Teaching Adolescents: a general background

The nature of normative and atypical development in adolescence have taken on

special significance in the last few years, as scientists have begun to recast old
portraits of adolescent behavior in the light of new knowledge about brain
development. Adolescence is often a period of especially heightened vulnerability
because of potential disjunctions between developing brain, behavioral and
cognitive systems that mature along different timetables and under the control of
both common and independent biological processes. Taken together, these
developments reinforce the emerging understanding of adolescence as a critical or
sensitive period for a reorganization of regulatory systems, a reorganization that is
fraught with both risks and opportunities.

Adolescence could be compared with a process of getting attitude and beliefs that
youth need to participate in the society, is also a period of fast growth, this is
crucial and everybody has to pass through in our life and determines how better we
are in the youth and adult period.

Biological, psychosocial and cognitive changes that begin during puberty and
continue throughout adolescence. Adolescents experience dramatic physical
growth and development during puberty. It is the transition phase between
childhood and adulthood.

Stanley Hall (the father of adolescent psychology) stated that its a time of storm
and stress. In terms of a time frame, adolescence begins around the onset of
puberty (age 11-12) and ends during the late teen years and young adulthood (age
19-20).

It is a time of much physical, social, mental, and emotional change. It is also a

time of opportunity and risk. Adolescents also experience significant changes in
their ability to assess and comprehend complex situations and information and in
their desire to become independent, unique individuals. The increased need
among adolescents, combined with increasing financial independence, increasing
need for autonomy and immature cognitive abilities. During adolescence teens
develop a stronger recognition of their own personal identity, including recognition
of a set of personal moral and ethical values, and greater perception of feelings of
self-esteem or self-worth.

As children grow and enter the adolescent stage of their life, certain developmental
aspects proceed with a transformational quality, primarily: the physical, cognitive,
and psychosocial aspect of development. Every individual normally faces a series
of developmental tasks and learning during adolescence. Some of these major
processes include the movement towards independence, formation of sexual
identity, developing career interests, and the integration of morals and ethics
(Canadian Parents Online Inc, 2001).

Cognitive development in human beings can be addressed by various theories and

clinically-based results.

Middle school roughly coincides with students entering the formal operations
stage of Piagets cognitive development theory, at roughly the age of 11. The
formal operations period is the beginning of the highest level of cognition, as
viewed by Piaget, a stage characterized by the growing ability to think
hypothetically and abstractly. Children develop a capacity for manipulating
information and using symbols, and their thought processes are at the ultimate
level of intellectual development.

Kohlbergs (1969) three levels of moral reasoning into consideration, middle school
aged children are entering the conventional level. This level is further divided into
two stages----- stage 3 (children judging intentions of self and others, evaluating
whether that means they are good or not) and stage 4 (maintaining social order,
performing their duty). Eventually, these children will enter the post conventional
level where focus develops around the welfare of society, adherence to the law,
rational thinking and internalized standards. (Papalia, Olds, & Feldman, 2001).

Level 1 (Pre-Conventional) age 4-10

1. Obedience and punishment orientation

2. Self-interest orientation

Level 2 (Conventional) age 10-13 or beyond

3. Interpersonal accord and conformity

4. Authority and social-order maintaining orientation

Level 3 (Post-Conventional) young adolescence

5. Social contract orientation

6. Universal ethical principles

David Elkind (1984), based on his research, presents a view of adolescence that
classrooms are all too familiar with. He devised a list of characteristics that
represents immaturity in adolescent thought, primarily:

Argumentativeness, Indecisiveness, Finding fault with authority figures, Apparent

hypocrisy, Self-consciousness, Imaginary audience, Assumption of vulnerability,
Personal fable (Papalia, Olds, & Feldman, 2001).

The characteristics are important to consider when planning classroom

management strategies. By understanding (or least respecting) the notion that
students are not always aware of their behaviors, or accept that teens lack control
over the stages of puberty and cognitive development, teachers can implement
strategies that acknowledge and work through some of these issues.

(McLaughlin, 1990) argue that teenagers are intrinsically better language learners
than either younger or older learners, since a teenager already has a well-
developed cognitive base and learning skills. On the other hand, the linguistic
sophistication required of teenagers is greater than that required of young children.
While children may only need to be surrounded by language, in a positive climate,
to acquire a language, teenagers may need much more than linguistic exposure
-the student must be able to be involved and engaged with communicative events
in order to profit from them and develop communicative competence. The length of
time it will take individual students to develop this competence cannot be predicted
accurately, especially for teenagers who have so much to learn about academic
English

In adolescent foreign language learning, an identity-focused approach can make a

difference to achievement in education. It uses both in-depth exploratory interviews
with language learners and a cross-sectional survey to provide a unique glimpse
into the identity dynamics that learners need to manage in their interaction with
contradictory relational contexts (e.g. teacher vs. classmates; parents vs. friends),
and that appear to impair their perceived competence and declared achievement in
language learning.

Conclusion

It is undoubtedly that there are many factors that affect the adolescents learning
process, as teachers we need to realize that learning a language is not always the
result of teaching, we need to understand the complex of learning language from a
variety of perspectives, since it involves different factors.Teachers must be aware
of the problems that adolescents have in their development, so it is necessary to
find the methodology that suits their learning needs, where we must take into
account all the factors that go according to their needs such as motivation, their
personal emotions and their cognitive level in order to search for the best
strategies to get the communicative competence.

References.

Zajko, S. (20017). Adolescent Development and Psychology . Taken from:

file:///C:/Users/Rosi/Documents/UAEMEX%205o.%20SEM/INGLES%20PARA
%20ADOLESCENTES/books%20and%20materials/adolescent_developme.pdf

Steinberg, L. (20015), Cognitive and affective development in adolescence. Taken from:

https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Cognitive-and-affective-development-in-adolescence-
Steinberg/0a2208e9b75227d2fee2867baaabeded958a3b36

Walqui, A. Second Language Learning and the Schooling of Immigrant Teenagers: Focus on
Prevailing Misconceptions. Taken from:
http://web.stanford.edu/~hakuta/www/archives/syllabi/Docs/Walqui1.htm