As teaching Calculus, which is a first year subject, in this semester and acting as a programme leader of AENG, I have the following observations from my students:
Class discipline: It is excellent! Once you start the lecture, even after break, the class will become quiet very shortly as compared with F.7 students. However, students are always too silent and lack of facial expression, which provide limited feedback to me on their understanding about the contents during lecture.
Take-home assignment: This is my first time to receive several incomplete assignments (only finished 3 to 4 out of 5 questions). One student told me that the time was not enough for him to complete the entire assignment. Then, I realize that he is a "deadline fighter" (a word used by AENG student before) and obviously his time management is poor as there are two weeks for him to complete the assignment. Another student just told me that he did not know how to solve the question, so he just left it blank! Then, I asked him why he didn't discuss with his classmates or ask me for help. His feedback was similar as in lecture… silent, but this time he had a facial expression… smile.
Matureness: Maybe some of them are too young (still under 18), and without the experience of attempting an early selection examination, HKCEE. The objective of studying at HKCC or finishing the DSE is not so clear for them and they are easy to give up when facing difficulties. Also, independent thinking can be improved as they prefer lecturers to instruct what they should do, such as selecting programme choices in non-JUPAS application, and selecting GE elective subjects, etc.
I am not sure whether you have such experience or feeling as well. Although the sample size is not large enough to draw any conclusion, at least I start to change my teaching style and methods when facing these F.6 students. An obvious change is to answer student's questions directly and explicitly (especially when it is the first time for the student to ask me a question). For the "Green" learners, we need to provide a definite answer at first to increase their confidence before we can ask them to deduce the answer by discussing with them the relevant theories on their own. Also, more supports (e.g. provide different variety of tutorial questions for a topic, provide detailed information about the different non-JUPAS admission schemes in a university) should be given to them as they are relatively weak in handling unfamiliar situation. Hope that after having two years of teaching experience of F.6 students, I can teach them more effectively.