Helping student’s to speak.

This article reflects on the main problems teachers have with pair and group work, and suggests some solutions.

“ I’ ve qot too many  students to do pair or workgroup”
In a sense, this whole book is a response to just this problem. Students can’t get to do pair or group work.” enough practice to learn to speak English in Large classes without using pair or group work, nor can you help them individually without it. Of course, the smaller the class, the easier it becomes, but to continue not using small group work means abandoning the idea of teaching students to speak effectively. There are no easy solutions, and each particular situation will have its own specific constraints, but many teachers resist the idea because:

    … they’ve tried and failed’
    … they’ve never really known how to begin
    … they’re afraid of trying something different from the norm.

The aim of this book is to show you how to introduce these techniques (already used by many teachers worldwide, even with classes of 60 who can’t move from their seats), and to convince you that it’s worth the effort.

It will also arm you with enough techniques and ideas to be able to carry it through.  Could you use any of these activities?

“There are too many different levels of ability in my class”
This is really an argument for rather than against the use of pair or groupwork. Traditional methods virtually force you to teach as if all the students were at exactly the same level, when none really are. This is usually unfair on the weaker students. Besides, what are you going to do about the problem otherwise? How else are you going to be able to give them the individual help that they need? Pairwork allow us to individualise classes more, giving:

    … everybody a chance to speak
    … us the chance to monitor, listen, watch, think, breathe, and find out what students can/can’t do, so we can spend more time with those who need the extra help.

It actually makes teaching mixed-ability classes less difficult because we can personalise and accommodate different students’ needs much more easily. Focusing on speaking won’t make the problem of mixed abilities go away, but it might help some students who are weaker at reading and writing to do better!


“As soon as I put them in groups, my students speak L1 English”

Many teachers are unsure about when/whether to use L1. There is a check!ist on page 20 of activities where the use of Li in the classroom can be justified as both valid and useful. L1 is a valuable  resource to be used minimally and discreetly like any other. Ideally we’d never have to use L1 and the higher the level, the more you can phase it out. If you’re unconvinced, imagine how much less efficient your teaching would be if tomorrow two students arrived in your class who didn’t share your L1 and you had to do everything in English all the time! A general rule is to expect students to use English as much as they feasibly can, but to allow L1 where its use promotes the smooth running of a lesson.

“My students always make too much noise”

A certain amount of noise when teaching language is inevitable. Students  will always get overexcited, which is usually a sign of success. Our job is to try to make this noise productive.
A key ingredient is to avoid self-inflicted chaos, e.g. via unclear instructions or insufficient preparation. Establish routines for activities so students know what to do without being to e.g. moving quickly and quietly to pairs or groups. Unless they settle into their new groupings quickly, they’ll get distracted, noise level will rise and headaches ensue.
Noise control is really a question of getting students used to keeping their voices down when speaking together. This requires self-discipline, which needs training and practice. All but the most reticent students can usually be trained to lower their voices. Remind them that only their partner(s) needs to hear them, not the whole class. Some students have louder voices than others anyway, so have a quiet word with them. Noise only becomes a major problem when combined with lack of discipline (see below). Here are two simple options.

Offer students a choice

• Try a simple pairwork activity and when students make too much noise, say Sorry, you’re too noisy. We have to do something e/se. Stop the activity and make them do something more traditional, preferably as boring as possible.

• After a few minutes, say this is boring, isn’t it? Would you prefer to go back to (the other activity)? Assuming they answer yes, insist that they do it more quietly this time. If they can’t keep the noise level down after a few more warnings, stop the activity again and return to the boring exercise.

I’ve found that most students can learn to keep the noise level down for a while. Students who do want to learn to speak usually put enough peer pressure onto those who don’t for the class to begin to discipline itself. This obviously needs to be done several times, or at least to be threatened whenever students get overexcited, but they do learn to co-operate if we’re prepared to let them.

Draw up a ‘contract’ to establish clear behaviour rules.

• In L1, elicit from students what they want from you and write it up as a series of promises on the board: I‘II prepare my lessons, choose interesting topics which you like, teach you as we as I can, try to involve you all, be fair, mark the homework, do some songs, etc.

• Then ask the class What will you do for me? and elicit the rules’ of the class, e.g. We’ll come on time, do our homework, but more importantly We’ll try not to make too much noise, We’ll speak in English when we can, etc. to focus on the specific problems mentioned above. If you’re clever you can get them to make just the right promises!

• Help them to translate it and turn it into a ‘joint contract’. Make a big fuss

about signing it and ask them al to sign it too.

• Then if they ‘break’ their agreement later in the term, draw their attention to the contract (as they can if you break your side). This adult approach can go down well.

“ I’d like to do more speaking, but my students just won’t co-operate”

A lot of the comments above also apply to discipline. If too many students can’t  be persuaded to co-operate, then it’s probably best to give up for that lesson and return to more traditional ways of teaching. As above, try to train them by choosing between ‘disciplined fun’ or ‘disciplined boredom’. If we can get the majority on our side, it’s often possible to use them to persuade the remaining minority to play along’, or at least not to disrupt the class.
However, even the ‘perfect’ teacher would have problems teaching large classes of adolescents. How students are performing in other subjects, individual personality, mood, the time of day when they come to class all affect behaviour. Sometimes students just want to be noticed and will disrupt a lesson for no other reason. In a class practising communication skills, problems will always arise. Our job is to try to channel the energy behind this behaviour into the class.

TASK
To remove discipline problems, we have to discern the cause. Are they caused by the student, the institution where they study or the teacher? To find out if you might be part of the cause of your problems, answer questions 1 to 6.

1. Are both the content of your classes and your teaching style interesting for your students or do they find them boring?
   
   
2. Do your students know what is and isn’t acceptable behaviour in your classroom or are there no clear ‘rules’? What are the ‘rules’? Could your students tell you what they are?
   
   
3. Are you really consistent in the way you deal with students who misbehave, e.g. latecomers, those who don’t do homework, make too much noise or cause trouble? Do you take the same action each time these problems arise?
   
   
4. Are you seen to be fair? We all have favourite and least favourite students but do you show excess preference to some at the expense of others?
   
   
5. Do you threaten to punish students but then not carry these threats through?
   
   
6. Are you sometimes unpleasant e.g. not interested in certain students, shouting at them, etc.? Do your students think you are aware of and care about their individual performance?

If your answers feel negative, then perhaps you should try to do something to improve things. They’re all within your control and poor performance can cause discipline problems.
A few suggestions to help deal with more reticent or difficult students:

• Use L1 to explain your methods at the start of a course, and remind students of them from time to time so that they know your aims and how they’re expected to behave in your classes. It’s likely to be different from the other subjects they’re studying. Establish clear behaviour ‘rules’ and keep to them.
  

• Talk to individuals who are the main source of difficulty. Their problem might be something you can help with and your interest alone could trigger a positive reaction.

• Separate troublemakers. They’re much more disruptive together than apart. Sit them at the front of the class where they’re less likely to misbehave.
  

• Re-seat a troublemaker on his/her own for a while, doing something really dull They’ll either be convinced and join in or remain a problem forever, in which case they shouldn’t be allowed to spoil it for the others.
  

• If you’ve tried all you know to encourage co-operation without success, follow the usual channel in your school as you would with any other serious breach of discipline, e.g. discuss it with colleagues or your superior, call for the school

Directors help, contact the child’s parents, etc. If your school has no recognized system for dealing with problem students or even whole classes, steps should be taken to implement one.
Ultimately, for all the problems above we have to be patient but firm, taking quick action rather than suffering or ignoring them. Discuss the problems openly with students. Make them take responsibility for their own behaviour. Remember to discuss these problems with colleagues too and look for shared solutions. You’ll never be the first teacher who’s had these problems, nor the Last.
“But my students don’t It students think they’re never going to need to speak English, they wont try to want to speak English.” They won’t try to learn. But the reverse is equally true. Assuming they have to attend classes.
Anyway, the best way to get students interested in English is to make it relevant and to help them to speak and enjoy it as quickly as possible, i.e. build self perpetuating’ motivation. Indeed, it’s demotivating to study a language but not to be able to speak it, as it were something dead like Latin.

“I don’t have time to give them enough speaking practice”.

There are rarely enough classroom hours for everything that we want to do! Remember, pair and group work are ways of doing the existing course book materials, not adding more activities to a lesson. We can still reach the same goals (satisfying syllabus requirements and exams) without having to spend the class time on written exercises. If we define our job as that of trying to maximise learning and if speaking is something desirable, then we should be Jooking for every opportunity to create the conditions where it might happen.

“My students make many mistakes I can’t correct them”

Students  who share the same Li tend to make the same mistakes. Many of these are easy for us to predict, e.g. pronunciation, prepositions, the third person s, word order or other grammatical problems caused by Li interference. Perhaps you can try to anticipate more of them, and give more controlled practice? For example, pre-teach and drill more phrases so they’re more familiar before asking students to practise together.
Similar to the way we learn to play a musical instrument or ride a bike, we learn language by a process of trial and error Mistakes are unavoidable, a natural part of the learning process and often evidence that the student is experimenting and attempting to communicate. It we’re too negative about them, students won’t say anything, so we need to be careful how we react.
Is your aim ACCURACY or FLUENCY? This will make a big difference.

“ If it’s pure ACCURACY and they’re all making far too many mistakes, then the activity is probably too hard, and you should find a simpler one. But students speaking entirely accurately is unlikely at this age or level unless they’re just practising a known dialogue without improvisation.
It its pure FLUENCY, aiming for students to use what English they do know and can say to exchange ideas and information, then making mistakes is acceptable, indeed inevitable. Here we should aim to be correcting only those that seriously stifle communication and prevent them from being understood.
However, what they can’t do accurately they can often do fluently. A more realistic goal for oral ACCURACY is to aim for the correct use of a particular language point, e.g. question formation, polite requests, or past tense verb forms, insisting they use these forms accurately and correcting all the errors you hear with them, while ignoring the other mistakes they may be making. This is the mid-point between ACCURACY and FLUENCY which most teachers try to achieve.
Note: Teach students this distinction, making sure they’re clear about the aim of each activity, so they do them with the right focus. This makes it much easier for them to get the ‘right’ kind of practice.


“My own English isn’t good enough”

 If you can teach an English class in the traditional manner, then you have enough language to use these techniques. Try to work out exactly what language students will need to use for activities and what language you will need to explain mistakes and rules to students. Make sure you can express this language before each class (as you probably have to anyway). Your own English will soon improve. And don’t forget you can use the tape as a model too.

“My students will want to say lots of things that I haven’t taught them”

 It sounds as if they’re interested. Congratulations! This must be preferable to the alternative of their not wanting to say anything. When this happens you have a number of options.

• If it’s a fun comment, either allow students to enjoy what they want to say in L1, then get back to working in English, or teach them to say it in English if you know how, provided of course they ask you How do you say (X) in English? Remember being much more interested in learning Russian at school after our teacher had agreed to teach us a few rude words! Moments like this can release tension and enliven a lesson.
  

• There’s no harm in confessing you don’t know everything. You don’t have to translate everything for them. It it’s something they really want to say, even if you do know it, you can always tell them that you don’t but would like to. Ask them to find out and tell you in the next lesson.
  

• Always take one or two small bilingual dictionaries to class. They can save you a lot of work and encourage student autonomy. Students can look up words while you’re doing something else, e.g. during pairwork while you are helping another group. Again you can pretend not to know the words, so the students can teach you. If they really believe that they’ve taught you a new word or phrase and that you’re grateful to them, they’re unlikely to forget it in a hurry!

“I tried but it didn’t work.I haven’t got time to keep experimenting”

Perhaps they got overexcited because it was the first time? Maybe you hadn’t spelt out the ‘co-operative ground rules’? Perhaps the activity was over- ambitious, they weren’t linguistically prepared, or didn’t understand your instructions.
Once or twice isn’t really enough. Things rarely happen overnight in language learning! Speaking together needs to become a regular feature of your classwork before students can get used to it. Although you’ll inevitably have problems at first, it does get easier. The amount of linguistic preparation students need before speaking activities generally decreases as students’ level improves too.
As with any other theory of teaching and learning, its success depends as much as anything on the strength of your conviction. It you believe it will work, then you can almost certainly make it work within your own context.

TASK
Choose the problem above which causes you most difficulty and discuss it with other teachers who work in your school. What do they do about it?