If you can teach teenagers, you can teach anyone. (Michael Grinder)

Teaching teenagers is an interesting and challenging task. A group of adolescents can be highly motivated, cooperative and fun to teach on one day, and the next day the whole group or individual students might turn out to be truly ‘difficult’ - the teacher might, for example, be faced with discipline problems, disruptive or provocative behaviour, a lack of motivation, or unwillingness on the students’ part to do homework assigned to them.
The roots of these problems frequently lie in the fact that adolescents are going through a period of significant changes in their lives. The key challenge in the transition period between being a child and becoming an adult is the adolescent’s struggle for identity - a process that requires the development of a distinct sense of who they are. A consequence of this process is that adolescents can feel threatened, and at the same time experience overwhelming emotions. They frequently try to compensate for the perceived threats with extremely rude behaviour, and try to ‘hide’ their emotions behind a wall of extreme outward conformity. The more individual students manage to look, talk, act and behave like the other members of their peer group, the less threatened and insecure they feel.
Insights into the causes underlying the problems might help us to understand better the complex situation our students are in. However, such insights do not automatically lead to more success in teaching. We need to react to the challenges in a professional way. This includes the need to:
a) select content and organise the students’ learning according to their psychological needs;
b) create a positive learning atmosphere;
c) cater for differences in students’ learning styles and intelligence(s), and facilitate the development of our students’ study skills.

'English in Mind' has been written taking all these point into account. They have significantly influenced the choice of texts, artwork and design, the structure of the units, the typology of exercises, and the means by which students’ study skills are facilitated and extended.

THE IMPORTANCE OF THE CONTENT FOR SUCCESS
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There are a number of reasons why the choice of the right content has a crucial influence over success or failure in the teaching of adolescents. Teachers frequently observe that teenagers are reluctant to ‘talk about themselves’. This has to do with the adolescent’s need for psychological security. Consequently, the ‘further away’ from their own world the content of the teaching is, the more motivating and stimulating it will be for the students. The preference for psychologically remote content goes hand in hand with a fascination with extremes and realistic details. Furthermore, students love identifying with heroes and heroines, because these idols are perceived to embody the qualities needed in order to survive in a threatening world: qualities such as courage, genius, creativity, and love. In the foreign language class, students can become fascinated with stories about heroes and heroines that they can ascribe such qualities to. ‘English in Mind’ treats students as young adults, offering them a range of interesting topics and a balance between educational value and teenage interest and fun.
As Egan Kieran (see reference above) stresses, learning in the adolescent classroom can be successfully organised by starting with something far from the students’ experience, but also connected to it by some quality with which they can associate. This process of starting far from the students makes it easier for the students to become interested in the topic, and also enables the teacher finally to relate the content to the students’ own world.

A POSITIVE LEARNING ATMOSPHERE
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The creation of a positive learning atmosphere largely depends on the rapport between teacher and students, and the one which students have among themselves. It requires the teacher to be a genuine, empathetic listener, and to have a number of other psychological skills. ‘English in Mind’ supports the teacher’s task of creating of positive learning experiences through: clear tasks; a large number of carefully designed exercises; regular opportunities for the students to check their own work; and a learning process designed to guarantee that the students will learn to express themselves both in speaking and in writing.

LEARNING STYLES AND MULTIPLE INTELLIGENCES
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There is significant evidence that students will be better motivated, and learn more successfully, if differences in learning styles and intelligences are taken into account in the teaching-learning process . The development of a number of activities in ‘English in Mind’ have been influenced by such insights, and students themselves are given relevant information on how the mind works. They also find frequent study tips that show them how they can better utilise their own resources.