Third-Age Learners and Approaches to Language Teaching

Abstract

Foreign language learning in the third age is one of the popular activities among the elderly. The question remains as to how to teach a foreign language to older adults properly. The first objective of this review was to identify suitable pedagogical approaches, teaching methods, or strategies for teaching foreign languages to third-age learners. The second objective was to determine whether foreign language learning later in life is beneficial. The authors used a method of literature review to achieve these goals. The former objective was not fully achieved as there is no clear outcome, although some generalizations based on other review studies can be made. Namely, foreign language teaching among the older generation should be student-centred and a communicative method should be implemented with a special focus on talking about familiar topics and listening comprehension to facilitate a senior’s foreign language learning. In addition, the teaching methods ought to incorporate real life experiences and provide relevant content. Respect should also be paid to the fact that older adults have intrinsic rather than extrinsic motivation to learn a foreign language. The latter objective was attained since older people can benefit from learning a foreign language at a later age in many ways, including areas like travelling, social inclusiveness, improvement of cognitive skills, and overall well-being.

Developing Third-Age Learners’ Communicative Competence Using Communicative Language Teaching

“…There is a possibility that CS practice in timed conversation and FonF tasks all played an important role in improving TALs' CC. This finding reinforces Kacetl and Klímová's (2021) recommendation for a student-centered CLT approach. Moreover, the studies show that the CLT approach is suitable for both in-person and online learning environments in TAL teaching.…”

“…The results reinforce Kacetl and Klímová's (2021) claims that TAL education should use a student-centered and communicative approach. Instruction targeting CSs and timed conversation activities resulted in noticeable improvements in TALs' use of CSs.…”

“…On the other hand, the results in Table 6 show that the raters agreed (IRR = 0.31) that most students demonstrated improvements across all four components of their CC. The raters' assessment of TALs' CC reinforces Kacetl and Klímová's (2021) claims that TAL education should use a student-centered and communicative approach. Therefore, instructors should be aware of potential disparity in learners' perceived and actual communicative ability and help them recognize their progress.…”

“…Moreover, research into TAL L2 education remains scarce, raising questions about how to effectively teach TALs (Pfenninger & Polz, 2018;Ramírez Gómez & Sanz, 2017). Kacetl and Klímová (2021) proposed that a "student-centered and a communicative method should be implemented" (p. 7). Anecdotal evidence shows that in their youth, these elder learners studied foreign languages in teacher-centered classrooms with drill-focused lessons, so they are unaccustomed to communicative methods and can struggle adapting to the modern classroom.…”

Enhancing Foreign Language Learning Approaches to Promote Healthy Aging: A Systematic Review

“…Therefore, it was also thought to be a key predictor (Duff & Brown-Schmidt, 2012 ). Research (Kacetl & Klimova, 2021 ) also indicates that teaching a foreign language among the older generations should focus on the student and communicative methods, especially with topics related to their daily life and listening comprehension. It also suggests that three main areas should be taken into consideration when teaching seniors: the learning environment, the teaching style, and the establishment of a teacher-student rapport.…”