 Hey, welcome! Linda here from ITTT back this week with another live session. Welcome, welcome! How's everybody doing? Thank you so much for joining me. Good evening, good morning, good afternoon, whatever time it is where you are. And please do let me know where you are right now in the world. Where are you watching from today? Just leave a comment, let me know. I'm in South Korea and it's 10.30 am Friday. I'm super excited. It's Friday. How about you? Where are you at? What time is it there? Is it already Friday? Is it still Thursday? Let me know. As always, we are live on Facebook and on YouTube at the same time. And don't forget to like and subscribe because this is a regular thing. We go live every week, usually this place, this time. So if this is your first time watching, know that this is not the first and the last one. There are many, many, many of these and we will continue to do so. So please tune in, like and subscribe wherever you're watching from on YouTube or on Facebook, wherever it is. And today we're talking about top tips for teaching English to teens, teenage students in the EFL classroom. So if you are already a teacher or you're thinking about being a teacher, the chances are that you might encounter teenage students in your English teaching EFL career in the classroom. Maybe you also will teach them online. So these are a few tips, techniques, little things to like remember and to incorporate into your lessons when you do teach teenage students because they are very different from young learners, from children, even though they kind of also are included in the young learners theme. But they're very different from teaching very young children and also adults. They're in between. So what are some things that we need to kind of watch out for? That's what we're going to talk about today. And also right of the bat want to mention that we do have again our 30% off discount code off of any TEFL or TSOL course from ITTT. So what you can do is you can scan this QR code that you see right here. You also always see this QR code in the upper right hand corner throughout the entire live session. So you can always scan it there as well. And I also have a link for you guys that I'm going to share with you right now. It looks like this ends with FB live minus Linda. This link, this will get you 30% off of any TEFL or TSOL course from ITTT because we do have quite a few different options. So do check them out. And then when you are ready, whenever you're ready, you can use this link, save it somewhere and just get back to it. Make sure you sign up. You use this link when you fill out your application because if you don't, you don't get the 30% off. So make sure. And also when you go to the application page, you will see a thing. Congratulations. You get 30% off something like that. So then you notice the correct link. If for some reason this should not work, you can reach out to me. Hold on. Where is it? At Linda Goes East, for example, on social media, send me a message. Let me know. Hey, this isn't working. Can you show me how to do it? And I'll help you out. And again, just want to know where you're watching from today. Let me know in the comments. We're live on Facebook and on YouTube. And I would love to chat with you. Daniel, it's been a long time. Hi, Daniel. How are you doing? Where are you watching from, Daniel? Let me know. Thanks for tuning in. I appreciate it. I appreciate it. And first also maybe jumping into a bit of an introduction about who I am. If you're watching this for the first time and you're like, who is this? What is happening? I'll let you know. So my name is Linda. I'm a travel writer, content creator, language teacher. I'm many different things. And basically I'm based in South Korea. I'm originally from Germany slash the US. My mom is German. My dad is American. Hence language teacher. I teach English. I also teach German. I'm also an avid language learner myself. I've learned French, Spanish, Chinese, Korean. This year I started Japanese. Very interesting. So I'm all about language learning and teaching. If that's kind of your jam, check out LyndaGhostEast.com. If you're also into Asia specifically, you'll find travel information, language learning information, all of this good stuff also on my website. And on social media on Instagram, Twitter, all the other socials. It is also at LyndaGhostEast. You can find me there and reach out and send me a DM if you want. I'm also working for ITTT for Tefl TESOL in the marketing department. And if you don't know, ITTT stands for international Tefl and TESOL training. Many of you might already have a certificate from ITTT or two. You might already be familiar. And so ITTT is a leading Tefl and TESOL course provider worldwide. Like I said, we have a variety of different courses. So do check out the link that I sent in the comments. And the website is teflcourse.net. You can find all the information over there as well. And Danielle is from Haiti. Cool. What time is it over there right now? Is it in the middle of the night? Cool. Or maybe evening, Thursday evening. Very nice. How's the weather like over there right now? Is it always like summer? I'm actually not familiar. I've never been to Haiti, but I'd love to. I've seen beautiful pictures from there. So I would love to go. I would actually really like to go to the beach right now. It's getting colder in Korea, but I also really like autumn, fall season, which is nice. So we're kind of in that season now, which is nice, but yeah. Cool. Everybody else watching also let me know in the comments. I'd appreciate it where you're watching from right now. And then we are again, talking about today's topic at the end. There will also be a Q&A part. So this will be a time for you to ask questions. Of course you can leave comments and ask questions throughout the entire live session. But at the end we have a couple more minutes to talk about other things not related to today's topic, maybe. So that's what's going to happen at the end. We're going to cover 10 tips for teaching English to teens today. It might take 45 minutes to an hour. You can always watch the replay of the session. Always in our playlist on Facebook and on YouTube. So you can always refer back to that. If you're watching this as a replay and you leave a comment, we will also get back to it. So don't hesitate, leave your comments. I'm always very curious what you have to say. So please do leave them. Then we have Amitavva. Good morning, Linda. How are you faring now? I'm doing very well. Thank you, Amitavva. How are you doing today? Thank you so much. I do have some coffee over here that I sometimes need to take a sip off. So also if you guys want to grab a snack or a beverage, you're welcome to do so. Make yourself comfortable for the session. Yeah, that's good. Nice coffee in the morning as always. It's different. All right, very cool. Yeah, keep your comments coming. Where are you watching from right now? Let me know. And then we can jump in kind of with today's objective or agenda. What I would like you to kind of learn from today is just kind of the ability to effectively teach teenagers in the classroom. So it's kind of the goal and how you can create positive learning environments and establish meaningful connections with your adolescent students. That's going to be the objective today, the main goal. And like I said, we will cover 10 tips for this for teens. And I know many of you are already teachers and teaching and I know many of you are maybe teaching teens on a regular basis. So feel free to always kind of share your own experience, your input, your feedback to any of what I'm saying. I always say this, we're all here to learn from each other. We all have different experiences and all something to say. So don't be shy. Leave it in the comments. I would appreciate that really a lot. Daniel says it is 940 p.m. in Haiti right now. Okay, so Thursday, right? Thursday evening. Very cool. Okay. Nice. So thanks so much for tuning in at night or in the evening. Appreciate it. Okay. Then let's jump in. This is the objective. And then first I also want to cover kind of some of the challenges that teaching teenagers that comes with teaching teenagers specifically. So we need to understand and you've, everybody's watching is was probably a teenager at some point to kind of think about back at that time when you were a teenager, what, how was your personality, right? Very different from today probably. So teenagers usually are on an emotional roller coaster. They might feel happy or one second sat the next angry the next. So it's a very emotional time, right? So keep that in mind as a teacher. And if they, you know, say something inappropriate or something rude or anything, just kind of keep in mind that this is a very different phase or important phase, different phase that they're going through, very emotional. That also means that they are very distraction prone, right? When I think back at my high school time, middle school, high school, talking a lot with my friends, right? With my seat neighbor and stuff and very distraction prone or something. You see something outside the window. You get distracted very easily. So that's also something to keep in mind. And we will talk about these little things and how you can use that to your advantage and what you can do to create better lessons to match these challenges. And the red pursuit, very funny. He says, I'm glad I'm not teaching teenagers in America. Okay. Yeah, well, the teenagers are probably similar everywhere, but yeah, maybe in America, they're a little bit more different. I'm not sure. Also the third point here. So teenagers are independent seeking, right? So that's also something that is going to come into play later when we talk about some strategies and techniques. So these are just some of the things to keep in mind. Peer influence, right? Very strong at this age. You might notice little groups forming in your classes, more so than younger students in younger classes. So that's very big. Yeah. We want varied learning styles or people have varied learning styles to students, you know, and this is kind of the case with every age group. So some students might be more visual learners, some more auditory, some more this, some more that. So as a teacher, you need to kind of identify that and also have a lesson plan that works for everybody, right? Then we have rebellion and defiance, right? When you teach teenagers, you might have to also do some more discipline, things like that. When I was teaching, I actually, well, they were kind of teenagers. I taught early young teenagers in Korea and some of them they were sometimes very rebellious and defiant and luckily we had Korean co-teachers, so they would kind of take them out of the class and take care of that, but it's definitely something you will have to deal with, right? And so it's all about striking a balance as well. So these are the challenges when it comes to teaching teenagers and now we're going to look at 10 tips, how you can make the best of these challenges and turn them into opportunities for your lessons and make the best out of it and create a good learning space for everybody. You included, students included, so everybody's happy and comfortable. That's basically the goal today. Amitava says I'm watching from Kolkata in the state of West Bengal in India. It is 7-eleven a.m. and for the last week it is feeling a little cool like it was in the early, mid and late 1970s when we were first toddlers and later teens. Okay. So the weather is changing. Is it getting colder then? Interesting. Interesting, okay. Cool. So what's cool though for you? A little cool. What's the temperature? Because sometimes people say it's cool, but then because I come from Europe, so maybe my cool is that exactly what your cool is? I don't know. But interesting. Okay, so the weather, see the weather is changing everywhere, isn't it? It's kind of crazy. Interesting, okay. Then I think now we're jumping in with our first tip, first slide here. Oh no, we still have goals to go over. Just two goals. So based on these challenges, the goals as the teacher when you're teaching teenagers should be to foster a connection of trust and respect with your students and then also to identify and nurture the hidden abilities and talents of your students. So these are your two main goals that we should focus on when teaching really any student, not just teenagers, but really any student. But I think especially trust and respect and we're going to come back to this at one of the points later. It's very important for teenagers and when teaching teenagers and we're going to speak more about that. Okay, yes. I'm going to tell this as well. It is 25 degrees in Calcutta. Yeah, this would be warm for me. See, this is like summer in Germany, 25. That's a nice summer day in Germany. You know, it's funny. Great. All right. Good. Moving on. First tip that I have for you guys when teaching teenagers in the ESL, EFL classroom is to keep it real. Okay, keep it real as a teacher. Keep it real. So what does that mean? Show your true self. Share your interests and your personality. I found that yes, you're here to teach them and you're here to get to know your students, but they also always kind of want to know more about you as a person, especially if you're a foreign teacher. They get interested in foreign countries and foreign cultures. They're very curious about you as well. So show your true self. Don't put on like an act. Just really share, be open, honest, honesty matters. Teens can spot deception very easily. More so than younger students, right? With kids, with very young kids, you can kind of not lie to them, but like, right, put on a show maybe more so than for teenagers. Teenagers, they can already see that it's not all that. So teens can spot that very easily. Just be honest and show your true self, right? And this also fosters trust. So authenticity helps to create a bond of trust with students when you're authentic. It means like you trust them with your true self, with your authentic self, and at the same time then they will do the same, right? Hopefully. So this fosters trust and open communication. So you want to create an environment where students feel comfortable sharing thoughts. It's also very important, especially for teenagers. You always have some students in this age who are more talkative, more confident, and then some students who are less confident. And so it's very important to have this environment where they feel comfortable, and we're going to talk more about that as well, because that's a very important point for teaching teenagers. Active listening for you as a teacher, that's very important. Always pay attention to their concerns and their interests. Teenagers really want to be heard, especially their concerns, interests, and you can use this. We're going to talk about it. You can use this for your advantage in your lesson planning later on. And just overall, mutual respect. Show respect for your students' perspectives and individuality. Usually the teenage age is a time when you will see more individuality. People want to stand out. Some students might not, but they kind of discover, right, who they are. What are they good at? What are they bad at? What do they like? What don't they like? It's a big time of discovery. So they experiment with different maybe styles, different hobbies, different things, individuality, and different perspectives. So you want to really embrace that and bring that into your classroom with, again, communication and all of these things. So keep it real, and then in turn, they will also keep it real with you. So that's the first rule, basically your first tip when it comes to teaching teenagers. And I think, again, when you think back on when you were a teenager, you can probably see how this really can make a difference in the classroom. If you compare it maybe with how your teachers were back then, so you can make a difference. You can do it differently. Or you had a really good teacher and who did all of these things as well. All right. Again, if you have any comments to any of the things that I was saying, leave it in the comments and share it. I would really appreciate that. But that was our first point. Keep it real. Good. The next one is, number two, make it relevant. Make it relevant. Or here, make it relevant. Number two. So address the teenage students' short attention spans with engaging strategies to tap into their interests. And this is something similar that you see when you teach very young students. They also have very short attention spans, right? Teenagers do too. It's getting better, but they also have very short attention spans because like we said, one of the challenges is that they get distracted very easily, right? So it's kind of similar to young learners, to kids. So recognize their limited focus and then employ shorter but dynamic activities. And that's what we also do when we teach very young students. Again, you want to have shorter but very dynamic and active exercises. So encourage participation and use hands-on experiences. Teenagers also really love doing that. So just because they're older children, don't stop using games and things like that. They still really enjoy that, right? Like young learners. Incorporate their hobbies and concerns into lessons that's kind of piggybacking off of what we just said in the first one, keep it real, learn about their interests, hear them, hear the concerns as well, what they're worrying about these days, right? And put all of these things into your lessons so they get interested in it and foster a sense of ownership and relevance to these topics. And then they would be really interested. If you talk about the latest, I don't know, in Korea, we did this a lot with K-pop. You would talk about K-pop things or, you know, baseball. I don't know if they really like sports. You would talk about something like that. So make it relevant to their interests and then they automatically get more interested, right? Okay. Red Pursuit says, whenever a teacher expands their lessons and over-explains things, I get sleepy when they drag on. Yes, exactly, right? So the short dynamic activity is a good tip. Yeah. Thank you. I agree. I agree. That's important. You want to have quick things, but still obviously, you know, not too scattered, not too fast paced, but like at the right speed, not too slow, but also not too fast to get everybody in and to get people's attention, right? And again, make it relevant. Bring in their interests and concerns into your lesson planning. Okay. So, and here also maybe something, don't only stick to a textbook if you have the textbook, have the textbook, but then also structure these little things to make it relevant. Add other activities to it that piques their interest. That's always, always just sticking to a boring textbook is never a really good way for any age group of students. So always kind of bring into something that interests them as well. And the longer you teach your students and get to know them, the more you will know and see all of they like this. They don't like that. This is a concern to them. And then you can bring these things in. Of course, you're not going to be able to do that on the first day of teaching, but you can kind of guess, you know, what's in right now with the teenagers. I don't know, but, you know, ask somebody and then include it in your lesson, but just make it relevant. Perfect. Then number three, always have a laugh. Very important. Have a laugh. I like to have a laugh as well with you guys. So have a laugh, creating a relaxed classroom atmosphere. So encourage your students to express themselves and always use a warm and inclusive tone. Right. I think with teenagers, it's really like again, kind of the mutual respect. So what you do to them, they will do back to you. So if you come on really hard and strict and rough, then you're going to hit a wall. You're not going to really reach them. So you want to have, you know, you want to give them time to talk. You want to give them time to have a laugh. You want to have a warm and inclusive tone that's really going to make a difference and address the stress and anxiety teachers experience to acknowledge their potential sources of stress. You can go over that as well, you know, as a teenager, what they might be stressed about and then provide resources or coping mechanisms, especially with studying, you know, little strategies, how maybe you as a teenager studied better, especially here in Korea and a lot of East Asian countries, teenagers have it really, really rough. They're school time. They have to study a lot. They have to take a lot of exams, a lot of tests. So kind of just be here for them and understand. You can say like, yeah, this is really a hard time, you know, but I got through it. Your parents got through it. You know, you can get through it. It's not going to be like this forever. Just be there for them and provide resources for coping mechanisms. That's just very important. So don't only just keep it study, study, study, you know, give them also some time for a good laugh and something more relaxed. I think is the message here. It's very important. So that's why also short dynamic hands-on activities can also come into play here and also games. I think we're going to also cover that a little bit later on as well. But just, yeah. Of course, don't just have the whole lesson be like a comedy fest, a laugh fest. But here and there, you can make it just fun for them, you know, so there we go. All right. Then we have number four here. Be interested. We kind of talked about this today already in the beginning, but just diving a little bit more into this personalized learning. So build relationships through understanding the backgrounds, especially if you have, you know, if you're like in a new country with a new culture, this could be a great opportunity to learn more about that culture. They can explain to you, you know, oh, a holiday is coming up. You don't have this holiday in your country in your culture. So let them explain a little bit. Oh, this is what we do on this holiday or this is why we do that. And you can share your own holidays from your country or culture, for example. So, yeah, you can build relationships like that, understand their backgrounds. If there are people from different backgrounds, also very interesting, definitely touch on to that. Again, active listening really show genuine interest in their experiences and perspective. And then from there, you can tailor the curriculum and incorporate topics that are relevant to their lives. Again, this is the relevancy. You see how this all ties in together and relate to their passions. So connect the lessons to their hobbies and concerns and encourage active participation. This will come kind of naturally. So when you're interested and you relate to their passions, you incorporate these topics into your lessons. They are pretty much automatically going to be more interested, right? Then again, if you just stick to a boring textbook that kind of all covers the same topics, right? Every textbook is very similar, gets very repetitive and boring for students. So, yeah, have these other topics that are in right now and they will really then become a lot more active in participation and involved in the lesson this way can be a very, very good strategy. So, yeah. Then we have number five, mix it up. All right. And maybe after this point, this would be the halfway point. I'm going to check in with you guys and see your opinions, what you think also from your own teaching experience or from your own school experience. When you were a teenage student, what you think is the most important thing after this point? Let me know in the comments. Already think about it and then put it in the comments. All right. So mix it up. Again, diverse content. We're diving into this more. So offer a variety of different topics and activities and also always be sure to include everybody, right? Not everybody has the same interests and hobbies and concerns. So be sure to really be inclusive and hear everybody and include a little bit of everything, right? Everybody, so nobody feels left out. It's always very important as well. Excuse me. Then we have an important point, break routines. Avoid predictability to prevent boredom. So that means if you always structure, you lessen the same way or you always follow again the textbook, which is structured the same way. People or the students are going to predict, oh, now we're going to do the listening exercise. After this, we're going to do the writing. It's always the same. It gets boring very, very quickly. So make sure you mix it up. Okay. Don't just stick. And I know a lot of teachers are doing this in the beginning. And also in your TEFL course, you'll learn the ESA methodology, which is great. But there's so many variations to this ESA methodology, right? You also learned that how you can change it up because mixing it up and making it interesting and not predictable is so, so important. And more so for teenage students because again, they have a very short attention span. They get bored very easily and they see through things a lot quicker than maybe younger students do. So just be aware of that. Break the routine, structure every lesson the same way or they're going to lose interest. They're not going to be that attentive. And again, spice it up. Spice it up a little bit. Inject creativity into your lessons to make them more engaging. One way you can do this, again, that's always great and students always really love this to put in authentic teaching material, show them clips from really famous maybe TV shows that they could watch, English ones and pick out certain phrases that you want to highlight in these shows that could be very interesting to them or newspaper articles internet articles, things like that. Authentic content really works well with teenagers. They get really interested because a lot of them at this point they want to learn real English, right? Not just the textbook English, the school English, many of them they just want because they're like, what's the point of learning English if we don't really use it in the real world? And that's something we're also going to talk about in a bit, but yeah, authentic materials can really make a big difference and get them more and more interested in that. Also gamify, gamify your learning. So incorporate educational games and challenges. Teenagers also tend to be very competitive and they like a good challenge, but they also still, they're still older children and kids and they also like games. So combine the two, bring some games into it. You can also make them hands on, have like some actual cards, I don't know, have a card, vocabulary card or something that can actually physically touch. Flash cards, maybe less so, but yeah, something that can touch or a ball physical thing, just some game can really make a big difference and kind of get the energy going. If you feel like there's a moment of boredom where the energy is low, you can put in a really dynamic activity to mix it up as well. So always have something up your sleeve and this is true for any age group, you always need to have something up your sleeve as a teacher, some kind of game, some kind of activity, you can just throw in very easily when you see like, oh, your students are bored or sleepy right now, something to do. You should always have that somewhere in your sleeve and tap into their natural curiosities. So encourage questions and exploration always. Yeah, the discussion, open discussions and so on. So yeah, good. So now we are halfway through the tips and just checking in with you guys what you think also thinking back, maybe think about your own students, what are the challenges there and what you found that works for the teenage students. The best. Maybe it's something we already mentioned, maybe it's something we haven't mentioned yet, something different. Let me know in the comments, I'm very curious. So leave a comment about that, let me know and maybe from my own experience. So I've taught university students are older but I've taught younger teenagers, they're probably like 12, 13. And yeah, certainly the be authentic and show interest really worked well when I was teaching them. They were always very curious about also me and what I do, right? Especially like I said, as a foreign teacher, a foreigner living in their country, they were very interested about that experience. So they're very don't underestimate that. They're very interested in you also and your personal experience. And so obviously don't share too much of your personal life and your personal stuff with your students but share a little bit, right? And you can really make a great connection with your students and then they will also share more about themselves and that's very important in a classroom full of teenagers. So I found that that works really, really well. And we always had some games that I would pull out when I saw, oh, now is kind of a down time for them. Now they get very tired. Or they would ask, once you have a really good game that they enjoy, they would ask for this game over and over again and you're like, yeah, let's finish this page first. You know how students are, right? Let's finish this and then we will play the game, et cetera. So yeah, teaching teenagers is very interesting. A mix of children and adults. So you can kind of combine strategies from both young students, kids and adults. And that's kind of the fun in that. So let me know what you think in the comments. Also thinking back about when you were a teenage student, let me know. But then we're moving on to number six here and this is using technology. And this is actually really important and really a useful point as well. And again, this kind of depends on also the school that you work at and your abilities, right? The tools that you have at the school to use the teaching aids that you have and can use at the school. But yeah, recognize your students' digital fluency and this is only going to get worse or more evident in the future. But teens are just so much more comfortable with technology than maybe you are, right? They know all the newest tech and all the newest apps and this and that. So just kind of recognize that and use that to your advantage. So create a tech-friendly environment. Obviously with boundaries, don't allow them to just be on their phones the whole time, but you don't integrate this into their learning. So maybe there's an app that they, for example, I used an app, what was it called? Kahoot, right? Many of you might know this. It's an app for playing games. The Kahoot app. And typically when you allow them to kind of use their technology, they also get very excited. Because typically maybe in many schools it's not something that's allowed using the phone, at least when I was in school that was not allowed. So it's very exciting for them to be able to use that technology. So if there's some really great apps out there nowadays for teachers that you can use in real time with your students in the classroom, stuff like that usually really, really works well and gets them very excited. So you can blend digital and traditional methods, combine tech tools with conventional teaching that gets them really interested and they feel like, you know, they are... Yeah, they are heard again. They are heard. You hear them and incorporate their interests because teenagers love tech, right? And you can adapt to diverse learning styles, cater to tech-based and analog preferences. Always be able to look out for new tech that you can use in the classroom and there's so much stuff that came out. And I did a live session about chat GPT in the past. So you can check that out and how you can use that with your students in the classroom. And I'm sure when this came out teenage students would have loved that. All of these chat, GPT things and tools and games you can play, they would have really loved that. So use that. When there's something hot, new technology coming out, some new tools, some new this, that, use that in your classroom and then it's going to make a big difference. They're going to be so excited, really love to use it and it can be really fun. So use the technology. Use the technology. Then we have level up. Number seven, level up. So assess individual abilities and this is actually true for all the age groups again. So always assess individual abilities, you know, your strengths and weaknesses of your students and tailor challenges to each student's level, right? Offer a range of tasks. Again, this is true for every age level as well as to provide varied difficulty levels within a lesson. It's very important. It's also something that you learn in your TEFL course, right? Then something maybe, yeah, you can also do this for every age level, but specifically I think for teenagers works really well if you set high expectations, not too high, of course, but when you set expectations, you know, you also inspire your students to aim for their full potential, but you need to tread lightly with that, right? Don't set too high expectations, but just get them, encourage them to question and analyze always, promote critical thinking is very important also for teenage students and promote depth over memorization. And this might also depend on the country that you're teaching in. Again, from my experience in like China and Korea, this is a big problem in a lot of schools in the public school system, the over memorization or memorization rather than really in depth learning. So they might not be used to that. They might not be used to this kind of teaching. It's changing, I think it's very, I put slowly, I think in this part of the world, but there's still a lot of, especially if you have older traditional teachers, they just really stick to these older teaching styles and memorization is a big thing in this part of the world in eastern Asia at least. So try though, if you can, you know, if your school allows you to encourage comprehensive comprehension just promote depth over memorization to really get them to understand rather than just memorize words and then after the next exam they will forget it. So you can really cultivate problem-solving skills, teach strategies for real-life situations. And this is something we talked about before that I've seen with many teenage students that actually they're kind of sick and tired of this textbook English style teaching from the public school system in their countries and they really want to learn English that is really used in the world. So that's what they're really interested in and that's that's what you can then tap into and incorporate into your lessons again with authentic materials yeah, so right but again and again teenage students are very competitive so with the varied abilities and typically you can do the strategy, put one strong student with a weaker student together and then they can kind of piggyback off of each other with that stuff so that also works really, really well. All right nice then we have number eight creating a safe space we kind of touched on that in the beginning but we're going to expand on that a little bit because this is really very important for teenage students. You might know this from when you were a teenager in school how important it is to have a safe space to feel safe and comfortable in the classroom in your school with a certain teacher it can make all the difference, all the difference. So one way to do this first one here to normalize errors, to emphasize that mistakes are natural part of learning right how many times when you were in school or as a teacher I remember many times where a student makes a mistake and then all the other students laugh about it and that particular student then feels bad so try to avoid these situations just to normalize errors you know everybody makes errors maybe you also make an error as a teacher you can say that oh yeah I made an error I made a mistake here I spelled this wrong how should we actually spell that yeah and even you the teacher makes mistakes and that's okay everybody makes mistakes so emphasize that makes mistakes are a natural part of learning and destigmatize failure so remove the fear of being judged for errors you can really do this by being open and just be like yeah we all make mistakes you know there's nothing to worry about so encourage but at the same time then encourage risk taking and when you do this when you normalize errors then typically because what happens so what would happen if again in my situation when a student makes a mistake all the other students laugh about it that student feels bad and that student will then maybe never raise their hand again never say anything in class again because they get scared but when we normalize errors and destigmatize failure they are encouraged to risk to risk taking so promote a growth mindset that welcomes challenges and they get better by itself by themselves really the most important thing is to avoid public embarrassment so address errors if there is something you know when somebody makes a big mistake or something like that you can address this privately to preserve self-esteem don't call somebody out in front of everybody right that's also very important or a strategy that works really well that we talked about in previous live sessions is where you when they for example group work and you walk around the class you listen to the students talking to each other during the group work and you notice little errors little mistakes here and there you note them down and then at the end of the group session you would write it on the on the board all these are some common mistakes that I've noticed that some of you guys made in the group during the group discussion so instead of this we should say that or this is not the correct term for this so correct it that way but don't call somebody out in front of everybody and single them out but rather do like that speak to them as a whole for the mistakes if that makes any sense hope it does but yeah so when you do that really having a safe space like I said when the students feel safe and comfortable in the classroom that can make such a big difference because then they really talk and they don't feel scared and shy and anything like that and they can make a big difference so that's a very important tip and point to remember to maybe dive into more for yourself and do some research on that and in your TEFL course this topic is also covered but yeah that's one of the most important things from today I think we have let them talk alright we have Laura here from Argentina hi Laura how are you doing good to see you alright so again we said teenage students are very prone to distractions they get distracted very easily also me when I was in school I talked to my friends all the time during class so use that to your advantage recognize their desire desire to socialize and understand that chatting is natural right teenagers are going to chat and are going to talk so you're not going to stop them so what you can do is you can redirect this energy positively so encourage them encourage channeling social tendencies into discussions so because they want to talk and express themselves always have some study always have some discussions in your study in your lesson plan at the beginning of the class discussion in the middle or at the end wherever you want to bring it in wherever it fits in have some kind of discussion in your lesson because like I said they do want to talk a lot teenage students want to talk a lot express their opinions so they really do like that a lot promote collaboration like we just said you can include activities that require group participation they also really enjoy that and they talk amongst themselves from diverse perspectives you can also use that to your advantage so you can have for example this works really well for debates so discussing different viewpoints have debate sessions and this really also enhances learning because especially debates debate classes are great I've taught debate before really really like it and you can split students up in like a pro or con side and then they have to think about hear their opponents opponents opinion but then also answer with their opinion counter give a counter argument and all these things debates work really well with teenage students most of the students that I and we started doing debate in teenage years and they really really like doing that that was one of their favorite classes and they really were always excited when it was debate time they really bring that into your next classes so just remember teenagers aren't going to talk so you might as well just incorporate that into your lesson plan anyway and then the last one we have be respectful so number one here respect the teenage students individual growth rates so allow room for varying levels of maturity right so some of the students might still act more like kids whereas some other ones might be more mature more responsible you can give them more responsibilities whereas some other students might still be like more childish so it really depends so just be aware of that not all teenagers are the same they have varying levels of maturity we often say boys versus girls but really depends on the individual students so just keep that in mind not all teenagers are the same still always encourage independence support their developing autonomy that's what they really like and this is a big difference from your very young learners where they still need a lot of guidance and you want to kind of step back a little bit from that with your teenage students you want to show them that they can do stuff independently and that also makes them respect you and enjoy the lesson a lot more when you give them a little bit more space and independence to do things on their own avoid condescension so treat them as young adults rather than children just what we said there are no children anymore so just recognize that they want to be recognized as adults even though they're not adults but also don't treat them as little children that's what they really hate when you think about when you were a teenager that was something that we all hated when our parents or our teachers treated us like little kids so that's not a good strategy acknowledge their input again we talked about this many times now but show that their opinions are important might also be a little bit different from your younger students where they don't have that many personal opinions yet little kids this really starts developing in the teenage years acknowledge that and show that their opinions are important and again incorporate these into your lesson plans have discussion time and things like that lastly encourage responsibility foster a sense of ownership in the learning process this could have different ways but you could give out different homework depending on what they like if you prefer reading if you prefer this if you want to write give them more freedom maybe with that and responsibility make sure sometimes you don't have to do a thorough check on everything as what you would do with really young students this might also be a difference so things like that and then this shows that you respect them as young adults and then in turn they will also respect you back for giving all of this responsibility and that space and things like that yeah this was number 10 our 10 tips I hope you enjoyed it and we do have a quick recap I hope this isn't too small I might let's see no not this yeah I'm just going to make myself a little bit smaller so we can read the really small fine print here but just put that all on one recap slide if you want you can take a screenshot of this or just remember it these were the 10 tips that I mentioned to you guys for teaching teenage students first we started out with keeping it real this means be authentic to build trust with your students very important then we talked about make it relevant so relate your lessons to your students interests for engagement have a laugh balance humor with professionalism don't just make it really all about learning but also make it fun then we said to be interested so design your lessons that align with your students interests and experiences that will really get them interested in your class but also then mix it up so embrace a variety embrace variety and surprises to keep your students engaged don't always follow the same lesson plan the same structure don't always follow the textbook except etc etc mix it up another great tip is to use technology so harness the benefits of using videos apps and online resources because teenagers are very tech savvy they do this everyday in their daily life so just might as well incorporate that in your lessons as well level up design lessons that are appropriate and challenging they like they are very competitive they like to challenge so have varied less activities in your lessons create a safe space ensure that your students feel comfortable making mistakes that's very important then also let them talk structure lessons to include discussions and group work and lastly we talked about being respectful so involve your students in the decision making and value their opinions so there you have it 10 tips for teaching teenage students in our quick recap and then we are now in Q&A so you can ask questions about today's topic give me your feedback about maybe your own experience when you've taught teenagers or if you have any questions about anything else now is your time to ask and again we do have a 30% off discount code and I'm gonna share the link with you one more time so if you use this link you get a 30% discount code no I wanna see this one you wanna get a 30% discount code off of any TEFL or TSOL course from ITTT with this link and we don't share this discount code anywhere else 30% is the highest we share and we only share it during our live sessions so it's very special I just wanted to mention that so it looks like this, this is the link ends with fblive minus linda and then when you click on it you will go to the application page and you'll see at the top something like congratulations you get 30% off or something like that and then you know it is the correct link you can also scan this QR code that you see right here, it's the same thing but this is the link and so yeah, don't pay full price just save 30% it's a lot so if you're not get certified and you're like yeah I really want to teach English abroad or online or in my own country it's a great way to get started alright and then let me know, ask me your questions whatever you want to know I'm going to give you a couple of minutes because there is sometimes a delay between me talking and then you seeing it on your end so I want to make sure that everybody has the opportunity to type a question into the comments and then yeah before I say goodbye I don't want to say goodbye too early and then someone didn't have a chance to ask but again if you watch this as a replay or you leave a comment later on after the live we always get back to you as well oh and maybe also if you have any questions later about ITTT about the courses et cetera et cetera you can always reach out to us via email and this is our email address so you can reach the ITTT team at courses at email us at any time we'll get back to you with your questions, concerns, whatever you have you can ask us I want to teach English in X country what's the best course which course should I take what should I do, all of that because there is no one answer to teaching English abroad or online it really depends on where you want to go you can reach in also your background where you're from your own personal if you have a degree or not if you are a native speaker or not what country you're from all these things matter so there's not just one answer but if you email us we can tell you exactly these are your opportunities this is what you can do and you can go from there okay well I'm going to wait one more minute if nothing's coming through I want to make sure everybody has a chance here but it was really good to see you all again today I hope you're going to tune in again next week we're going to talk about oh next week is the first Friday of a new month so that means we're going to have a TEFL Q&A the whole time so maybe you have a question but now it's not you don't have time now tune in next time it's all about Q&A next time so you can ask your questions next time as well that's going to be next week so tune in that's why I say like and subscribe so you're always updated and you don't miss any of our live sessions so please do that yeah I hope I see you again next week okay I'm going to have a question how to get a work permit or a license to work in the EU as a non-EU resident on an ASAP basis so EU work permit varies I believe also from country to country depends on where you're from all of these things work experience what kind of job you want to do there all of these things so I would say the best place to reach out to is the embassy of the country that you want to go to so if you want to go to Germany reach out to the German embassy or the German chamber of commerce places like that and they can walk you through that because work permits and there's so many different types of visas and work permits as well so yeah I don't think there's just one answer and the best place to ask and reach out really is an embassy and an official government body because we don't at ITTT we don't help with work permits and visas so I unfortunately can't give you a good answer for this one sorry about that but good question alright good I think we're going to end it here and then I'll see you all again next week I hope when it is Q&A, Tefl Q&A time and we're going to have a chat and I hope you're going to have a wonderful weekend and stay healthy and happy and safe wherever you are and then I hope to see you all again next week and make sure you use that 30% off discount code if you apply don't forget that and yeah I wish you all the best thank you so much and see you next time bye