“Aren’t teenagers too self-conscious to speak English?” “Do they
care about the contents that do not appear in their school
tests?” “Well… I wouldn’t want to get into that area…” I have
been teaching teens as well as pre-school and elementary school
children at my language school, English Square, in Japan, for
the last 20 years. When I tell my teacher friends about it, I’ve
almost always met the responses like the ones above. Actually,
teaching teens has been a lot of fun! They are growing at an
amazing rate, intellectually, emotionally and socially, and I
have learned a lot from them about what the world looks like
through their lenses. In this small article, I would like to
briefly discuss what sort of teen curriculum I have at my school
and why I’ve designed the curriculum that way. Then, I will
share one of the recent lessons with them. Teen Curriculum at My
School Teen lessons at my school are topic-based, and students
spend most of the class time on using English as a tool for
communication. In many les