Research in Adult Education shows that adult learners are very goal-driven. If they don’t understand how what they are learning helps them to achieve their goals, they will likely lack the motivation to attend class. A common issue that comes up, then, is how to make sure that students’ goals are taken into account when planning for class.
Fortunately, English Forward has a couple of helpful tools that can be used to determine your students’ goals.
The first tool is the Goal Setting Cards that you can find under the tab “For the Classroom” when you click “Other Supplemental Materials”. You may remember them from the English Forward Instructor Training. You can give the cards to your students, either in small groups or individually, and ask them to choose which cards represent topics they consider important (i.e. they want to learn about them) and which cards represent topics they consider less important. In the training we ask participants to choose three cards that they think are important and one that is less important. Each group then puts the cards up on the board, grouping like cards together to see which topics are more interesting to the students and should be taught in class.
You could use the Goal Setting Cards in the same way or you may find that some variation of this activity is best for your learners.
Another good tool is the Needs Assessment. If you go to Other Supplemental Materials you’ll see two documents called “Needs Assessment-Advanced” and “Needs Assessment-Beginning”. If you open them you can see that they work to get the same kind of information from your learners, but in two different ways. The advanced needs assessment is for learners who are comfortable with text. It asks several questions about their hobbies, where they are from, why they are learning English, etc. The beginning needs assessment does the same thing, but uses pictures in addition to text. If this information is collected by the instructor and analyzed by the instructor they should get a good sense of what their students want to learn.
Do you have other strategies for determining your students’ goals? How do you do it? Have you had successes or challenges? Let us know in the comments below!