Since I entered the middle school, I studied English for the first time. Although I have studied English since then,  I am not good at speaking English even now . That was probably because of the environment that I had been in. English class in my middle school showed the image of typical traditional classrooms. My English teachers taught English only with books and chalk. In other words, teachers only gave lectures and we students just listened. We had to memorize a large number of vocabularies which was unnecessary to real life at all. There were not group activities, games etc. to facilitate English communication skill  at all. I think the worst is , we had little chances to communicate in English.

When I entered the University, things were not much different, though circumstances became better than had been. A foreigner professor had us make a five-minute speech. However, all that we had to do was  to memorize what we research by the given topic and present in front of the class in English. Besides, we were not encouraged to participate in group activities and other variety of activities. No wonder I was not still good at speaking English, even by the time I graduated from the University.

I believe that if my English teachers had been more enthusiastic, given me more chances to speak English, and then positive and immediate feedback, and created more comfortable atmosphere to use English, I could  be a fluent English speaker now.

If I teach a class that consists of adult learners, I will teach them as follows. First of all, it is important for me to understand the characteristics of adult learners. They are autonomous and self-directed. Because they are motivated to learn, as a teacher, I , rather than direct what they have to do, will actively involve them in the learning process and let them work on tasks on their own, allowing them to acquire various skills which are needed to learn a second language. Another property of adult learners is, they have accumulated a large amount of knowledge about English, especially grammar, and a lot of vocabularies. They lack speaking and listening skills, however. So I only have to let them utilize what they have already known and teach them only what they lack and want to improve. Third feature is that they come to class to attain what goal they set.  In other words, because they have a certain specific goal, I will help them reach their goal.

Fourth, they seek to pursue relevance to their work or task. So I will help them use English to be applicable to their work. For example, if they are businessmen, I will teach them, concentrating on English usages concerned with business tasks such as vocabularies related to their work, how  to send and receive E-mails, and many other things necessary to business work.

Finally, I will show respect to them as with children, too.

Like children, adults can be shy or much shier. It may be because they are afraid that they make a mistake and that other people find them silly. Thus, above all, to encourage them to express their opinion freely, or without inhibition, I will create a comfortable atmosphere.

Once I have figured out the characteristic of adult learners, I will lead my class to more efficient one as follows. I will teach them not just as an explainer-type teacher, but also as a involver-type, further enabler-type teacher. So as well as explain, I am going to divide them into several groups, and let them participate in a variety of activities and present their tasks in front of class. In addition, I will induce students themselves to research what they want to learn and teach it to other students. It is because teaching other people is the best way to retain what one learns.

If I had had such an English teacher above mentioned, I could speak English more fluently now.