Learners’ Factors

A. Age
1. Young Children
Young children which are especially up to the age of nine or ten have different
characteristic in learning language. According to Harmer (2001:38), young children have
several characteristics in learning language, those are:
a. They respond to meaning even if they do not understand individual words.
b. They often learn indirectly rather than directly, that is, they take in information from
all sides, learning from everything around them rather than only focusing on the precise
topic they are being taught.
c. Their understanding comes not just from explanation, but also from what they see and
hear and, crucially, have a chance to touch and interact with.
d. They generally display an enthusiasm for learning and a curiosity about the world
around them.
e. They have a need for individual attention and approval from the teacher.
f. They are keen to talk about themselves, and respond well to learning that uses
themselves and their own lives as main topics in the classroom.
g. They have a limited attention span; unless activities are extremely engaging they can
easily get bored, losing interest after ten minutes or so.
As mentioned above, it can be concluded that a good teacher must design the activity
in learning to young children such as what a classroom for young children should look like,
what method should apply, what media should use, and so on.
2. Adolescents
Adolescence period occurs in secondary school. One of the key issues in adolescence
in the west is the search for individual identity (Harmer, 2001:39). Individual identity has to
be forged among classmates and friends. It means that peer approval may be considerably
more important for the students than the attention of the teacher. Adolescents have a great
capacity to learns, a great potential for creativity, and a passionate commitment to things
which interest them. In learning language, students must be encouraged to respond to texts
and situation with their own thought and experiences, rather than just answering questions
and doing abstract learning activities. In order to provoke the students’ engagement, a teacher
must provide relevant materials.
3. Adult Learners
 According to Harmer (2001:40), adult learners have a number of special
characteristics in learning language, those are:
a. They can engage with abstract thought.
b. They have a whole range of life experiences to draw on.
c. They have expectation about the learning process, and may already have their own set
patters of learning.
d. Adults tend, on the whole, to be more disciplined than some teenagers, and crucially,
they are often prepared to struggle on despite boredom.
e. They come into classrooms with a rich range of experiences which allow teachers to
use a wide range of activities of them
f. Unlike young children and teenagers, they have a clear understanding of why they are
learning and what they want to get out of it.
As good teachers of adults, they should be aware that their students will often be prepared to
stick with an activity for longer than young learners. They encourage their students to use
their own life experience in the learning process.