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The first topic in our Explore It series looks at the problem of teaching large classes. The following two questions were submitted to us by local teachers of English:
In primary school, the English teacher is limited in my hometown. So every English teacher should teach 4 or 5 classes. There are nearly 50 students in a class. So how to make interactive is very important for me. Can you give me some suggestion?
There are more than 70 students in each class in our area. In each unit we have lots of new words and phrases. How to finish teaching tasks and how to involve all the students in classroom activities really trouble me. Could you give me some advice?
These two tough questions were answered by James Banner at Hilderstone College.
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| We feel a bit of a fraud answering such very difficult questions. The two questions are related in that they both deal with the problem of getting students in large classes to interact and participate creatively. At Hilderstone College we have a maximum of 12 students per class – all very highly motivated. We simply do not have to cope with the near-impossible demands of teaching 50 to 70 in a class. However, we do have a lot of experience of running large seminars for 50 to 250 people.The principles behind involving 250 people in a seminar are similar to those behind involving 70 students in a class, although motivational factors make the seminar by far the easiest task.
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|  | In both cases the important thing is to get participants working together in pair work or group work, and interacting in some way with the teacher. We know that group work is nearly impossible in a class of 70 –space, noise, time constraints make it very difficult indeed. However, there are some points to keep in mind.
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| ·Pair work/group work does not just happen. We can't expect students who have never worked together - who have only ever experienced class as a sitting-down-and-listen-to-teacher exercise – to suddenly start working in pairs and discussing in groups on the instruction of the teacher.
·Pair work takes preparation and training both for the teacher and the students. This can take a whole term or a whole year.
·Prepare your students for pair work in class by giving them small and interesting tasks that have a clear objective, purpose and outcome. Group work might be near to impossible in a class of 70, but you can set tasks for students to work on outside of class time. |
| ·Be clear in your instructions. If a task is clearly defined and has a clear outcome, students are likely to cooperate and put real effort into the task.
·In primary schools, setting up pair and group work is even more difficult. One thing we do know is that with young learners the language has to be topic based: food, weather, health, places, routines. It is almost impossible to base it on grammar.
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n.连续；系列；丛书 (初中英语单词)
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