Revista simpozionului Eficienta si calitate in educatie 2018 Revista simpozionului | Page 38

OLD TRICKS FOR COPING WITH THE MILLENNIALS
Violeta Antonia Muică, Liceul Tehnologic „Școala Națională De Gaz”
Mediaș, Jud. Sibiu
Abstract: High-school teachers are facing the challenge of adapting their teaching methods to a
new type of learners, the so-called millennials, whose main characteristics are restlessness
and/or extreme boredom, lack of interest in studying and motivation, distributive attention and a
very short concentration span. Some of the old strategies and methods have been, however,
effective and led to real progress in the EFL classes.
Key words: method, strategy, trick, attention span, motivation, teenagers, millennials
It is generally accepted that teachers are facing the challenge of adapting to the
“new type of learner” reality, which involves not only switching to a student-
centered approach in the classroom, but also trying to find new methods (or adapt
the old ones to the reality of the 21st century classroom) in order to motivate the
students, to stimulate their curiosity and make them willingly participate in the
process of self-development.
As a high-school teacher of English I have dealt with all the common obstacles we,
teachers, know too well, starting with my students’ lack of interest in learning,
regardless of the school subject they may be undertaking, their diminished
attention span, an ever-increasing restlessness in the classroom and/or a
permanent “boredom” displayed during the classes. All of these may seem difficult
to cope with and, to say the least, can lead the honest and enthusiastic teacher to
a state of disappointment and a sense of uselessness that will, in the long run,
result in giving up on the attempts to find better solutions to seemingly endless
problems and attitudes towards education.
However, as soon as I understood the “new type of learner” I was dealing with,
some of the “old tricks” I used in the beginning of my career as a teacher have
proven to be, with only slight adjustments, effectively working with my teenage
students. What are these teenagers’ expectations when coming to (and often just
sitting in) the daily classes? What makes them so difficult to be motivated? Has the
teenager typology changed so much that we, their teachers and educators, cannot
understand it anymore? Well, the answer is double-edged and lies, as expected, in
the changes that have appeared in the teenagers’ reality, marked by the enormous
amount of information available and the easier and easier ways of getting it. The
common teenager has permanent access to an array of sources of information,
starting with the internet connection, and the availability of these sources has
turned the process of looking for information into a rather boring (from their
perspective) “click and copy-paste” operation. Also, the use of smart phones,
tablets etc. has largely contributed to the decrease of our students’ attention span
which, according to some studies, has dropped to the average of 8.5 seconds in
common teenagers’ case, a minimum that allegedly is overpassed by that of a
goldfish. The rather sedentary lifestyle (that most of our students have) added to
the long list of obstacles to be faced, as well as the shift from a learning style
based on written stimuli to a pictorial and/or auditory learning style. No wonder that
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