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As a language learner, I remember we always used to love fun activities and games. Especially when we had our lesson at the end of the day, when we were all so tired and we knew the teacher was as well... sometimes our teacher said if we work well during the lesson then we can play our favourite game in the last 5-10 minutes. This motivated us to pay attention and finish the tasks as quick as possible, so then we could play, relax and have fun (while learning!). I think these games are great methods for motivation, engaging our students, increasing student talking time, creating time for group work and competition, getting to know each other better...
We can also prepare these games beforehand (for example by preparing vocab cards for specific topics, and these can of course be used in different groups).

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Whenever people ask what age group I would like to teach and my reply is "teenagers", I always get some interesting reactions, such as an ironic "good luck with that!", "aren't you scared they won't listen to you?", "how will you keep discipline?", "the most problematic and difficult age group?", "are you sure?"...
After many such situations I find it quite sad, that so many people have such negative stereotypes about teenagers, while on the other hand, this age group has many positive characteristics as well.
As a teacher trainee and a young adult I think it is important to stay connected with this age group and to not develop such a judgemental attitude towards them. It is important to be aware of the difficult aspects of this age group, but I believe there is so much potential in teens and we should take advantage of that.

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Some reward ideas for individual students are:

Extra computer time

Permission to eat a snack in class

Permission to listen to music (with headphones) while working

Chance to switch roles with the teacher for five minutes (teacher is a student and student is the teacher — great for English practice!)

If the whole class is being rewarded:

3-5 minutes at the end of class to watch the students’ favourite English-speaking show or movie

Playing a favourite game as a class

Allowing free time for students to chat amongst one another — in English!

Teacher-provided snacks or drinks for the class

We can’t always rely on rewards, for many reasons. As such, develop strong, personable relationships with your students. Trust goes a long way when it comes to student motivation and engagement!

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BridgeUniverse - TEFL Blog, News, Tips & Resources

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Tips and Techniques to Effectively Teach Teens ESL

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Gain the confidence to teach teens ESL with these strategies, games, and lesson plan tips designed to keep your young students engaged and motivated.

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1. English Only:
In this challenging game, students compete to speak only English for the entire lesson; teams that speak their native language are marked with a point. The team with the fewest marks wins a prize.

2. Hot Potato:
This no-materials-needed classic is another game that teen ESL students enjoy. The students quickly pass a ball (or ball of paper) around the room while music plays. Use a popular song the students know and like to keep them engaged. The student holding the “hot potato” when the music stops has to answer a question correctly to earn a point.

3. Roll the Dice, Make a Question:
In this game, the numbers one through six are written on the board corresponding to “Who, What, When, Where, Why, and How.” A student rolls the dice and then poses a question to a classmate based on the number the dice landed on.

4. ESL songs:
Beyond games, using music in the classroom is also a great way to help students learn while having fun.

5. Tell Me 5:
The teacher picks a topic, e.g., animals, colors, verbs, etc., and the student whose turn it is must name five items in the category in less than a minute. This is a great way to review vocabulary!

6. Activity (/Pictionary):
A great way to practice vocabulary items. Divide the students into two teams. A student picks a card with a word on it and has to either draw, mime, or describe/define the word in speech. If his/her team guesses the word they get a point. After 1-2 minutes the other team can also try and guess. The teams take turns and each turn it is a different student, this way they can all participate.

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BridgeUniverse - TEFL Blog, News, Tips & Resources

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Tips and Techniques to Effectively Teach Teens ESL

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Gain the confidence to teach teens ESL with these strategies, games, and lesson plan tips designed to keep your young students engaged and motivated.

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What's important to know about teaching English to teenagers?

be aware of their level of proficiency

teenage psyche:

less control over behaviour as emotions take over

focus on the now more than the consequences

find it harder to concentrate when distracted

Strategies:

get to know your students

make use of classroom routines --> predictable, comfortable learning environment

example: warming up, reviewing homework, presenting new material, practicing concepts

using visual or verbal cues to transition between segments

result: students are much more likely to come prepared to class, understand what is happening throughout a lesson, and maintain their focus during instruction

However, also build opportunities to break away from the routine and implement an exciting new activity, instead!

allow time for group work

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BridgeUniverse - TEFL Blog, News, Tips & Resources

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Tips and Techniques to Effectively Teach Teens ESL

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Gain the confidence to teach teens ESL with these strategies, games, and lesson plan tips designed to keep your young students engaged and motivated.

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-English classes that go beyond language teaching
-Language as an instrument by which we communicate and express ourselves in other ares of human knowledge and relationships

Pay attention to and take advantage of their characteristics:

treat them as adults but not expect them to behave as such

help establish their own sets of values that will guide them in their adult lives

use activities that encourage and develop critical thinking

form + content, fact + opinion

1. Be careful with compliments

praise positive behaviours (effort, creativity, cooperation)

praise the effort rather than the performance
--> most effective in improving learning and self-esteem

2. See how you ask questions

When asking students something, ask the question first, then name a student to answer it. In other words, avoid saying “Rafael, what’s the answer to number 3?”, but say “What’s the answer to number 3, [pause] Rafael?”

If you first say a student’s name, the others will no longer pay attention to what you are talking about, that’s for sure. And this is especially true for teens.

3. Pay attention to wait time

gap between a question and response

Research shows that prolonging the wait time by one to two seconds results in more student reasoning and better responses.

4. Encourage cooperation

Teenagers like to compete, but encourage much more cooperation than competition.

In a competition, for every winner there are many losers. Teenagers who work together to do something gain a lot more than winning a competition – and certainly more than losing one.

Of course you can hold some competitions, at least to vary the lessons a little – but not very often, and do it in teams, so that at least there is also cooperation!

5. Making notes to remember

Find ways to get teens to write down and remember vocab

Take advantage of their contact with English (music, YouTube, Instagram...): ask them to bring words and phrases they hear.

Giving teenagers room to bring content to the classroom themselves will help them see English language learning as a positive experience – and in the end I think that’s our main task as teachers.

Instead of just scrolling through Instagram reels or TikTok --> learning, motivation through social media

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World of Better Learning | Cambridge University Press

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For many teachers, a class full of teenagers can be a big challenge. With that in mind, we interviewed author Jeff Stranks to better understand the phases of teen adolescence, and hear his suggestions for effective ways of teaching English to this age group.

It is common to see English teachers feel insecure in front of a group of adolescent students. Whether it's because of the stigma that "teens are complicated" or because they are not used to teaching this age group, it's common to get uncomfortable - but it doesn't need to be like that.

For Jeff Stranks, the co-author of "English in Mind", "More!" and "THiNK", teachers need to know that adolescence has two phases: one that goes approximately from 10 to 14 years and another that begins at 15 and goes until adulthood; and that the interests of the students change as they grow older.

"In general, in the early teens, students tend to be fascinated by extremes and things that are completely outside their everyday existence, hence their interest in, for example, The Guinness Book of Records. They are also interested in positive human traits such as courage, perseverance, creativity, and they look for role models who represent these things. The second group of older adolescents begin to become more 'philosophical' in the sense that they want to understand how the world and society work. They start to get interested in 'great ideas'," says Jeff.

Neither group are particularly interested in talking about themselves or their own experiences: they want to broaden their horizons - Jeff Stranks

Because of this, one of the key elements for teachers to prepare more engaging lessons is to use content that will arouse the curiosity of adolescents and thus help them to have more knowledge of the world and build knowledge that goes beyond language. For Jeff, "teachers can help them precisely to broaden their horizons by giving them stories - in the broadest sense of the word - that speak about human values ​​and experiences."

What are the differences when teaching adolescents?

In addition to considering the adolescence stage of your students, there are also other factors that need to be observed when working with these young people. One is the understanding that your students are going through a transformation phase, in which they are no longer children, but are not yet fully mature.

For Jeff, "teens will often revert to child behavior and try to be disruptive, they will claim to be upset about something very quickly, do or say things just to look cool in front of their peers, and that requires a lot of patience from teachers ". But the author points out that it is not necessary to teach adolescents and adults in different ways, quite the contrary: "When teaching adolescents, I have always tried to treat them as adults, but I do not expect them to behave as such," he concludes.

Teaching beyond language

Valid for the teaching of anyone in any age group, planning English classes that go beyond language teaching is a primary factor when looking for a broader experience and richer content. After all, language is an instrument by which we communicate and express ourselves in other areas of human knowledge and relationships.

"There are so many other things that need to be addressed beyond language. Adolescents, especially the younger ones, need support in their development. They seek help to establish their own sets of values, values ​​that will guide them in their adult lives; seek help in terms of reasoning and understanding; they want to be able to make sense of the multitude of facts, opinions and ideas that surround them, something even more important in this 'post-truth era'," explains Jeff.

"Occasionally, adolescents also seek help in relation to their self-esteem, that sense of self-worth that is so important even to adults and that can make a big difference in someone's life," says the author. "I believe that teachers know implicitly that when working with groups of adolescents, their role goes far beyond grammar, or lexis, or pronunciation, although they are important. Good teachers help adolescent students to think and investigate. And good materials help teachers to do this," he says.

For the author, it is necessary to devise activities that encourage and develop critical thinking. While teaching English, teachers may ask students to analyze and discuss the values ​​inherent in the content of a text, not just its form. It is also possible to do an exercise that leads adolescents to distinguish 'fact' from 'opinion', or to analyze whether a given internet text is criticizing an idea or the personality of a person, for example.

They are simple exercises that, in addition to working with language, help adolescents to build vocabulary and express themselves more confidently, exercise critical thinking and develop awareness of the world around them.

But how to achieve these results?

In most cases, you will need to look individually at each of your students and find out the best way to teach them English. There is no perfect formula that works for all teachers and all students, but there are some tips that can help you take the first step, like these suggestions from Jeff Stranks:

1. Be careful with compliments
Do not praise the right answers, but praise positive behaviors such as effort, creativity, cooperation etc. Much research shows that praise for teens is most effective in improving learning and self-esteem when it is linked to the students' effort rather than their performance. And beware of excess! Only use adjectives such as "brilliant" or "fantastic" when that is indeed the case. At other times, things like "very good" or "correct" are sufficient.

2. See how you ask questions
When asking students something, ask the question first, then name a student to answer it. In other words, avoid saying "Rafael, what's the answer to number 3?", but say "What's the answer to number 3, [pause] Rafael?" That makes a lot of difference. If you first say a student's name, the others will no longer pay attention to what you are talking about, that's for sure. And this is especially true for teens.

3. Pay attention to wait time
Wait time is the gap between a question that is being asked and a response to be presented. Research shows that prolonging the wait time by one to two seconds results in more student reasoning and better responses. So, ask a question and then insist that no one respond for at least two seconds, so they have time to think before they speak.

4. Encourage cooperation
Teenagers like to compete, but encourage much more cooperation than competition. In a competition, for every winner there are many losers. Teenagers who work together to do something gain a lot more than winning a competition - and certainly more than losing one. Of course you can hold some competitions, at least to vary the lessons a little - but not very often, and do it in teams, so that at least there is also cooperation!

5. Making notes to remember!
Find all the possible ways to get your teenagers to write down and remember vocabulary (words, phrases, etc.). Most of them listen to music, watch clips on YouTube, use Instagram and so on. They have a lot of contact with English, so take advantage of that and ask them to bring the words and phrases they hear to show or ask about them (some will be questionable, but you can handle it!). Giving teenagers room to bring content to the classroom themselves will help them see English language learning as a positive experience - and in the end I think that's our main task as teachers.
Visit this link to explore more of our resources for teaching teens English.

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What I need to know about teaching English to adolescents | Cambridge English

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For many teachers, a class full of teenagers can be a big challenge. We interviewed author Jeff Stranks to better understand how to teach this age group.

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going through a transformation phase: no longer children but not yet fully mature

they want to be able to make sense of the multitude of facts, opinions and ideas that surround them

importance of self-esteem and self-worth

developing

logical reasoning

mood swings

individuality

creative

emotional

language aware

cognitive skills

self-centered

opinionated

energy levels

hormonal

competitive

clumsy

attention span

There’s a lot going on in a teenager’s head as their brains are developing towards maturity. The frontal cortex, in particular, develops rapidly during adolescence. This is responsible for executive functions and cognitive flexibility including the ability to direct our attention, to plan future tasks, to inhibit inappropriate behaviour, and to keep more than one thing in mind at once (Blakemore & Frith, 2005).

Whilst these changes can cause some of the undesirable characteristics already mentioned, there are some positives. An adolescent’s brain is adaptable, it can be ‘sculpted and shaped’ as neural connections are ‘eliminated and pruned’ (Geidd, 2002).  It is, in fact, an optimal time for learning.

Source:
https://eflrecipes.com/2015/01/23/teenagers/

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mostly negative:

challenging age group to teach

moody

uncooperative

loud

judgemental

rebellious

"problematic"

complicated

mischief, drinking, smoking, taking drugs, relationships...

disrespectful

lazy

attention seekers

addicted to social media (+ other addictions)

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5 tips for teaching English to teenagers

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5 tips for teaching English to teenagers

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1. Build a relationship with your students.

earn their respect

learners likely to want to work harder (motivation)

students respond well to a teacher they feel is interested in their life

as a teacher, be interested in their hobbies, interests (for example: ask your students about their weekends)

2. Work to their interests.

choose topics that interest them

engage teenage learners

learning English through a fun pastime (for example: encourage students to watch their favourite TV show in English)

3. Use relevant topics.

learning for a reason

relevant issues to their lives (example: vocab for popular culture)

will make them pay attention

their work is worthwhile

4. Work choice into their learning.

give students a few options to choose from

gives teens ownership over their work

example: when setting a writing task, give 5 topics they can choose from

5. Have staggered difficulty in classes.

different difficulty levels (some will find a task tricky and give up, others find it easy and get bored)

differentiate so students can learn at their best ability

Source:
https://www.oxfordinternationaljuniors.com/5-tips-for-teaching-english-to-teenagers/