridge the gap that most students encountered between the four ‘official’ levels, one of the strategies we used as teachers was to change publishers. If a group was struggling at Elementary level and wasn’t ready to go on to Intermediate, for example, we would look around for an Elementary-level coursebook from another publisher. This worked up to a point, but often brought with it the disadvantage of changing from a style that learners had become used to, and which generated a sense of security, to a style that was new and that provoked different reactions from different students.

The new style was not necessarily better or worse, but it definitely felt different. For the more adventurous students this unfamiliarity often acted as a stimulus, and they took to the new book with few if any problems, and, initially at least, with genuine enthusiasm. But the learners in a group that were less sure of themselves (and who were usually the students that were finding it difficult to move up to the next level), would often tell you that they liked the old book better, and would even ask if it wasn’t possible to repeat the year with the same book.

Another problem with trying to bridge the gap with a coursebook from a different publisher was that the new book, quite correctly, assumed that the users were coming to the level for the first time. There is no reason to write a coursebook aimed at learners who have been using materials from a competing publisher. The only possible strategy is to assume that students adopting a coursebook at a given level, will be arriving at that level after successfully completing the previous one with a book from the same series.

The outcome of this situation in class was that material would, logically, be presented to learners as if they had never seen it before. This wasn’t the case, of course, and students often lost motivation when they embarked upon a unit that presented an area of language that they had already studied only the year before. I can clearly remember a strong sense of We’ve already done this! invading the classroom during these ‘repeat’ years.

As the teacher, I knew only too well that the group needed to go back to the language areas in question in order to, on the one hand, consolidate any previous learning, and, on the other, successfully cover what the class had demonstrably failed to learn the year before. In general, it takes a lot of skill to overcome the demotivating effect of going back in order to go forward, and often the new coursebook ends up being supplemented by original materials provided by the teacher. This is a solution that a) raises the question as to why the students have been required to buy a book they seldom use, and b) eats up serious amounts of a conscientious teacher’s free time.

Over the intervening 30 years since I began teaching, major coursebooks have expanded from running at three or four levels, to offering teachers and learners five or even six levels. The Common European Framework of Reference, whose influence has extended way beyond the shores of even the widest concept of Europe, started off with six levels, from A1 to C2, although the use of the ‘+’ sign to generate even more precise gradings is increasingly common. Theoretically, we can now talk about a 12-level system that progresses from A1 through A1+ to A2, and then on to A2+, and so on.

Although it is interesting to be able to refer to individual students with this almost mathematical precision, it is not feasible in practical terms to run a language school with as many as twelve different levels. In that respect, the six levels from Beginner to Advanced, the current default system in many private and public ELT institutions, constitute a strong basic structure. The progression from one level to another, whilst not without its problems, is realistic and generally motivating for learners.

There is, however, one level where again and again learners seem to struggle, and this is the step up from Intermediate to Upper-Intermediate. This is a critical step for many learners, and handled badly, it can lead to them becoming demotivated, and even abandoning their studies.

Learners abandoning English is a highly undesirable outcome. But as we saw at the beginning of this blog, neither changing publishers to repeat at the same level nor repeating at the intermediate level with the same coursebook, are very adequate solutions. Just as inadequate is the strategy of pushing Intermediate learners into an Upper-Intermediate class and hoping they’ll survive if we give them enough support.

The fact is that if we are really going to ‘Mind The Gap’ that Intermediate students face, what is needed is an Intermediate Plus coursebook. This will be a coursebook that:

a) is from the same publisher as the book the group used at intermediate level,

but that:

b) tackles material from this level in fresh and engaging ways.

This is precisely why OUP and authors Christina Latham-Koenig and Clive Oxenden and co-author Mike Boyle have created English File Intermediate Plus. In my webinar on 20th February I’ll be looking at this especially in terms of grammar, vocabulary, listening and speaking, four key areas for learners hoping to progress to Upper-Intermediate.


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Announcing the 2014 Headway Scholarship

Exeter CollegeWhen John and I started writing Headway we had certain beliefs about ELT borne out of our experience as teachers and teacher trainers. And, like many teachers, we weren’t always entirely happy with the courses we used. However, we decided to stop whinging and have a go at creating a course of our own. We never imagined that Headway would become the chosen course of countless ELT classes round the world. We were flattered that so many teachers seemed to find our approach complemented and assisted their teaching.

Over the years we have hugely valued the many trips we’ve made to schools round the world, meeting up with teachers and students, and learning of their experiences and needs. Their stories – your stories – have influenced our writing. Nothing has given John and me greater satisfaction than teachers telling us how they felt that their students have made real progress using Headway.

As Headway became increasingly successful, we wanted to give something back to the ELT community to show our appreciation of all those students and teachers who were our inspiration and motivation. We decided to create the Headway Scholarship, sponsoring two students and two teachers from a country where Headway is widely used, to come to study in Oxford for a fortnight in the summer. We wanted to select students and teachers for whom such an opportunity wouldn’t otherwise be possible.

The first year of the Headway Scholarship was 2004, and the first country selected was Hungary – a country which has shown huge enthusiasm for Headway from the start. Over the following years, John and I discussed the country selection with the Headway team at OUP. Other countries in Europe were selected, then we extended the opportunity to the Middle East, Latin America, and most recently Ukraine and Turkey. The selection process has varied country to country, but each Headway Scholar has been a worthy recipient, having demonstrated their commitment – often via a competition – to English Language Teaching.

Liz and John Soars with four Headway Scholars at Exeter College in 2010

Liz and John Soars with four Headway Scholars at Exeter College in 2010

Although in the early years the Headway Scholarship was awarded to both students and teachers, it became apparent that the people who most benefited were the teachers. They attended the two-week English Language Teachers’ Summer Seminar, held at Exeter College, Oxford. These teachers have all been very enthusiastic about this course. Whenever we were able to, John and I met up with them. Many of them have written to tell us about what had been for them an opportunity of a lifetime, how much they’d developed as teachers, how they valued exchanging ideas with so many other ELT professionals from round the world, and how they would pass on what they’d learned to the wider ELT community back home. This is why we decided to dedicate the Headway Scholarship to four teachers.

And now there is an exciting new development to tell you about! The country selection has always been hard, and we hate to deprive any teacher of this opportunity just because of where they live. So to mark ten years since the first Headway Scholarship, this year we are making the Scholarship global! Wherever you are in the world, as a Headway teacher, you will be eligible to enter the Headway Scholarship competition to win a place at the 2014 Summer Seminar in Oxford.

The Headway Scholarship is very important for me, as it was for John, and I’m delighted it’s expanding in scope. As you’ll see from the competition entry information, it’s all about ‘Making a difference’, which is exactly what John and I set out to do all those years ago when we started writing Headway.

Good luck to everyone!
Warm wishes,

Liz Soars

You can find the application form and terms and conditions to enter the competition on the Headway Fourth Edition page.

14 March 2014 UPDATE: Please note, we are no longer accepting applications for the Headway Scholarship. We have posted the shortlist of applicants on the Headway Fourth Edition page.


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Oxford Teachers’ Academy 2012 – Reflections

Teachers working togetherMirjana Podvorac, an attendee of the Oxford Teachers’ Academy: Teaching English for Adults course in July 2012, talks about this life-changing experience.

I feel really privileged to have been a part of the Oxford Teachers’ Academy course Teaching English to Adults 2012. Being able to meet people from all over Europe and beyond, who are in the same profession of teaching, who are really dedicated to what they do and are experts in their area of interest, is inspiring and makes me personally want to learn more and push my own limits.

These few days in Oxford have really been rewarding in many ways; famous Oxford University and prominent Keble College provided a perfect setting for the course, stirring our imagination and taking us back to the times of Tolkien, C.S Lewis and other prominent Oxford scholars.

The course consisted of 18 hours of intensive teacher training divided into 9 sessions over the course of three days. Tim Ward, the tutor, professionally covered all language skills providing lots of useful tips, techniques and ready-to-use activities to make our teaching more efficient, varied and fun. Personally, I admired his calm, friendly, and engaging attitude. At the end of each day there was some time left for reflection, going through our notes and handouts, summing it all up, which have proved to be very useful now that I want to use the activities and ideas in my class.

We were also given the opportunity to meet the editors of Oxford University Press Adult course book classics, English File and Headway, which enriched with the new, inventive iTutor and iTools digital features, continue to be teachers’ favourites worldwide. Being able to convey our opinion to people who are engaged in the process of the development of new courses and to assist with the usability testing of the online test project was really rewarding. The OUP team have proved once again to be trustworthy ELT partners who truly value teachers’ feedback encouraging all the participants to continue working together and contribute to future projects.

Meeting fellow colleagues from different countries was another benefit; 36 enthusiastic people who like this tricky, yet wonderful profession. We spent most of our free time together as well, sightseeing, taking photos, buying souvenirs and getting to know each other over dinner and a pint in famous Oxford pubs or, again thanks to the OUP, enjoying fabulous Lebanese food. We continue to keep in touch exchanging ideas, useful books and links. Hopefully, the OUP OTA 2012 will result in some inspiring international partnerships as well.

In conclusion, although Oxford is known as the City of Dreaming Spires suggesting the melancholy, poetic echo of the rich history, we have found the City and the University itself to be vibrant, stimulating and fully awake.

Finally, I give my appreciation to the Croatian OUP team in Zagreb, who have been reliable partners for more than thirteen years, for their support and this memorable experience.

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