Unit 4 Lesson Planning

Module 1 Classroom Management and Assessment

At the end of this module you will:-

a) understand the overall aims of TESOL

b) know basic management techniques that can help you to

facilitate communication in the classroom

c) know how to increase participation and make students ‘active

learners’

d) have considered ‘differentiation’ as a key part of teaching

e) have considered formative assessment as a part of everyday

teaching and planning
 Part 1. Classroom Management

Aims

Our aim as teachers of English to speakers of other languages is to involve

all the students all the time. We want to have active learners who are
following the lesson, building on what they learn and feeling that they are
achieving something.

If you come from a teaching background where everyone is supposed to be

getting on with work quietly then this may be a bit of a shock for you. But think
of it this way: you have very little teaching time, and the students need to
learn a great deal if they are to achieve any degree of fluency or if their goal
is to pass an exam.

If we adopt a communicative approach, we are to teach communication. This

means we want our students to talk (in English of course). Many of your
students, if they are living in their own country, have an opportunity to speak
English only in class so you need to maximise their interaction time.

If you have a class of students who are preparing for a writing or grammar
test, want to expand their academic vocabulary, etc, then the role of oral
communication will be less significant. But even so, keeping the students
involved and encouraging their active participation will be absolutely
essential.
In order to achieve your aim of involving all the students all the time and
making them active learners, you must be able to 'manage' your class. That
means to organise teaching and learning in the most efficient way, where
every participant feels that his or her needs are being met and where
everything you and your students do works towards achieving the objectives
of a lesson or course. An important part of classroom management is being
able to control your students' concentration and behaviour and to prevent
discipline problems.

Every teacher develops his/her own style of classroom management. That's

because our behaviour as teachers is linked to our personal preferences -
how much noise or silence we can stand, how good we are at organising
paperwork and so on. But whatever your personal style is, one useful
statement to repeat to yourself might be:

‘TEACHING’ IS NOT ‘LEARNING’.

Unit 4 1 Module 2
There is more to real teaching than standing at the front of the class and
passing on knowledge. Telling people things is no guarantee they will learn
them.

Real teaching involves constant interaction with students, so that learning

occurs as part of communication. If your students are learners in an active
sense, taking part in what is happening in the classroom, then they will get
the most out of their lessons - much more than by listening to you.

Do you remember what L.T.T.T means – we discussed it in Unit 3 Module 1?

If you have forgotten, go back and remind yourself.

Having a well-planned and engaging lesson, in which the principle of L.T.T.T

is followed, goes a long way towards keeping your students' participation
levels high and preventing discipline problems.

There are a number of basic techniques which good ESOL teachers use to
manage their class in a professional and skilful way.

The ‘basics’ of everyday class management

1. Look at all the students in the class.

Switch your gaze from side to side and back to front of your class. It is so
easy to stick with an area of friendly faces, but this is unfair on the others who
will then not be so involved in the lesson. Call on different students – try to
avoid the temptation of calling on the same most active ones all the time.
Another mistake is calling only on those who are silent assuming that the
students who have raised their hand know the answer anyway – this is
discouraging for the active students.

2. Move around the class.

Try to move around the class sometimes - not only to check what the
students are doing but also to deliver input from a different direction. For
example, if you have done some board work that you want the students to
focus on, you can move to the back of the class and explain the diagram from
behind the students, so their gaze is on the board. It encourages them to
listen and also allows you to assess how clear your writing is.

Unit 4 2 Module 2
If you are talking about flowers and trees, move to the window! If you are
teaching classroom equipment, move around the room picking up the pens
and pencils of different students, don’t just use a pile on your desk.

Don't overdo it: a non-stop teacher may come across to students as a

prowling lion and they may feel uneasy if they never know when you are
going to pop up behind them. But a teacher ‘glued to the board’ can be easy
to ignore - ‘she’s never going to come over my way….’

3. Make sure your board work is clear and tidy.

It is essential to write clearly. Make it easy for your students.

It is not as easy as it looks to write on a black/white board and keep it

straight, so you may need practice. Print wherever possible. This is especially
important if any of the students you are teaching use a different script in their
own language. Don't write everything in capital letters. (Remind yourself of
the discussion on board work in Unit 3 Module 4)

4. Remember students' names.

Make an effort to remember their names. Pronounce the names of your

students correctly. It is no excuse that their names are very difficult to
remember let alone pronounce. You would not like it if you were always
called the wrong name or your name was always mispronounced. Getting
their names right as soon as possible shows your respect for them as people.

Make yourself a seating plan/chart and write their names phonetically.

Involve them in your learning of their name. Ask them to correct your
pronunciation. Ask them if they know what their name means. Be careful: you
may inadvertently change the sex of the person by changing one letter in their
name!

5. Think about the seating arrangements

Group students rather than seat them in rows. No communication can take
place when students are looking at the back of someone's head. In many
cases, the best arrangement is a circle or semi-circle (horseshoe) - all
students can be involved and they become a community. With a horseshoe
it's easy to see both all your classmates and the demonstration on the board.
If the class is large, put them in small groups, each sitting in a circle. Often

Unit 4 3 Module 2
you will need to rearrange the furniture. Do not be afraid to do this and to
explain that you are doing it to aid communication.

Whilst you cannot be moving the furniture around all the time in a lesson,
getting students to help you set up as they come in and put the tables back at
the end of the lesson will only take a couple of minutes and can really
stimulate an activity.

Make sure that all the students can see the visual aids. If you make your own,
think of the student with poor sight!

You may be unable to move the tables around as they are fixed to the floor or
have desk-chair combinations. This is getting rarer but can still be the case in
older buildings. Chairs are also sometimes joined to the desks. Then there is
the room where there is very little space to move the furniture. The least you
can do is divide students in side-by-side pairs as they sit. For information gap
activities, a pair might be able to turn around and work with the pair of
students sitting behind them as a group of four.

If you want each student to change his or her partner, tell the student at the
end of each row to move to the opposite end and begin working with the new
person next to them. This way, all the pairs will be new.

If the number of students is odd, you can have a group or groups of three
along with the pairs, with a clear role given to each person in the triad.

Alternatively, you can plan in advance who will sit next to whom and, at the
beginning of the lesson, have each student pick a piece of paper with a
number. They will then walk around the classroom looking for their partner
who has the same number (and of course, asking questions only in English).
The partners will sit together and carry out pairwork activities as they sit.

Now consider the following extract:

"
There is no real limit to the way in which teachers can group students in a classroom, though certain factors,
such as over-crowding, fixed furniture and entrenched student attitudes, may make things problematic.
Nevertheless, teaching a class as a whole, getting students to work on their own, or having them perform
tasks in pairs or groups all have their own advantages and disadvantages; each is more or less appropriate
for different activities.

Whole-class teaching
When people think of teaching and learning, they frequently conjure up a picture of students sitting in rows
listening to a teacher who stands in front of them. For many, this is what teaching means, and it is still the
most common teacher-student interaction in many cultures. Though it has many limitations, whole-class
grouping like this has both practical advantages and disadvantages.

Unit 4 4 Module 2
Advantages of whole-class grouping:

o It reinforces a sense of belonging among the group members, something which we as teachers
need to foster (Williams and Burden 1997: 79). If everyone is involved in the same activity, then we
are all in it together and such experiences give us points of common reference to talk about and use
as reasons to bond with each other. It is much easier for students to share an emotion such as
happiness or amusement in a whole class setting. Twenty people laughing is often more enjoyable
than just two; 40 people holding their breath in anticipation create a much more engaging
atmosphere than just the person sitting next to you. In other words, if language learning is a
collective endeavour, then 'learning takes place most effectively when language classes pull
together as unified groups' (Senior 2002: 402).

o It is suitable for activities where the teacher is acting as a controller. It is especially good for giving
explanations and instructions, where smaller groups would mean having to do these things more
than once. It is ideal for presenting material, whether in pictures, texts or on audio or video tape. It is
also more cost-efficient, both in terms of material production and organisation, than other groupings
can be.

o It allows teachers to 'gauge the mood' of the class in general (rather than on an individual basis); it
is a good way for us to get a general understanding of student progress.

o It is the preferred class style in many educational settings where students and teachers feel secure
when the whole class is working in lockstep and under the direct authority of the teacher.

Disadvantages of whole-class grouping:

o It favours the group rather than the individual. Everyone is forced to do the same thing at the same
time and at the same pace.

o Individual students do not have much of a chance to say anything on their own.

o Many students are disinclined to participate in front of the whole class since to do so brings with it
the risk of public failure.

o It may not encourage students to take responsibility for their own learning. Whole-class teaching
favours the transmission of knowledge from teacher to student rather than having students discover
things or research things for themselves.

o It is not the best way to organise communicative language teaching or specifically task-based
sequences. Communication between individuals is more difficult in a group of 20 or 30 than it is in
groups of four or five. In smaller groups it is easier to share material, speak quietly and less formally,
and make good eye contact. All of these contribute to successful task resolution.

Seating whole-group classes

There are many different ways of seating classes when they are working as a whole group. One of the most
common is to have students seated in orderly rows (see Figure 1).

Unit 4 5 Module 2
There are considerable advantages to orderly row seating. The teacher has a clear view of all the students
and the students can all see the teacher. Lecturing is easier with such a seating arrangement since it
enables the teacher to maintain eye contact with the people he or she is talking to. Orderly rows allow the
teacher to work with the whole class. Some activities are especially suited to this kind of organisation, such
as explaining a grammar point, watching a video! DVD or a PowerPoint (or other computer-based)
presentation, or using the board or an overhead projector. It is also useful when students are involved in
certain kinds of language practice. If all the students are focused on a task at the same time, the whole
class gets the same messages. It is often easier to create a good whole-class dynamic when students are
sitting as one group - rather than many - in orderly rows. Two other common seating arrangements are
circle and horseshoe (see Figure 2). These are especially appropriate for smaller groups (i.e. fewer than 20
students). In a horseshoe, the teacher will probably be at the open end of the arrangement since that may
well be where the board, overhead projector and/or computer are situated. In a circle, the teacher's position
- where the board is situated - is less dominating.

Classes which are arranged in a circle make quite a strong statement about what the teacher and the
students believe in. With all the people in the room sitting in a circle, there is a far greater feeling of equality
than when the teacher stays out at the front. This may not be quite so true of the horseshoe shape, where
the teacher is often located in a commanding position, but, even here, the rigidity that comes with orderly
rows, for example, is lessened. With horseshoe and circle seating, the classroom is a more intimate place
and the potential for students to share feelings and information through talking, eye contact or expressive
body movements (eyebrow-raising, shoulder-shrugging, etc.) is far greater than when they are sitting in
rows, one behind the other. In some classrooms students sit in groups at separate tables (see Figure 3),
whether they are working as a whole class, in groups or in pairs. In such classrooms, you might see the
teacher walking around checking the students' work and helping out if they are having difficulties - prompting
the students at this table, or explaining something to the students at that table in the corner.

Unit 4 6 Module 2
A huge advantage of separate tables is that groupwork is easy to arrange. Indeed, such an arrangement
means that groupwork is likely to be far more common than with other kinds of seating. Separate table
seating is especially useful in mixed-ability classes, where different groups of students can benefit from
concentrating on different tasks (designed for different ability levels). Separate tables are more difficult to
‘teach to' in whole-group activities, depending, of course, on the size of the room and the group. It is also
important to bear in mind that students may not want to be stuck with the same three or four students for
ever. Nevertheless, when students are working together, such a seating arrangement is ideal.
There are other ways of seating students, of course. Jim Scrivener, for example, suggests groupings such as
‘enemy corners’ (where two groups get into opposite corners of the room), opposing teams, and face-to-face
(or back-to-back), where students sit in rows to make pairs (Scrivener 2005: 89).
The point of all these different sitting (and standing) arrangements is that we should choose the best one for
the students and, especially, the task. Insofar as we can make a general statement about it, it is worth
pointing out that, where possible, varying the seating arrangements will make our lessons more dynamic and
enjoyable.

Students on their own

At the opposite end of the spectrum from whole-class grouping is the idea of students on their own, working
in a pattern of individualised learning. This can range from students doing exercises on their own in class, to
situations in which teachers are able to spend time working with individual students, or when students take
charge of their own learning in self-access centres or other out-of-class environments. Such individualised
learning is a vital step in the development of learner autonomy. If we wish students to work on their own in
class, we can, for example, allow them to read privately and then answer questions individually; we can ask
them to complete worksheets or writing tasks by themselves. We can give them worksheets with several
different tasks and allow individuals to make their own decisions about which tasks to do. We can hand out
different worksheets to different individuals, depending upon their tastes and abilities. We can allow students
to research on their own or even choose what they want to read or listen to.

Advantages of individualised learning:

o It allows teachers to respond to individual student differences in terms of pace of learning, learning
styles and preferences.

o It is likely to be less stressful for students than performing in a whole-class setting or talking in pairs
or groups.

o It can develop learner autonomy and promote skills of self-reliance and investigation over teacher-
dependence.

o It can be a way of restoring peace and tranquility to a noisy and chaotic classroom.

Unit 4 7 Module 2
Disadvantages of individualised learning:

o It does not help a class develop a sense of belonging. It does not encourage cooperation in which
students may be able to help and motivate each other.

o When combined with giving individual students different tasks, it means a great deal more thought
and materials preparation than whole-class teaching involves. When we work with individual
students as a tutor or resource, it takes much more time than interacting with the whole class.

Pairwork

In pairwork, students can practise language together, study a text, research language or take part in
information-gap activities. They can write dialogues, predict the content of reading texts or compare notes on
what they have listened to or seen.

Advantages of pairwork:

o It dramatically increases the amount of speaking time any one student gets in the class.

o It allows students to work and interact independently without the necessary guidance of the teacher,
thus promoting learner independence.

o It allows teachers time to work with one or two pairs while the other students continue working.

o It recognises the old maxim that 'two heads are better than one', and in promoting cooperation, helps
the classroom to become a more relaxed and friendly place. If we get students to make decisions in
pairs (such as deciding on the correct answers to questions about a reading text), we allow them to
share responsibility, rather than having to bear the whole weight themselves.

o It is relatively quick and easy to organise.

Disadvantages of pairwork:

o Pairwork is frequently very noisy and some teachers and students dislike this. Teachers in particular
worry that they will lose control of their class.

o Students in pairs can often veer away from the point of an exercise, talking about something else
completely, often in their first language. The chances of misbehaviour are greater with pairwork than
in a whole-class setting.

o It is not always popular with students, many of whom feel they would rather relate to the teacher as
individuals than interact with another learner who may be just as linguistically weak as they are.

o The actual choice of paired partner can be problematic (see below), especially if students frequently
find themselves working with someone they are not keen on.

Groupwork

We can put students in larger groups, too, since this will allow them to do a range of tasks for which
pairwork is not sufficient or appropriate. Thus students can write a group story or role-play a situation which
involves five people. They can prepare a presentation or discuss an issue and come to a group decision.
They can watch, write or perform a video sequence; we can give individual students in a group different
lines from a poem which the group has to reassemble. In general, it is possible to say that small groups of
around five students provoke greater involvement and participation than larger groups. They are small

Unit 4 8 Module 2
enough for real interpersonal interaction, yet not so small that members are over-reliant upon each
individual. Because five is an odd number it means that a majority view can usually prevail. However, there
are occasions when larger groups are necessary. The activity may demand it or we may want to divide the
class into teams for some game or preparation phase.

Advantages of groupwork:

o Like pairwork, it dramatically increases the number of talking opportunities for individual
students.
o Unlike pairwork, because there are more than two people in the group, personal relationships are
usually less problematic; there is also a greater chance of different opinions and varied
contributions than in pairwork.
o It encourages broader skills of cooperation and negotiation than pairwork, and yet is more private
than work in front of the whole class. Lynne Flowerdew (1998) found that it was especially
appropriate in Hong Kong, where its use accorded with the Confucian principles which her
Cantonese-speaking students were comfortable with. Furthermore, her students were prepared
to evaluate each other's performance both positively and negatively where in a bigger group a
natural tendency for self-effacement made this less likely.
o It promotes learner autonomy by allowing students to make their own decisions in the group without
being told what to do by the teacher.
o Although we do not wish any individuals in groups to be completely passive, nevertheless some
students can choose their level of participation more readily than in a whole-class or pairwork
situation.

Disadvantages of groupwork:

o It is likely to be noisy (though not necessarily as loud as pairwork can be). Some teachers feel that
they lose control, and the whole-class feeling which has been painstakingly built up may dissipate
when the class is split into smaller entities.
o Not all students enjoy it since they would prefer to be the focus of the teacher's attention rather than
working with their peers. Sometimes students find themselves in uncongenial groups and wish they
could be somewhere else.
o Individuals may fall into group roles that become fossilised, so that some are passive whereas
others may dominate.
o Groups can take longer to organise than pairs; beginning and ending groupwork activities,
especially where people move around the class, can take time and be chaotic.

Ringing the changes

Deciding when to put students in groups or pairs, when to teach the whole class or when to let individuals
get on with it on their own will depend upon a number of factors:

The task: if we want to give students a quick chance to think about an issue which we will be focusing on
later, we may put them in buzz groups where they have a chance to discuss or buzz the topic among
themselves before working with it in a whole-class grouping. However, small groups will be inappropriate for
many explanations and demonstrations, where working with the class as one group will be more suitable.
When students have listened to a recording to complete a task or answer questions, we may let them
compare their answers in quickly-organised pairs. If we want our students to practise an oral dialogue
quickly, pairwork may be the best grouping, too. If the task we wish our students to be involved in
necessitates oral interaction, we will probably put students in groups, especially in a large class, so that

Unit 4 9 Module 2
they all have a chance to make a contribution. If we want students to write sentences which demonstrate
their understanding of new vocabulary, on the other hand, we may choose to have them do it individually.
Although many tasks suggest obvious student groupings, we can usually adapt them for use with other
groupings. Dialogue practice can be done in pairs, but it can also be organised with two halves of the whole
class. Similarly, answering questions about a listening extract can be an individual activity or we can get
students to discuss the answers in pairs. We can also have a 'jigsaw listening', where different students
listen to different parts of a text so that they can then reassemble the whole text in groups.

Variety in a sequence: a lot depends on how the activity fits into the lesson sequences we have been
following and are likely to follow next. If much of our recent teaching has involved whole-class grouping,
there may be a pressing need for pairwork or groupwork. If much of our recent work has been boisterous
and active, based on interaction between various pairs and groups, we may think it sensible to allow
students time to work individually to give them some breathing space. The advantage of having different
student groupings is that they help to provide variety, thus sustaining motivation.

The mood: crucial to our decision about what groupings to use is the mood of our students.
Changing the grouping of a class can be a good way to change its mood when required. If students are
becoming restless with a whole-class activity - and if they appear to have little to say or contribute in such a
setting - we can put them in groups to give them a chance to re-engage with the lesson. If, on the other
hand, groups appear to be losing their way or not working constructively, we can call the whole class back
together and re-define the task, discuss problems that different groups have encountered or change the
activity.

Organising pairwork and groupwork

Sometimes we may have to persuade reluctant students that pairwork and groupwork are worth doing.
They are more likely to believe this if pair and group activities are seen to be a success. Ensuring that pair
and group activities work well will be easier if we have a clear idea about how to resolve any problems that
might occur.
Making it work
Because some students are unused to working in pairs and groups, or because they may have mixed
feelings about working with a partner or about not having the teacher's attention at all times, it may be
necessary to invest some time in discussion of learning routines. Just as we may want to create a joint
code of conduct so we can come to an agreement about when and how to use different student groupings.
One way to discuss pairwork or groupwork is to do a group activity with students and then, when it is over,
ask them to write or say how they felt about it (either in English or their own language). Alternatively, we
can initiate a discussion about different groupings as a prelude to the use of groupwork and pairwork. This
could be done by having students complete sentences such as:

They can then compare their sentences with other students to see if everyone agrees. We can also ask
them to list their favourite activities and compare these lists with their classmates. When we know how our
students feel about pairwork and groupwork, we can then decide, as with all action research, what changes
of method, if any, we need to make. We might decide that we need to spend more time explaining what we
are doing; we might concentrate on choosing better tasks, or we might even, in extreme cases, decide to

Unit 4 10 Module 2
use pairwork and groupwork less often if our students object strongly to them. However, even where
students show a marked initial reluctance to working in groups, we might hope, through organising a
successful demonstration activity and/or discussion, to strike the right kind of bargain.

Creating pairs and groups

Once we have decided to have students working in pairs or groups, we need to consider how we are going
to put them into those pairs and groups - that is, who is going to work with whom. We can base such
decisions on any one of the following principles:

 Friendship: a key consideration when putting students in pairs or groups is to make sure that we put
friends with friends, rather than risking the possibility of people working with others whom they find
difficult or unpleasant. Through observation, therefore, we can see which students get on with which of
their classmates and make use of this observation later. The problem, of course, is that our
observations may not always be accurate, and friendships can change over time. Perhaps, then, we
should leave it to the students, and ask them to get into pairs or groups with whoever they want to work
with. In such a situation we can be sure that members of our class will gravitate towards people they
like, admire or want to be liked by. Such a procedure is likely to be just as reliable as one based on our
own observation. However, letting students choose in this way can be very chaotic and may exclude
less popular students altogether so that they find themselves standing on their own when the pairs or
groups are formed. A more informed way of grouping students is to use a sociogram, but in order for
this to be effective (and safe), students need to know that what they write in private will never be seen
by anyone except the teacher. In this procedure, students are asked to write their name on a piece of
paper and then write, in order of preference, the students they like best in the class. On the other side
of the piece of paper, they list the people they do not like. It is important that they know that only the
teacher will look at what they have written and that they cannot be overlooked while they do this. We
can now use the information they have written to make sociograms like the imaginary one in Figure 4:

This will then allow us to make informed choices about how we should pair and group individuals. However,
not everyone agrees with the idea of grouping and pairing students in this way. In the first place, sociograms
are time-consuming and fail to answer the problem of what to do with unpopular students. Secondly, some
people think that instead of letting the students' likes and dislikes predominate, 'the initial likes and dislikes
should be replaced by acceptance among the students' (Dornyei and Murphey 2003: 171). In other words,
teachers should work to make all students accepting of each other, whoever they are paired or grouped with.
Sociograms may be useful, though, when a class doesn't seem to be cohering correctly or when pairwork
and groupwork don't seem to be going well. The information they give us might help us to make decisions
about grouping in order to improve matters.

 Streaming: much discussion centres round whether students should be streamed according to their
ability. One suggestion is that pairs and groups should have a mixture of weaker and stronger students.
In such groups the more able students can help their less fluent or knowledgeable colleagues. The
process of helping will result in the strong students themselves being able to understand more about the
language; the weaker students will benefit from the help they get. An alternative view is that if we are
going to get students at different levels within a class to do different tasks, we should create groups in

Unit 4 11 Module 2
 which all the students are at the same level (a level that will be different from some of the other groups).
This gives us the opportunity to go to a group of weaker students and give them the special help which
they need, but which stronger students might find irksome. It also allows us to give groups of stronger
students more challenging tasks to perform. However, some of the value of cooperative work - all
students helping each other regardless of level - may be lost. When we discussed differentiation earlier,
we saw how it was possible to help individual students with different abilities even though they were all
in the same class. Streaming, therefore, seems to fit into this philosophy. However, there is the danger
that students in the weaker groups might become demoralised. Furthermore, once we start grouping
weaker students together, we may somehow predispose them to stay in this category rather than having
the motivation to improve out of it. Successful differentiation through grouping, on the other hand,
occurs when we put individual students together for individual activities and tasks, and the composition
of those groups changes, depending on the tasks we have chosen. Streaming - which implies that the
grouping is semi-permanent - is significantly less attractive than these rather more ad-hoc
arrangements. But also we said how realistic mixed-ability teaching often involves us in teaching the
whole group despite the different levels. This can be replicated in groups, too, though there is always
the danger that the stronger students might become frustrated while the weaker ones might get left
behind. However, the benefits in terms of group cohesion may well outweigh this.

 Chance: we can also group students by chance, that is for no special reasons of friendship, ability or
level of participation. This is by far the easiest way of doing things since it demands little pre-planning,
and, by its very arbitrariness, stresses the cooperative nature of working together. One way of grouping
people is to have students who are sitting next or near to each other work in pairs or groups. A problem
can occur, though, with students who always sit in the same place since it means that they will always
be in the same pairs or groups. This could give rise to boredom over a prolonged period. Another way of
organising pairwork is the 'wheels' scenario (Scrivener 2005:89). Here half of the class stand in a circle
facing outwards, and the other half of the class stand in an outer circle facing inwards. The outer circle
revolves in a clockwise direction and the inner circle revolves in an anti-clockwise direction. When they
are told to stop, students work with the person facing them. We can organise groups by giving each
student in the class (in the order they are sitting) a letter from A to E. We now ask all the As to form a
group together, all the Bs to be a group, all the Cs to be a group and so on. Depending upon the size of
the class, we might end up with groups of more than five, but this may not be a problem if the task is
appropriate. We can also arrange random groups by asking people to get out of their chairs and stand
in the order of their birthdays (with January at one end of the line and December at the other). We can
then group the first five, the second five and so on. We can make groups of people wearing black or
green, of people with or without glasses, or of people in different occupations (if we are in an adult
class). It is interesting to note that modern computer language laboratories often have a random pairing
and grouping program so that the teacher does not have to decide who should work with whom.

 The task: sometimes the task may determine who works with whom. For example, if we want students
from different countries (in a multilingual group) to compare cultural practices, we will try to ensure that
students from the same country do not work together (since that would defeat the object of the
exercise). If the task is about people who are interested in particular leisure activities (sport, music,
etc.), that might determine the makeup of the pairs or groups.

 Changing groups: just because we put students in groups at the beginning of an activity does not
mean that they have to stay in these groups until the end. The group may change while an activity
continues. For example, students may start by listing vocabulary and then discuss it first in pairs, then in
groups of four, then in groups of eight - or even 16. In an interview activity, students can start working in
two main groups and then break into smaller groups for a role- play. If groups are planning something
or discussing, members from other groups can come and visit them to share information and take
different information back to their original group. A longer sequence may start with the teacher and the
whole class before moving between pairwork, individual work and groupwork until it returns back to the
whole-class grouping.

 Gender and status: we need to remember that in some contexts it may not be appropriate to have
men and women working together. Similarly, when grouping students we may want to bear in mind the

Unit 4 12 Module 2
 status of the individuals in their lives outside the classroom. This is especially true in business English
groups where different tiers of management, for example, are represented in the group. We will need, in
both these scenarios, to make ourselves aware of what is the norm so that we can then make informed
decisions about how to proceed.

We make our pairing and grouping decisions based on a variety of factors. If we are concerned about the
atmosphere of the whole class and some of the tensions in it, we may try to make friendship groups - always
bearing in mind the need to foster an acceptance for working with all students in the group eventually. If our
activity is based on fun, we may leave our grouping to chance. If, on the other hand, we are dealing with a
non-homogeneous class (in terms of level) or if we have some students who are falling behind, we may
stream groups so that we can help the weaker students while keeping the more advanced ones engaged in
a different activity. We might, for example, stream pairs to do research tasks so that students with differing
needs can work on different aspects of language.

One final point that needs stressing is that we should not always have students working with the same
partners or group members. This creates what Sue Murray humorously refers to as ESP-PWOFP (English
for the Sole Purpose of doing Pair Work with One Fixed Partner) (Murray 2000: 49). She argues
persuasively that mixing and moving students around as a course progresses is good for classroom
atmosphere and for individual engagement.

Procedures for pairwork and groupwork

Our role in pairwork and groupwork does not end when we have decided which students should work
together, of course. We have other matters to address, too, not only before the activity starts, but also
during and after it.

 Before: when we want students to work together in pairs or groups, we will want to follow an 'engage-
instruct-initiate' sequence. This is because students need to feel enthusiastic about what they are going
to do, they need to know what they are going to do, and they need to be given an idea of when they will
have finished the task. Sometimes our instructions will involve a demonstration - when, for example,
students are going to use a new information-gap activity or when we want them to use cards. On other
occasions, where an activity is familiar, we may simply give them an instruction to practise language
they are studying in pairs, or to use their dictionaries to find specific bits of information. The success of
a pairwork or groupwork task is often helped by giving students a time when the activity should finish -
and then sticking to it. This helps to give them a clear framework to work within. Alternatively in lighter-
hearted activities such as a poem dictation, we can encourage groups to see who finishes first. Though
language learning is not a contest (except, perhaps, a personal one), in game-like activities ' ... a slight
sense of competition between groups does no harm' (Nuttall 1996: 164). The important thing about
instructions is that the students should understand and agree on what the task is. To check that they
do, we may ask them to repeat the instructions, or, in monolingual classes, to translate them into their
first language.

 During: while students are working in pairs or groups we have a number of options. We could, for
instance, stand at the front or the side of the class (or at the back or anywhere else) and keep an eye
on what is happening, noting who appears to be stuck, disengaged or about to finish. In this position we
can tune in to a particular pair or group from some distance away. We can then decide whether to go
over and help them. An alternative procedure is often referred to as monitoring. This is where we go
round the class, watching and listening to specific pairs and groups either to help them with the task or
to collect examples of what they are doing for later comment and work. For example, we can stay with a
group for a period of time and then intervene if and when we think it is appropriate or necessary, always
bearing in mind what we have said about the difference between accuracy and fluency work. If students
are involved in a discussion, for example, we might correct gently; if we are helping students with
suggestions about something they are planning, or trying to move a discussion forwards, we can act as
prompter, resource or tutor. In such situations we will often be responding to what they are doing rather
than giving correction feedback. We will be helping them forwards with the task they are involved in.

Unit 4 13 Module 2
 Where students fall back on their first language, we will do our best to encourage or persuade them
back into English. When students are working in pairs or groups we have an ideal opportunity to work
with individual students whom we feel would benefit from our attention. We also have a great chance to
act as observer, picking up information about student progress, and seeing if we will have to
'troubleshoot'. But however we monitor, intervene or take part in the work of a pair or group, it is vital
that we do so in a way that is appropriate to the students involved and to the tasks they are involved in.

 After: when pairs and groups stop working together, we need to organise feedback. We want to let
them discuss what occurred during the groupwork session and, where necessary, add our own
assessments and make corrections. Where pairwork or groupwork has formed part of a practice
session, our feedback may take the form of having a few pairs or groups quickly demonstrate the
language they have been using. We can then correct it, if and when necessary and this procedure will
give both those students and the rest of the class good information for future learning and action.
Where pairs or groups have been working on a task with definite right or wrong answers, we need to
ensure that they have completed it successfully. Where they have been discussing an issue or
predicting the content of a reading text, we will encourage them to talk about their conclusions with us
and the rest of the class. By comparing different solutions, ideas and problems, everyone gets a greater
understanding of the topic. Where students have produced a piece of work, we can give them a chance
to demonstrate this to other students in the class. They can stick written material on noticeboards; they
can read out dialogues they have written or play audio or video tapes they have made. Finally, it is vital
to remember that constructive feedback on the content of student work can greatly enhance students'
future motivation. The feedback we give on language mistakes is only one part of that process.

Troubleshooting
When we monitor pairs and groups during a groupwork activity, we are seeing how well they are doing
and deciding whether or not to go over and intervene. But we are also keeping our eyes open for
problems which we can resolve either on the spot or in future.

 Finishing first: a problem that frequently occurs when students are working in pairs or groups is that
some of them finish earlier than others and/or show clearly that they have had enough of the activity
and want to do something else. We need to be ready for this and have some way of dealing with the
situation. Saying to them OK, you can relax for a bit while the others finish may be appropriate for tired
students, but can make other students feel that they are being ignored. When we see the first pairs or
groups finish the task, we might stop the activity for the whole class. That removes the problem of
boredom, but it may be very demotivating for the students who haven't yet finished, especially when
they are nearly there and have invested some considerable effort in the procedure. One way of avoiding
the problems we have mentioned here is to have a series of challenging task-related extensions for
early finishers so that when a group has finished early, we can give them an activity to complete while
they are waiting. This will show the students that they are not just being left to do nothing. When
planning groupwork it is a good idea for teachers to make a list of task-related extensions and other
spare activities that first - finishing groups and pairs can be involved in. Even where we have set a time
limit on pair- and groupwork, we need to keep an eye open to see how the students are progressing.
We can then make the decision about when to stop the activity based on the observable (dis)
engagement of the students and how near they all are to completing the task.

 Awkward groups: when students are working in pairs or groups we need to observe how well they
interact together. Even where we have made our best judgements - based on friendship or streaming,
for example - it is possible that apparently satisfactory combinations of students are not ideal. Some
pairs may find it impossible to concentrate on the task in hand and instead encourage each other to talk
about something else, usually in their first language. In some groups (in some educational cultures)
members may defer to the oldest person there, or to the man in an otherwise female group. People with
loud voices can dominate proceedings; less extrovert people may not participate fully enough. Some
weak students may be lost when paired or grouped with stronger classmates. In such situations we may
need to change the pairs or groups. We can separate best friends for pairwork; we can put all the high-
status figures in one group so that students in other groups do not have to defer to them. We can

Unit 4 14 Module 2
 stream groups or reorganise them in other ways so that all group members gain the most from the
activity. One way of finding out about groups, in particular, is simply to observe, noting down how often
each student speaks. If two or three observations of this kind reveal a continuing pattern, we can take
the kind of action suggested above.
Adapted from The Practice of English Language Teaching, Jeremy Harmer 2007, Longman.

Below are a few more basic techniques of classroom management.

5. Encourage and praise your students

Your students need encouragement. Even if the answer you get is completely
incorrect don't say 'NO!' but try intonation which means 'No, but...', then allow
someone you know will have the correct answer to give their version. Don't
be afraid to use 'good' frequently, even if it has to be 'Good, but let's hear X's
answer' (when you know that his/her answer will be better). This will
encourage student Y to try again another time. 'NO!' may discourage. Don’t
be afraid to show gently that an answer has not been given clearly and that
you don’t quite understand. A puzzled expression from you gives the student
a chance to practise reformulation - rephrasing something in a different way -
and this is a very valuable skill. It may also be that a class member can pick
up on the idea and help to explain.

6. Use a natural voice and never shout

It's easy to yield to the temptation of speaking at an above-normal range.

That's a way to lose your voice. That will not necessarily get your students'
attention, either. They will mirror your voice level, so you will end up shouting
over each other. If we want students to talk at a normal, pleasant volume, we
must do the same. Remember to differentiate your tone, eg if you give an
instruction, use a declarative tone; if you ask a personal question, use a
'warmer', more conversational tone.

Instead of telling your students to quiet down, just don't say anything, stand in
front of them and wait, and then wait some more until they are all quiet. That
really works.

7. Use hand signals and other nonverbal communication

You can also keep your hand raised as a pre-agreed gesture meaning that
you want silence. Have a repertoire of gestures to control the class and
respond to students' contributions. Make sure the students understand what
each gesture means; discuss this at the beginning of the course.

Unit 4 15 Module 2
Seeing a teacher standing or sitting still all the time is boring. When you move
your body, you are more likely to succeed in grabbing their attention.

That having been said, keep in mind the cultural aspect, as some gestures
that are perfectly normal to you may be offensive in your students' culture.
This can be a good occasion to discuss cultural differences with your
students.

8. Bring the outside world into the classroom

This is a key classroom management technique. We should be, as much as
possible, linking what happens in the class with what happens in the outside
world. Graded readers are available from most publishers at most levels;
newspapers are always available in English, some are written for the ex-
patriate community and contain useful articles. The internet is a virtually
endless source of trivial and less trivial information.

The days of the teacher having to say: ‘I’ll find out for you’ are numbered in
many parts of the world - students are more and more able to find things for
themselves and indeed should be given the responsibility of doing so.

Ask your students for the latest news each morning - this will get them into
the habit of finding out on their way to school, listening to the BBC World
Service, accessing news websites and so on.

There is a marked difference in the learning skills of people with a wide

general knowledge - it helps them so much with understanding languages
and concepts.

An active learner is one who bounds in saying ‘Have you heard about…..?’

SELF-CHECK 4:1 1

Most of your students actively participate in lessons. However, there are a few others who
refuse to participate. They sit silently throughout the class. What could be the reasons for
their not participating? What solutions can you suggest? Think of at least 3 reasons and 3
solutions.

Reasons

1.
2.
3.

Unit 4 16 Module 2
Solutions

1.
2.
3.

The comment is after the extract from Harmer below.

Now consider the following extract:

Promoting autonomy

Most teachers are keen to talk to students about the importance of becoming autonomous learners. But just
telling students that autonomy is in some way a good thing will have little effect unless it is part of a wider
course design - and unless we find ways of helping students to become more independent. Sarah Cotterell
suggests that language courses which aim to promote learner autonomy should have a number of defining
characteristics. In the first place, the course should reflect the learners' goals in its language, tasks and
strategies. This means raising the students' awareness of ways of identifying goals, specifying objectives
and identifying resources which will help them to realise these goals. Next, the course tasks should be
explicitly linked to a simplified model of the language learning process. In other words, Sarah Cotterell
suggests, students are unlikely to be able to manage their own learning if they have no idea of how learning
works; it is by developing an awareness of language-learning theory that they are able to adopt learning
strategies for themselves. Course tasks should replicate real-world communicative tasks (or provide
rehearsal for such tasks) and, finally, the course should promote reflection on learning (CottereIl 2000: 111-
112).

Learner training, learner autonomy

It is possible that some students will be keen to take responsibility for their own learning from the very
beginning of a course. However, most teachers know that this is unlikely unless they are given help in
thinking about how they learn and how this learning can be made more effective. Learner training, in other
words, is a first step on the road to self-directed learning. Together with activities where students are
encouraged, or even (sometimes) forced, to take responsibility for what they are doing, learner training gives
those who are prepared to take it the possibility of real autonomy.

Thinking about learning

In the following learner training example, students are encouraged to think about what (and how) they have
been learning, are made to think about different ways of listening and are offered different strategies for them
to choose from.

Under the influence of the Common European Framework, many teachers and materials writers have
students go through a checklist of 'can do' statements at the end of each unit. For example, they have to tick
statements such as I can use the present continuous to talk about the future or I can construct a business
letter using appropriate language and layout. If they don't feel they can tick a statement, they have a clear
indication that they should go back and study the language or the language skill they still seem to have
trouble with.

A more elaborate way of getting students to reflect on what they have done recently is to ask them to
complete sentences about, say, last week's work, e.g.

 The things that I enjoyed most in last week’s lessons was/were …

Unit 4 17 Module 2
  The things I learnt last week that I did not know before was/were …
 The things I am going to do to help me remember what I learnt last week is/are …

Taking over
The ideal situation is for the students to take over their own learning - in other words, to do it without having
to be shown how by the teacher. There are various ways of trying to bring this about. In the first place, what
we have called the 'immediate creativity' phase is the moment when we get students to take the language
for themselves. They are no longer just repeating what we have told them to; instead, they are trying to use
the new language to say things they want to. When we get students to make their own dialogues with new
language, the same thing is true; the moment they invent their very own conversations, they are, to some
extent, taking the language into their own hands. Earlier we looked at a number of dictionary activities in
which students both learnt how dictionaries worked and then learnt how to use them. Once students are
capable of using dictionaries in this way, they have, in effect, taken over since they can get word information
with or without our help. When students get to make (or help to make) decisions about what happens in and
out of class, they can be seen to have at least partly taken over in the same way. Thus, for example, when
a teacher says You can decide what we do next. We can either listen to someone talking about different
kinds of education, we can read a text about a special education experiment or we can have a discussion
about different kinds of discipline ... and the students choose which of these they are going to do, they have
a degree of agency. Except in exceptional circumstances, we are not suggesting that students should take
over the whole design and running of a course. That, surely, is our job and we bring our professional skills
to bear when we decide on the programme we are going to ask students to follow. But within that
programme, the more we can get students to rely on their own decision-making, the better. We can get
them to tell us what they want and need to do next via discussion, needs analyses or other forms of action
research. We can ensure that some of their time is spent in a self-access centre, and we can do our best to
ensure that they learn outside the classroom and after the course.

Learning journals
One way in which teachers try to encourage students to become autonomous is by encouraging them to
write journals. But journal writing has other benefits, too. In the first place, writing journals provides good
writing practice and helps to improve the students' general writing skills. In the second place, journals allow
students to express feelings more freely than they might do in public, in class. If they know that their journals
are not going to be read by everyone (unless they want people to read them), they will write more openly.
And because the act of writing is less immediate than spontaneous conversation, they have more time to
access those feelings. Journals can also provide a kind of teacher-student dialogue that is often impossible
in a whole-class environment. We can often learn things about our students which we were previously
unaware of when we read what they write in these journals. For example, when Lakshmy Krishnan and Lee
Hwee Hoon asked students to keep diaries at the Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, they
found themselves 'listening to voices' which gave them strong messages about individual concerns and
needs. As a result of reading these journals, the course leaders found themselves thinking up new ways of
helping students from outside Singapore who had shown, through their journal entries, that they were
homesick and disoriented (Krishnan and Hoon 2002).
From the point of view of learner autonomy, journals provide an opportunity for students to think both
about how they are learning (i.e. what is easier or more difficult, and why and how they achieve success),
and also about what they are learning (i.e. aspects of the language and how it all fits together). This kind of
introspection may well lead them to insights which will greatly enhance their progress. Just as teacher
journals provoke their writers into reflecting on how and why things have happened so that they can decide
what to do next, so student journals may well provoke creative introspection in their writers. A marked benefit
of such introspection when it occurs is its effect on memory. There are good reasons for supposing that
when we have a chance to reflect carefully on what we have done, we are far more likely to remember it than
if we simply discard an experience the moment it is over.

Forcing agency?
Before we leave the subject of getting students to assume agency (to take responsibility for their learning),

Unit 4 18 Module 2
we need to discuss limits to our attempts to make this happen. If, as we have suggested, learning is
conditioned both by the student's educational culture and also by his or her individual learning styles and
preferences, then the idea that all students should be forced to become autonomous seems unnecessarily
prescriptive. Why should students who are, for whatever reason, reluctant to become autonomous, have
autonomy thrust upon them?
The fact is that in the words of an old English proverb, you can lead a horse to water but you can't make it
drink. And if it doesn't want or need to drink, you shouldn't make it do so anyway. Some students, like horses
at the water's edge, just don't get it; for them the teacher is the one who is responsible for their learning, and
they expect the teacher to do their job.
Faced with the reluctance of at least some of the students in a group to assume agency, we have to
consider what we can do both for those students and for others in the group who are keener on the idea of
taking learner responsibility.
But however much students do or do not take up our offer of training for autonomy, there is a group of
activities which at the very least make their participation mandatory. These are activities where students
have to take part in order for the activity to be a success. For example, a story-circle will only work because
every member of the group is obliged to write a new sentence every time they are given a new piece of
paper. Opting out is not an option (unless, of course an individual student has a serious behaviour problem,
but that is another issue).

The self-access centre (SAC)

A useful adjunct to classroom learning - or indeed alternative to it - is the self-access or (open) learning
centre. In SACs students can work on their own (or in pairs and groups) with a range of material, from
grammar reference and workbook-type tasks to audio and video excerpts. They can work with books,
worksheets, CDs and DVDs, or they can access material from computers, whether hooked up to an Intranet
- that is all programs working from a main server run by the institution where the SAC is located - or whether
they have access to the Internet.
Some modern SACs consist of little but banks of computers. Others, which rely on books and paper, will
almost certainly have large collections of learner literature, dictionaries, reading texts and listening materials.
Where possible, SACs either have separate rooms or have one large room divided into sections for different
kinds of material, though it is also possible to put large amounts of self-access material on a trolley that can
be wheeled from class to class. In well-regulated SACs, students drop in either as a regular part of the
timetable or in their own spare time. Some students may have signed up to be allowed to use the SAC even
though they are not in any English class; they are, therefore, not actually following a regular course. Once
inside the room (or hooked up to a computer), they will decide what work to do, find the right kind of material
and activities, and settle down to complete the learning task.

After (and outside] the course

As Susan McLean Orlando suggests, the kind of learning that occurs in formal settings 'may represent only
a fraction of the learning experienced by participants' (McLean Orlando 2006: 45). If they are studying in a
target-language community such as Australia, Britain, Canada, New Zealand or the USA, for example, they
are likely to hear and see English all around them in shopping malls, on advertising billboards or on TV or
the radio. Increasingly, even when they are studying in what were once considered EFL situations, they may
have access to the Internet for a wide variety of genres from newspaper reports to blogs, from poetry to pop
songs. As English becomes more and more of a lingua franca, there is more and more chance that students
will be exposed to English in the real world outside the classroom, too. In most situations, teachers and
students can have access to competent English speakers who, for example, work for international
companies or who take part in English-language theatre productions or other recreational activities.
When students are attending our lessons, we can do our best to make them aware of all these resources.
We need to remind them of all the ways they can access English on their own. We can set them tasks, such
as bringing in English they have found on their own every Monday morning, or having them report on what
they have done to enhance their English outside the class. We will promote extensive reading and listening,
of course, and we can also ask them to use their learning journals as records of the English they have
investigated on their own.

Unit 4 19 Module 2
 However, sooner or later students will stop attending our lessons (or may not want to or be able to attend
lessons of any kind). Now they really are on their own, and unless they can find some way of continuing to
learn autonomously, their English is unlikely to improve and might even begin to deteriorate. There is a lot
we can do to help our students plan for the teacher-free future.

Training students to continue learning

Much of the advice that students are given about continued learning is not taken up (Braymen 1995). It is
too general and though students know it is all sound counsel, they cannot follow the advice because the
whole idea is too 'big', too amorphous. We need, therefore, to offer specific guidance which will allow them
to focus on exactly what suits them best.
The first thing we need to do is to include 'continuing learning' as a topic in the syllabus. We can involve
students in awareness-raising activities; together we can list all available sources of English before
discussing which are most appropriate for their individual needs and how and where to get hold of them. We
can consider the various skills that the students might want to work on, and re-visit various styles of
language study and language research which they can usefully carry out on their own.
To train students in ways of using resources at their disposal, we can organise 'self-study' projects in
class, which they can later replicate when they are on their own. For example, we might direct them to watch
an English language news channel on TV and note down the main story headlines before following up those
stories in newspapers or on the Internet. We can start, perhaps, by providing the material on CD, tape or
DVD. Later, students can start accessing news material on their own, using the techniques we have
practised earlier. By the time the course is over, they may have acquired the habit of accessing this kind of
material on their own. We can get students to use classroom techniques on their own, encouraging them to
predict the content of texts before they read in detail, and then decide on a maximum of ten unknown words
to look up in their dictionaries after they have read. We can train them to be their own language researchers
by looking for new words and patterns that they have come across in subsequent texts. In this sense, all the
learner training we do in class has enormous potential for students working on their own, since, once having
considered the best ways to learn, they can use these ways to improve without the necessity of teacher
supervision.
A powerful way of getting students to continue with their language use, especially where a successful
group is coming to an end, is to encourage them to stay in touch with each other. They can do this by email
or by setting up a users' group on the Internet (e.g. with Yahoo groups - see http://groups.yahoo.com - where
it is extremely easy to set up a discussion group so that people can talk to a whole group at the same time).
Finally, students can access the many sites for language learners which are available online. Some of these
are attached to schools the students have studied at, but there are many other sites, too, which provide free
language exercises and other material for people who want to continue studying on their own.

Adapted from The Practice of English Language Teaching, Jeremy Harmer 2007, Longman.

Unit 4 20 Module 2
COMMENT on 4:1 1
Your reasons for students not participating might include:

They are shy

They are of a different level
They are used to a different teaching style
They come from the tradition where each student is expected to work quietly
on his/her own
They don't understand your explanations and discussions
You never call on them so they feel discouraged and excluded
You never praise them so they feel discouraged
They find lessons boring

Your solutions might include:

 Alternate whole class work and group work with pair work. Pair work is
less daunting than group work.
 Give lots of preparation for a spoken activity to ensure students have
the language they need.
 Before the lesson, make it clear what is to be learnt. At the end of the
lesson, emphasise what goals have been reached and praise students
for their individual achievements.
 Give clear instructions; step to the back of the class and see if your
board work is clear.
 Call on all students equally.
 Talk to the quiet students after class; you can explain your teaching
style, the importance of communication and ask them what could make
them participate more.

Unit 4 21 Module 2
 Questions

Questions are a way of compelling attention from a sleepy student in the

corner, but they are also a very important factor in learning. Teachers ask
phenomenal amounts of questions and yet do not always think about the
kinds of questions they ask!

Who to ask and how to ask

Don't start with the name of the student you are addressing, eg "Panayota,
what was the name of the driver?" As soon as you say "Panayota", the rest of
the class will switch off. Instead say, "What was the name of the driver?"
Pause, look around. Everyone will work out the answer, not knowing who you
will ask. When you finally ask Panayota, the other students will listen to see if
her answer corresponds with theirs. In educational jargon, this pause is called
‘wait time’. Wait time has been shown to be very effective in encouraging
independent thinking and getting the class to work out new information.
You can extend this with younger pupils by asking them to put their hand up
when they know the answer and wait until all or nearly all the hands in the
room are up before asking for the answer.

Particularly make it a rule not to ask comprehension type questions in a fixed

order so that the fifth student along knows he will get question 5 - he will
spend all his time working out the answer to question 5 and will not hear or
read the text nor will he hear anyone else's question or answer.

Instead, dart around with your questions and sometimes go back to keep
everyone on their toes.

A good technique, especially with more open questions (see below) is to get
pairs to discuss an answer before giving it to the class - for example ‘What
word or words could I use in this space and why?’

Make sure everyone is called upon equally. This is particularly difficult when
you are darting around with your questions. Students at the back and in the
'wings' must not be forgotten. This is one area where moving around the
room will help you to get a different ‘camera angle’ on the class!

Unit 4 22 Module 2
What kinds of questions to ask

Think about these two kinds of questions:

Type 1 questions usually have one right answer. Everyone in the classroom
could know the answer. They are often called ‘closed’ questions.

Examples:

Can you spell ‘really’?

What is the capital of Paris?
What tense is this verb?
(Holding three pens) How many pens do I have?
Is this a bus or a car?

All teachers ask questions like this as a way of checking students have
understood and of reviewing language or information. They sometimes use
lots of them together - for example you can easily imagine a situation where a
teacher gets the class to change the number of pens in the sentence to
practise singular and plural. How many….? You have three pens. How
many… ? You have one pen, etc

Notice that in a closed question the teacher is not really asking for the
students’ opinion as she already knows the answer, and also that the
questions belong in a classroom - they are not ‘real’. Any teacher who had to
ask her husband to verify how many pens she was holding, or any driver who
had to ask a policeman if a vehicle was a bus or a car, would be looked at
very strangely.

Type 2 questions do not always have a single or right answer. There can be
several alternatives. These questions are sometimes called ‘open-ended’ or
‘open’ questions.
Examples:
How can we answer the telephone in English?
Can you tell me the names of any countries that have had earthquakes
recently?
Why is this sentence in the past tense?
What’s the difference between these two sentences?
Why is the man in the picture angry?
When teachers ask open-ended questions they are activating the students'
thinking. More language is produced by students when they answer open
questions than when they answer closed ones. Some teachers like to start

Unit 4 23 Module 2
with an open-ended question on the board at the beginning of a lesson that
leads into their topic or focus for the day. It is also a useful way of finding out
how much the students already know.

Even if the response to ‘Name 3 deserts in the world’ is chocolate cake, ice-
cream and fruit salad, the students are still participating and you have
something to discuss!

Both types of questions are useful in the classroom but a teacher that asks
only Type 1 questions is not giving the students a chance to think for
themselves.

SELF-CHECK 4:1 2

Identify the kinds of questions asked by the teachers in these two short scenes. Both
teachers have three pictures of cats on their white boards.

Class 1:

TEACHER:

Small smaller smallest

Smaller is the comparative of small. It has -er on the end of the word, see?
The white cat is smaller than the black cat.
-est is the superlative of small. It has -est on the end of the word. The brown cat is the
smallest.
Which cat is the smallest? Jose?

JOSE: That one.

TEACHER: Is this cat smaller or bigger? Marina?

MARINA: Smaller.

-----------

Class 2:

TEACHER:

These cats are different. How are they different? Tell your partner how the cats are
different. (Teacher waits for a minute.)
Class talk in pairs: colour, big, small, thinner, more small, black, white, ugly, etc
TEACHER: OK everyone? Put up your hand if you could see a difference. (All hands
should go up. If they do not, teacher waits). Chooses someone to answer.
KARIN: Big and small, miss.
Teacher: Good. Can you make a sentence to compare them? Anyone?
NELLA: This cat more small this cat……..

Unit 4 24 Module 2
COMMENT

Note the high TTT in the first extract! And only two students do anything.
What the others are doing we can only guess, especially if the class is quite
large. The teacher begins with a short lecture and the students do not get
involved. We can't be sure whether they are paying attention.

The class in the second classroom have had time to think. They are all
expected to answer the question. They have had time to see if they can do
the task. The teacher has been listening in and finding out what they know -
that some of them can compare but that they need to learn how to do it
grammatically. The students are not so worried about giving a 100% correct
answer. This is important for learning. After such an introduction, the whole
class are engaged and ready to find out about comparatives.

Managing mixed ability classes

In Unit 3 Module 1 we mentioned that even beginners are not all the same. In
fact, every class is a mixed ability class because people have different skills.

How can classes be managed that have very able students and ones that are
struggling? ‘Lock step’ activities in which everyone is supposed to finish at the
same time, like an army drill, will always be problematic. We need to look at
planning a variety of activities over a course, so everyone can do well.
Mixed ability lessons are not frightening or difficult if everyone can achieve
something. Some students need extra support. Some need extension. The
big word for all of this in education is differentiation - different things for
different people.

How can we differentiate work?

By task

When students are preparing a presentation or a poster or working on

another group project, give different students different responsibilities in their
group. One can be the group leader, another the reporter – who summarises
the discussion, another one the scribe – who makes notes of what is being
discussed, and so on.

You can select smaller groups within a large group, with students of the same
ability working together, or mixed ability groups where everyone can help
each other to do the same task but in the relaxed atmosphere of a group. You
can put all the class leaders in one group and give them something more
difficult to do.
Unit 4 25 Module 2
When the class works with a reading text, ask a weaker group and a more
advanced group to identify different vocabulary. Utilise students' individual
skills and talents. (Just make sure that the student who is good at art does
not always spend thirty minutes colouring!)

By support

This means giving more help to certain students than others.

It can mean extra lessons or consultations but not always. Worksheet
differentiation is one way. For example, on a picture story one section of the
class has only the pictures and has to make a story from them. A weaker
group has the pictures plus key words. A third group, whose language
proficiency is the lowest, has a gap-fill story to complete.

It can mean designing a lesson that gives the teacher free time to concentrate
on certain individuals or one section of the class. Group work is good for this,
or individual reading or writing. The teacher can work with one student in
particular, or direct a student who is good at speaking to work with someone
who finds speaking difficult.

By homework

Homework is private time, so there is less embarrassment about getting

different work, and different homework tasks can be given to individual
students.

You can give longer or shorter homework. You can give small extras like:
These are the five words you usually spell wrong. Use each of them in a
sentence about yourself.

Giving students open tasks such as ‘Write a clear description of five family
members’ will result in submissions that are very different and done according
to students' ability. Your flexibility in assessing their work (rewarding them
according to their individual achievements) will encourage each student to try
hard at his or her own level of ability.

Don’t misunderstand extension tasks. This means more difficult, not longer!
How would you feel if you always had to work longer than the other students?
And how would you feel if they always got some fun extras to do and you
didn’t because you were too slow.

Finally, here are a few differentiation DON’Ts!

Unit 4 26 Module 2
Don’t teach the whole class as a whole class all the time.
Don’t teach to the middle level and expect others to catch up or wait.
Don’t expect the mixed abilities issues to magically disappear!

SELF-CHECK 4:1 3
The following students have listened to dialogues on a recording and read some other
dialogues in their book. Now look at their worksheets.

As you read through these, think how the teacher has differentiated work simply and easily
for her students. Which worksheet gives the students more support?

Worksheet 1

Read the conversation and then continue the dialogue

between a shop assistant and a customer. Use phrases
from your course book to help you.

C: Good afternoon.

SA: Good afternoon. Can I help you?

C: Yes, I’m looking for a bag for my wife.

SA: ……………………… (leather or cloth?)

C: …………………………………

SA: OK and …………………….? (colour?)

C: ………………………………….

SA: Oh, I’m sorry. We don’t ………

…….. How about …………………..?

C: OK that’s fine. What a lovely bag. ……………. $$$$?

SA: ………………………………… $20

C: Here ……………

SA: Shall I wrap it for you?

C: No, thank you.

SA: Have a nice day!

Unit 4 27 Module 2
Worksheet 2

Read the conversation and then continue the dialogue between a

shop assistant and a customer.

Remember questions about materials, colours and prices. The

shop does not have the first colour that the man asks for.

C: Good afternoon.

SA: Good afternoon. Can I help you?

C: Yes, I’m looking for a bag for my wife.

SA:……………………………………… ? Material

C: ………………………………………..

SA: OK and ……………………………………….? Colour

C: …………………………………….

SA: Oh I’m sorry……………………… ……………../…..?

C: OK , That’s fine. What a lovely bag ………………………..? Price

SA: ……………………………………..

C: Here …………………………………….

SA: ……………. wrap it for you?

C: …………………………..

SA: Have a nice day!

COMMENT

More help is given in the first worksheet than the second. There are fewer
gaps, and for each gap there is a clear hint in the right-hand column. These
include words that the students actually need to use in a grammatical
sentence, eg ‘leather or cloth’. In the second worksheet, there are lots of
blank lines and the hints are more general (eg ‘material’).

Unit 4 28 Module 2
 Managing interruptions

It is amazing how much class time can be taken up with managing

interruptions.

Here are some of the things that can interrupt or even disrupt a class and
suggested solutions in case these happen to you:

Forgotten textbooks
Have an extra photocopy or two handy or have students share.

Forgotten equipment
If it is things like pencils or rubbers, keep a supply of extra ones in the room.
If it's a CD with a film you were going to show your students and build your
lesson around it, have Plan B on hand – games and activities to recap the
material studied a while ago or practice exercises for the end-of-term test.

People coming late

Gesture to them to sit down quietly and finish what you are doing before re-
explaining or challenging them over their lateness. Do not wait for latecomers.

Student very lost on one point

See them after class for an extra explanation - if possible provide them with
an exercise OR find time during group or pair work to do an extra explanation.

Personal problems
Should always be dealt with outside whole class time.

Over the years, our classes have been interrupted by:

industrial action, earthquakes, power cuts (failed air con, heating or lights),
nervous breakdowns and tears, bomb scares, fights, an escaped snake
during a lesson on pets and once a flood from the toilets across the hall. So
be ready for anything.

SELF-CHECK 4:1 4

Here are two teachers beginning lessons. Look at how they manage interruptions and the
phrases that they use. Which of them is more successful and why? Both teachers are
teaching older teenagers.

Unit 4 29 Module 2
Lesson 1

Teacher:
Come in, sit down, be quiet. Be quiet, I said.
Shh! Listen, don’t sit there, move over. (student moves) Sorry? What? Toilet? Yes, go.
(student leaves room) In today’s lesson we are going to do something about different types
of cars. Put your bag on the floor, not on the desk, you in the second row. No, not you,
you. (points) Yes, today’s lesson is about cars that we like. (Shouts) I need quiet before I
can start . Shh……..

Lesson 2

Teacher: Good afternoon, everyone.

Students: Good afternoon, hello etc.

Teacher: Is everyone here? Oh, where’s Fabienne?

Student 1: She’s going to be late - she told me to say sorry for her.

Teacher: Thanks for that. Now, we’ll need our textbooks later today so get them out and a
pencil. (pause) Look at the title of the lesson on the white board and our aims for today.
(points to white board) Turn to a new page in your note book (shows blank page).

Student 2: Sorry, I haven’t got my stuff today, I left it at home. Very sorry.

Teacher: Here’s a pen and pencil for today, and have some paper from the table.
Remember to bring everything next time.

Now, write down the title of today’s lesson and can anyone tell me…...

COMMENT

OK, so this was an easy self-check (we hope) - it is quite clear that the
second teacher is in control and managing what is happening. She has got
her class started quickly and quietly so she can ease up later. She has
prepared the materials for classwork and made provisions in case a student
forgot to bring his or her things.

The first teacher lost his chance to get everyone quiet and it will take him a
while to get on with the work. He also doesn't seem to remember his
students' names and generally sounds a little rude.

Now look back at lesson 2 and think what the problem with that introduction
could be from the point of view of the communicative approach. Then read on
to check yourself.

Unit 4 30 Module 2
While the teacher manages the class well, he begins in a rather formal and
teacher-centred manner. This might not be the way forward and you might
like to start with a warm-up game or oral activity, while still giving an air of
calm and control.

Now consider the following extract:

Creating successful classrooms

Problem behaviour rarely occurs in successful language classrooms. When students are engaged, have a
reasonable level of self-esteem and are experiencing success, there is no incentive for them to behave
badly, disrupt lessons or create barriers between themselves and their teacher or their peers. We need,
then, to examine how we can try to ensure that the classroom is a success-oriented environment.

Behaviour norms
Schools, just like any other group-based entities, need norms of behaviour if they are to function efficiently. It
is worth thinking, therefore, about how we can get the students' active agreement with such norms; for if we
do so, they are far more likely to adhere to them rather than feel they have been coerced into obedience.
There are three things we need to bear in mind in order to achieve this.

 Norms need to be explicitly discussed: it is not effective just to tell students to read a set of rules
about what is considered to be normal and acceptable behaviour. We need to discuss the rules with a
group, explaining what they mean and why they are there. We might give students a handout describing
the kind of behaviour we expect from them. Perhaps we can have a poster or wall chart which lists the
rules so that we can refer to it whenever necessary. If students understand what is expected of them
and why it is expected of them, they are far more likely to conform to these behavioural norms than if
they just seem arbitrary and capricious.

 Norms can be jointly negotiated: if we really want students to 'buy into' a set of rules or norms of
behaviour, we will go further than just explaining them. We will actively negotiate what should go into
our list with our students by creating a jointly agreed code of conduct. The code (a kind of contract
between teacher and students) could include details about classroom behaviour (e.g. when someone is
talking, they will be allowed to finish before they are interrupted), discuss how often homework is
expected, or establish norms of learner autonomy. When a teacher and students have divergent views
about what is acceptable and what is not, we should take the students' opinions into account and try to
work with them. However, ultimately we will have to be firm about what we are prepared to accept. With
low-level classes, teachers may need to hold the discussion in the students' first language. Where this
is not possible - as in a multilingual class - we will need to show quickly and calmly, through example,
what is expected and what is not acceptable. Some teachers adopt a formula where teacher and
students produce a chart which says 'As your teacher/a learner I expect ... ', 'As your teacher/a learner,
I will ... '. These bind both teacher and learners to behaviours which will be mutually beneficial.
When a code of conduct has been democratically arrived at (even when based on teacher direction)
- with everyone having a say and coming to an agreement - it has considerable power. We can say to
students that since they agreed to the code, they themselves have responsibility for maintaining it.

 Norms need to be reviewed and revisited: just because we have discussed a code of conduct at the
beginning of a term or semester, it does not mean that our job is done. When students step outside the
norms of behaviour, we need to be able to remind them of what we agreed on. This will be made much
easier if there is a copy of the code (say on a poster or wallchart) which we can refer to. When the
group starts behaving in ways that are not especially appropriate, we will discuss the situation with the
group and get their agreement to come up with new norms to cover this new situation.

Unit 4 31 Module 2
How teachers can ensure successful behaviour
The way we work in lessons and the interaction we have with our students make a significant contribution to
a group's success and, when things are going well, to successful learning. We have already seen that the
rapport we establish with our students is crucial to effective teaching and learning. Without good rapport,
creating an appropriate group atmosphere and identity is extremely difficult. But there are other things, too,
which we can do to ensure a positive class atmosphere.

 Start as we mean to go on: students will find it extremely difficult if we only begin to insist on certain
behaviour when things go wrong. If, for example, we wish to start our lessons in a calm atmosphere,
then we need to do that from the very first lesson by waiting for silence before we start the activities we
have planned. If we have decided that we are in charge of who sits where, then we should exercise that
decision-making from the very beginning rather than asking students to accept this halfway through the
term.

 Know what we are going to do: students are far less likely to cause problems if we give them
interesting things to do. They are far less likely to feel the urge to be disruptive if they understand that
we have come to the lesson with clear ideas about what these things are, rather than making it up as
we go along. This does not mean that we will always slavishly follow a plan, but it does suggest that a
well-organised period of study and activity which has been thought about before the lesson has a far
greater chance of success than a chaotic ill-thought-out (and ultimately frustrating) one.

 Plan for engagement: students who are interested and enthusiastic do not generally exhibit problem
behaviour. When we plan our classes, therefore, we need to think how we can engage students in a
reading or listening text before starting detailed work on it; we need to do our best to introduce topics
that are relevant to our students' experience. Interest can be also be generated by a teacher's
performance. There is no doubt that students can be engaged by the energy and enthusiasm of their
teachers.

 Prioritise success: one of our most important tasks is to try to make our students successful. This
does not mean making things easy all the time since that can provoke boredom or, at the very least,
disengagement. But at the other end of the spectrum, if things are too difficult, students become
demoralised. What we will try to aim for, instead, are tasks, activities and goals which challenge
individual students but for which they can have a better-than average chance of success. Getting the
level of challenge right is a major factor in effective classrooms. Our use of praise is also a way for us to
show students how successful they are being.

 Equality rules: in any dealings with members of the group, the group has to see that we treat everyone
in exactly the same way, irrespective of who they are. We should not show obvious favouritism or
appear to hold a grudge against particular students. We need to treat events in the same way each time
they occur, too, so that students know exactly what is likely to happen in certain circumstances. What
this means is that any student who behaves in a certain way is treated exactly the same as another
student who behaves similarly in the same circumstances.

 Praise is better than blame: a piece of research carried out four decades ago (and often cited)
suggested that when students were told off for inappropriate behaviour, it had little effect. However,
even 'difficult' students responded extremely positively when they were praised for appropriate
behaviour (Madsen et aI 1968). Praise works, in other words. Students are far more likely to avoid
inappropriate behaviour if there is an obvious advantage (the teacher and the group's approval) in
appropriate behaviour. However, praise has to be offered in the right way and for good reasons if it is to
be effective.

Modifying problem behaviour

Despite all our best efforts to create successful learning environments, things sometimes get out of hand and
students start behaving in inappropriate ways. The way we react in such situations will determine not only

Unit 4 32 Module 2
how serious the event becomes, but will also influence the attitude of the whole group in terms of their future
adherence to the group norms which they have agreed. Punishing problem behaviour is not in itself an
attractive action, but turning it into future success is. When students behave disruptively or uncooperatively,
our first task is to find out what the problem is. We can then see if we can agree a solution with the student
who is exhibiting the offending behaviour so that we can set a target for them to aim at - one which will
ensure the success we are striving for. There are many things to bear in mind if we wish to achieve these
goals.

 Act immediately: it is vital to act immediately when there is a problem since the longer a type of
behaviour is left unchecked, the more difficult it is to deal with. Indeed, unchecked behaviour may get
steadily worse so that where it could have been deflected if it had been dealt with immediately, now it is
almost impossible to deal with. Immediate action sometimes means no more than stopping talking,
pausing and looking at the student in question (Brown and McIntyre 1993: 42). Sometimes, however, it
may demand stronger action.

 Keep calm: in many students' eyes, teachers who have to shout to assert their authority appear to be
losing control. Shouting by the teacher raises the overall level of noise in the classroom, too. We need
to find some other way. The first thing to remember is that whatever we feel like, we should never
appear to be flustered. Despite the fact that students sometimes appear to be attacking our personality
and threatening everything we hold dear, we need to remember, in the words of a participant at a
conference in Montreal Canada in 2005, that 'it's just a job’. Somehow we have to stand back from what
is happening and rather than taking it personally, we need to act calmly and carefully. When we are
trying to modify student behaviour we need to look disruptive students in the eye, approach them, keep
looking at them and speak in a measured tone. We can start by asking them questions to find out why
they are behaving in the way they are. This will often be enough to defuse the situation. If more serious
action is required, however, we will adopt some of the methods described below.

 Focus on the behaviour not the student: we should take care not to humiliate an uncooperative
student. It's the behaviour that matters, not the student's character. Though it may sometimes be
tempting to make aggressive or deprecatory remarks, or to compare the student adversely to other
people, such reactions are almost certainly counter-productive: not only are they likely to foster hostility
on the part of the student and/or damage their self-esteem, they may also be ineffective in managing
the situation. Students can easily dismiss sarcasm as mere unpleasantness but it is much more difficult
to keep behaving in ways which the teacher is criticising sensibly and fairly.

 Take things forward: where a simple look or brief comment is not sufficient, we need to think carefully
about how we respond. It is always better to be positive rather than negative. It is usually more
effective for a teacher to say Let's do this, rather than Don't do that. Taking things forward is better than
stopping them, in other words. Our objective will be to move on to the next stage of an activity or to get
a new response rather than focusing on the old one. In extreme cases, we may decide to change the
activity in order to take the heat out of the situation and allow students to re-focus. However, we should
be careful not to base such decisions only on the inappropriate behaviour of one or two students. Other
ways of going forward are to re-seat students, especially where two or more of them have encouraged
one another. Once separated in an effective (but not humiliating) way, students often calm down and
the problem behaviour dies away.

 Talk in private: it is appropriate to discuss a student's behaviour in private and talk about how to
improve it. This is not always possible, of course, but disciplining a student in front of his or her
classmates will not help that student's self-esteem at all. Ideally, we will try to deal with problem
behaviour with the student after the class, or at least privately in a one-to-one situation, perhaps at the
teacher's desk. If, however, we have to deal with the situation in front of the whole group, the more
private we can keep it - by speaking quietly and approaching the student - the better.
George Petty suggests a three-stage approach to such conversations when dealing with teenagers.
He calls the stages a 'chat', a 'word' and a 'telling off' (Petty 2004: 117). In a 'chat', the teacher shows
that he or she thinks the student is quite able and willing to solve the problem and that the student has

Unit 4 33 Module 2
 the teacher's respect. When offering a 'word', the teacher is being firmer and is exerting pressure so
that the students can solve their problem. But in a 'telling off', the teacher is quite clear that the
behaviour is unacceptable and that it needs to change right now. And whether or not we agree with
Petty's threefold division, we will all agree that we should try to deal with a problem - in the first
instance - as lightly as possible before gradually becoming more serious or, finally, imposing some kind
of sanction.
One way in which we can attempt to change students' behaviour is by writing to them - a general
letter to each member of the class expressing a problem and asking students to reply in confidence. In
this way students have a chance to make contact with us without other people listening or having to
face us directly. However, this kind of correspondence takes up a lot of time, and there are dangers of
over-intimacy, too. Nevertheless, the use of letters may help to break the ice where teachers have
found other ways of controlling misbehaviour to be unsuccessful.
Dealing with indiscipline is often a matter of 'pastoral' care, helping students to recognise the
problem behaviour and start to find a way towards changing it. This is far less likely to happen in class
with everybody listening, than in private ongoing communication with the student outside the class.

 Use clearly agreed sanctions: we have already suggested that ‘equality rules’. Quite apart from the
need for fairness to all students, this means that students need to know what the penalties are for bad
behaviour. They need to be aware that if X happens, Y will follow. There needs to be a gradual scale of
action from a gentle reprimand (Petty's 'chat'- see above) to removal from a lesson and, finally, to
exclusion from a school- though we will do everything we can to modify the student's behaviour so that
this does not happen. Now, when X happens, the students know what to expect and they see it
happening. This provides a sense of justice and a feeling of confidence in the system. What is less
effective is either the teacher failing to impose a sanction that he or she has warned the group about (in
which case it immediately loses its power for future occasions), or imposing a sanction far more serious
than the one which the students expect (in which case they may lose respect at this arbitrary
behaviour).

 Use colleagues and the institution: it is no shame to have disruptive students in our classroom. It
happens to everyone. So when there's a problem, we should consult our colleagues, asking them for
guidance. When the problem is threatening to get beyond our control (for example, a pattern of
disruption which continues for a series of lessons), we would be well advised to talk to coordinators,
directors of studies and/or principals. They should all have considerable experience of the kind of
problems being faced and will be in a position to offer the benefit of their experience.
Whatever sector we work in (primary, secondary, tertiary, adult, state school or the private sector), we will all
experience problem groups and encounter problem behaviour at some time in our teaching careers. More
often than not, the problem is minor and can be easily dealt with, especially if we can refer to a previously
established code of conduct, and if our responses to indiscipline are based on the principles and strategies
we have outlined above. However, as we have suggested, it is far more attractive to try to avoid such
problems occurring by managing for success.

Adapted from The Practice of English Language Teaching, Jeremy Harmer 2007, Longman.

Unit 4 34 Module 2
 Learning styles

As you gain experience as a teacher of ESOL, you will come to realise that
not all students learn in the same way. You may have many different types of
learner in a class at any one time.

A learning ‘style’ is an individual predisposition to learn in a particular way. It

is likely that the preferred learning style of any one learner will manifest itself
in all aspects of learning, not just in relation to learning a foreign language. If
you teach a lot of students, it may be hard to identify each student’s individual
style. However, by observing the way a student responds to different tasks,
his/her learning style may become obvious and then it cannot be ignored. If
you are teaching on a one-to-one basis, you will, and should, get to know and
work with your student’s individual approach to learning.

There are various way to describe learning styles. One easy idea to talk
about here is VAK. These letters stand for Visual, (to do with seeing) Auditory
(to do with hearing) and Kinaesthetic (to do with the body - touching, feeling
and doing).

These terms describe ways that we process new information.

Let’s imagine you are going to a wedding tomorrow and you need to learn
how to tie a tie. There's a friend who knows how to do it.

What do you do?

a) Ask the friend to show you several times how it's done, and then you are
able to repeat the actions quite easily.
b) Ask the friend to explain how it's done, so that you follow his verbal
instructions.
c) Begin by experimenting with the tie and ask the friend to move your hands
to help you tie the knot.

If you answered a) then you are choosing to learn visually, by looking at the
friend's actions.

If you answered b) you got the information in an auditory way by listening to

what your friend has to say.

If you chose c), you are learning in a kinaesthetic way, using your fingers to
fiddle with the tie and have the friend physically push you in the right
direction.

Unit 4 35 Module 2
SELF-CHECK 4:1 5

Look at the following everyday activities. Use one of the three letters to write next to each
activity whether it is mainly

V - visual A – auditory K - kinaesthetic

or may it's a combination of the above.

EXAMPLE
Using your car's GPS to find your way around the city

V (looking at the screen and matching it to what you can see out of the window).

Doing a 'spot the difference' puzzle

Listening to a song and singing along

Flower arranging

Following your passenger’s directions while driving

Dribbling a football round some posts

Drawing a map accurately

Experimenting with your new smartphone to see how it works.

We bet that each and every one of you finds at least one of the above
activities very difficult!

Most people use a mixture of ways to process information, even if they have
a preference and have greater success with some types of learning than with
others.
What you need to do as a teacher is to make sure that you are presenting
language and information to your students in a way that they can understand
easily. Next time you are teaching, look at what students do in your class. It is
a big clue to how they process information.

 Some ask you what they have to do even when the instruction is written
on the board. They pick up a worksheet and turn it over and over, then
ask their friend what to do. They hum while they are working. They are
very good at pronunciation of new words and they can mimic teachers
and speak well in role-plays.

Unit 4 36 Module 2
These like to listen and hear words in their heads. They are auditory learners
and it means they like learning by hearing.

 Some tap their foot or their pencil on the desk. They doodle on their
books and swing on their chairs. They use highlighters and colours and
copy everything that you write on the board even if you asked them not
to! They will volunteer to take messages and write on the white board.
When asked to explain a new word they put their pen down and use
their hands. They move the furniture about when asked to work in pairs.
They look up and use new vocabulary when they are writing their
homework and they often cross out a lot as they are working.

They like to do something and move around. They are kinaesthetic learners,
and they like learning by doing.

 Some do very neat diagrams and copy exactly from the white board,
using colour coding for tables. They ask you to write the instructions on
the board and always seem to miss what page they should be on
unless it is written down. When they are remembering vocabulary their
eyes swivel up to the left or right as they can see the word in their head.
They enjoy it when the teacher draws on the board and they love silent
reading, especially with diagrams or pictures. They often decorate their
notebooks and make them look very neat. They are good at spotting
changes (new desk, new teacher hairstyle) and they do well on DVD
tasks.

They like to use their eyes and see pictures in their brains. They are visual
learners, that is, they like learning by seeing.

Your class will have all sorts of people in it and you need to cater for them all
in your teaching so that they can access what they want to learn. Remember:
A good VAK presentation gives the students a chance to hear, see and use
the language.

Here is an example of different ways to approach teaching comparative forms

of adjectives with a class:

 For kinaesthetic learners: Line the class up according to who is taller,

then by who lives further from school etc, followed by the teacher and
learners giving example sentences.
 For visual learners: Use a substitution diagram on the white board to
show the pattern …er than using different coloured pens.
 For kinaesthetic learners: Have everyone put their bag in a line by the
teacher's desk to see whose is the biggest and then writing sentences
about the results.

Unit 4 37 Module 2
  For visual learners: Compare three pictures of mountains with their
elevations written beside them.
 For kinaesthetic learners: A piece of card with written on it which
learners come up and attach to the end of adjectives written on the
white board.
 For auditory learners: A listening exercise with a graph on which to
mark different weights of objects.
 For auditory learners: A speaking exercise that asks students to rate
footballers or musicians depending on their tastes.

It's not correct to think that only one type of learner will benefit from a
particular activity. The activity may especially appeal to visual learners, for
instance, but may also be helpful to the other types. And remember that there
doesn't exist a purely visual learner who cannot learn in any other ways.
These learning styles are present in everyone but some have predisposition
to one style more than another. By including activities for various learning
styles in every lesson, you'll make things easy for everybody in your class.

Learner needs

While one's learning style is a general characteristic that the learner

possesses, learner needs are more situational and may apply to a course of
study or vary from lesson to lesson. Remember that you will never teach
exactly the same class day after day. Their mood and the time of day may
affect the students, among other internal and external factors. While students
don't always understand what their learning style is, they can usually say
what they need or want in a particular lesson.

Student needs may be shaped by their beliefs in what is good and what is
bad for their success. Sometimes such beliefs are not completely justified.
For example, a student might demand that you correct each and every error
she makes because she thinks it will help her become a better English
speaker. However, you notice that she speaks particularly well when she is
interested in the subject and not interrupted. Don't feel obliged to grant her
request. Explain that errors are corrected mainly in accuracy activities and
that the aims of fluency activities are different, and that correcting every error
will break the flow of the lesson.

At other times, talking to your students may reveal their true needs. For
instance, someone may say to you that he is most successful writing essays
at home because he cannot concentrate in class. You do see that his essays
written at home are outstanding. Then why not give this student more
opportunities to write on his own rather than insist that he should always write
in class?

Unit 4 38 Module 2
SELF-CHECK 4:1 6

Consider the following situations and decide what you will do to meet the students' needs
where it is possible. Remember that there are other students in the class as well, whose
needs can't be ignored.

1) During a test, a student says: 'I sprained my wrist yesterday. Now it hurts and I can't
write any more'.

2) A student says: 'I want to be in an easier class so that I can understand all the listening
materials.'

3) A student says: 'It's stuffy in the room. Can I open the window?' You know that it's very
cold outside.

4) Students are practising a role-play in pairs. Everybody has a partner and is busy talking.
Suddenly, a student says: 'Why do you always put me with Andreas? He can't speak and
I'm not learning anything. I want to work Pieter who is better than me.' Meanwhile Pieter is
busy working with someone else.

5) A student has a bad cough and looks pale.

6) You are going to give a student a bad grade for not knowing the rule. She says: 'I know
the rule but I forget it when I’m speaking.'

7) A student says to you: 'Why do I have to learn all those rules? I know I make mistakes
when I speak, but those girls in the disco understood me.'

8) A student always brings cookies to class and whenever there's a pause she puts a
cookie in her mouth and chews it.

COMMENT

There is no single 'right' solution for each of the above situations. Much will
depend on your wisdom and flexibility. Your reputation among the students
and rapport with them are also important because if they are good, the
students will be likely to respect any decision you make.

Here are some ideas:

1) Maybe let them finish in the next class?

2) Maybe find out if the problem is with their listening skills or they are
generally unhappy in your class so this is just an excuse? Talk to them
after class?

3) Ask the other students what they think? Maybe leave a window ajar and
let the student sit closer to it? Close it if others complain?
Unit 4 39 Module 2
 4) Definitely not recommended to switch pairs while they are working. Tell
them you'll change the pairs for the next activity? Maybe you should
really change the pairings more often?

5) Ask them how they feel? Maybe let them go home?

6) Could it be that the student is too nervous? Find a way to put them at
ease? Maybe allow them to tell you the rule again after class and put off
giving a grade until then?

7) Maybe ask them if talking at a disco is their top ambition? Do they want
to use English at a more serious level? If not, maybe they really are in
the wrong class?

8) Perhaps the break between classes is too short and she doesn't get the
opportunity to eat before class? Maybe she has diabetes? Or she has
to chew when she's nervous? Talking to her after class would be much
better than telling her off in front of everyone

Part 2. Assessment

Along with discipline, this has to be the subject that teachers worry about
most! But assessment does not just mean ‘tests’ and ‘examinations’. If you
assess something, you work out how efficient or inefficient it is. Is it working
well or does it need something different or extra? As well as your students,
you can, for example, assess your living room to see if it needs painting or
assess your route to work to see if it is the best way to go. Class assessment
can be divided into two main types: formative assessment and summative
assessment.

Formative assessment

Think about the word 'formative': it looks like the words ‘forming’ and
‘reform’. Formative assessment means assessing in order to do something
about the situation. Such assessment is in the form of feedback which helps
students to identify their strengths and weaknesses and to improve their
problem areas and which enables the teacher to recognise where the
students are struggling and how to help them.

Summative assessment

Unit 4 40 Module 2
Think about the word 'summative'. It looks like ‘sum up’ and ‘summary’.
Summative assessment means finding out what point you have got to. It
evaluates how much students have learnt at the end of an instructional unit. It
can be in the form of a midterm exam, a final project or an end-of-course
report. It brings the student a mark of a grade.

The problems in learning start when the only assessment they ever do is
summative assessment.

Let's imagine that in a sequence of classes your students do the following:

On Monday, they learn family members.
On Tuesday, they learn the possessive ‘s’.
On Wednesday they do the following test.

Put these words into the sentences:

father mother brother sister aunt

uncle

Susan Jean = Peter Jim

Alison Paul

1. Jean is Alison’s …………….

2. Peter is Alison’s …………….
3. Alison is Paul’s ……………..
4. Jim is …………… uncle.
5. Susan is Paul’s …………….

8 students get it all right

2 students get 4/5
3 students get 3/5
4 students get 2/5
6 students get 1/5
Unit 4 41 Module 2
Here are some possible thoughts of a teacher who needs to make a
summative assessment of the students' work.

Some revised. Give them a merit mark.

Some did badly.
Tell them off. Give them a D grade.
They must do better.
Just over half got more than half marks.

SELF-CHECK 4:1 7

Now bearing in mind what you have read about formative assessment, what do you think
could be some possible thoughts of a teacher who was to make formative assessment of
the same work? Think first and then read on and check yourself.

The comments for this and the next self-checks are on page 49.

As you can see, formative assessment is more analytical and its aim is to
help students build their skills.

Summative assessment concentrates on what students already know. From a

summative test you can only record and then go forwards. Both kinds of
assessment are necessary, however if there is summative assessment and
no formative assessment, some students will fall more and more behind.

Chat to your students at the end or beginning of lessons. This will help you to
know them better and judge their abilities more accurately. Simply grading
them with ‘20% - should try harder’ will not help.

SELF-CHECK 4:1 8

Which of these are formative and summative comments? Write F or S next to them.

EXAMPLE:
Watch out for future tense forms F

1) Correct your errors and hand in again.

2) Your handwriting is much better but look at the way you write 'f' and 't'.

3) 6/10

Unit 4 42 Module 2
 4) C+

5) grammar: 80% correct, vocabulary: 85% correct.

6) You are ready for the next level.

7) Revise the present perfect continuous.

8) Davide has progressed this term but he still struggles with ‘th’ pronunciation.

What to assess

Don't be content with an overall assessment of students' performance.

Remember to assess each of the four skills separately: listening, speaking,
reading and writing, with more attention given to the skills that correspond to
the aims of your course.

Other things to assess include grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation and

cultural awareness.

The tests, projects, presentations, etc can be specifically designed to assess

one or several of the mentioned skills/language areas. In particular,
presentations assess study skills, writing and preparation, speaking and
pronunciation and confidence, all important in English improvement.
Make sure that this goes into their assessment grade for the end of the
course so that they value the activity.

By the end of a course you should have a record of your students’

achievements in a range of skills/areas, not just a few percentages and
letters.

While any school you work for will require that students are assessed
individually, group assessment can also be used. If you regularly have team
tests, it encourages students to help each other outside class.

SELF-CHECK 4:1 9
In the following classroom, the teacher is assessing students. Answer the question below
the box.

Teacher at the front of the class - students watching with pencils in their hands.

T: Listen carefully as I say the same word twice. Circle the word you hear.

glass grass

Unit 4 43 Module 2
risk wrist

what watch

train drain

plank blank

thing sing

crab grab

What is the teacher assessing?

COMMENT 4:1 7

You might have had some of the following thoughts:

Which family member was the biggest problem for my students?

More than half the class had problems, so we'll need to revise.
What did they all get right?
We must discuss the test and which answers confused them.
Find out if the chart was clear enough.

COMMENT 4:1 8

3, 4 and 5 are examples of summative assessment.

1, 2, 6, 7 and 8 are examples of formative assessment.

COMMENT 4:1 9

The teacher is assessing which commonly confused pairs of consonants the

students find difficult to distinguish from each other (eg /k/ vs /g/, /l/ vs /r/ and
/t/ vs /ʧ/) so that she can do further work on these. In order for the
assessment to be formative, she must record who had what problem and
then drill the students on some problem pairs of sounds. They may have no
trouble at all with one pair but a lot of trouble with another.

Unit 4 44 Module 2
So the teacher is assessing listening and recognising sounds. In an indirect
way, she also assesses pronunciation, as confusing sounds when you hear
them may well mean you will confuse them when you pronounce them.

Note that she is not interested whether they understand the words. If she
was, she would need to put the words in sentences and she would not be
assessing only listening and pronunciation but also vocabulary.

Test writing

And finally, a word on tests and examinations. The school you will be working
for may administer its own test, or your students may be preparing for
standardised examinations, such as Cambridge exams or IELTS (we
discussed those in Unit 3 Module 1). But there are a great many classes in
which the teacher is responsible for administering an ‘end-of-term test’.

At this stage in your career you should not be asked to write tests for your
classes without help. If you do by any chance have to write one, here are a
few things you must do every time.

1. Decide exactly what you want to test, including which skills.

2. Show the test to a colleague, not only for proofreading but for checking
if the questions are logical and sensible.
3. Make a sensible mark scheme that gives marks for the content as well
as the mistakes.
4. If you do a writing task, make sure that the students have studied the
form - don’t give them a story to write if you have been studying letter
writing.
5. Make the marks add up to a sensible amount.
6. Decide on a pass mark based on what you think is acceptable or on the
school rules. Beginners, for example, are more likely to get over 90%
right than advanced students who have more scope for making
mistakes and will take more risks.
7. Never use a course book test without checking that you have covered
everything in it and then doing it yourself.
8. Make instructions as simple as possible!

Always allow time to go over and discuss the test with students, if possible
individually and to provide formative feedback along with summative
assessment. That is why never plan your test for the last day of the course.
The test should not be something that looms large to frighten people in your
classes, and you must be fair.
Unit 4 45 Module 2
Now consider the following extract:

There are four main reasons for testing, which give rise to four categories of test:

 Placement tests: placing new students in the right class in a school is facilitated by the use of
placement tests. Usually based on syllabuses and materials the students will follow and use once their
level has been decided on, these test grammar and vocabulary knowledge and assess students'
productive and receptive skills. Some schools ask students to assess themselves as part of the
placement process, adding this self-analysis into the final placing decision.

 Diagnostic tests: while placement tests are designed to show how good a student's English is in
relation to a previously agreed system of levels, diagnostic tests can be used to expose learner
difficulties, gaps in their knowledge and skill deficiencies during a course. Thus, when we know what the
problems are, we can do something about them.

 Progress or achievement tests: these tests are designed to measure learners' language and skill
progress in relation to the syllabus they have been following. Progress tests are often written by
teachers and given to students every few weeks to see how well they are doing. In this way they can
form part of a programme of formative assessment. Achievement tests only work if they contain item
types which the students are familiar with. This does not mean that in a reading test, for example, we
give them texts they have seen before, but it does mean providing them with similar texts and familiar
task types. If students are faced with completely new material, the test will not measure the learning that
has been taking place, even though it can still measure general language proficiency. Achievement
tests at the end of a term (like progress tests at the end of a unit, a fortnight, etc.) should reflect
progress, not failure. They should reinforce the learning that has taken place, not go out of their way to
expose weaknesses. They can also help us to decide on changes to future teaching programmes where
students do significantly worse in (parts of) the test than we might have expected.

 Proficiency tests: proficiency tests give a general picture of a student's knowledge and ability (rather
than measure progress). They are frequently used as stages people have to reach if they want to be
admitted to a foreign university, get a job or obtain some kind of certificate. Most public examinations
are proficiency tests of this type. Proficiency tests have a profound backwash effect since, where they
are external exams, students obviously want to pass them, and teachers' reputations sometimes
depend (probably unfairly) upon how many of them succeed.

 Portfolio assessment: achievement tests and proficiency tests are both concerned with measuring a
student's ability at a certain time. Students only get 'one shot' at showing how much they know. For
some people, who say they are 'not good at exams', this seems like an unfair situation, and many
educators claim that 'sudden death' testing like this does not give a true picture of how well some
students could do in certain situations. As a result, many educational institutions allow students to
assemble a portfolio of their work over a period of time (a term or semester), and the student can then
be assessed by looking at three or four of the best pieces of work over this period. Portfolio assessment
of this kind has clear benefits. It provides evidence of student effort. It helps students become more
autonomous, and it can 'foster student reflection (and) help them to self monitor their own learning'
(Nunes 2004: 334). It has clear validity since, especially with written work, students will have had a
chance to edit before submitting their work, and this approach to assessment has an extremely positive
washback effect. However, portfolio assessment is not without its pitfalls. In the first place, it is time-
consuming, and in the second place, teachers will need clear training in how to select items from the
portfolio and how to give them grades. Some students may be tempted to leave their portfolios until the
end of the course when, they expect, their work will be at its best (though there are ways to counter this
tendency). But above all, when students work on their own away from the classroom, it is not always
clear that the work reflects their own efforts or whether, in fact, they have been helped by others. It is

Unit 4 46 Module 2
 largely for this reason that the British Qualifications and Curriculum Agency, for example, has
recommended phasing out coursework in many disciplines in secondary education in Britain and
replacing it with external exams, the equivalent of proficiency tests (Qualifications and Curriculum
Agency 2006). However, this view is not shared by all; the argument about whether continuous
assessment (represented by portfolio assessment) or 'sudden death' (represented by external
proficiency tests) is the most appropriate method of assessment is set to continue for some time to
come.

Characteristics of a good test

In order to judge the effectiveness of any test, it is sensible to lay down criteria against which the test can be
measured, as follows:

 Validity: a test is valid if it tests what it is supposed to test. Thus it is not valid, for example, to test
writing ability with an essay question that requires specialist knowledge of history or biology - unless it is
known that all students share this knowledge before they do the test. A test is valid if it produces similar
results to some other measure - that is if we can show that Test A gives us the same kind of results as
Test B (or some other test). A test is only valid if there is validity in the way it is marked; if we score
short written answers to a listening test for spelling and grammar, then it is not necessarily a valid test of
listening. We are scoring the wrong thing. A particular kind of validity that concerns most test designers
is face validity. This means that the test should look, on the face of it, as if it is valid. A test which
consisted of only three multiple-choice items would not convince students of its face validity, however
reliable or practical teachers thought it to be.

 Reliability: a good test should give consistent results. For example, if the same group of students took
the same test twice within two days - without reflecting on the first test before they sat it again - they
should get the same results on each occasion. If they took another similar test, the results should be
consistent. If two groups who were demonstrably alike took the test, the marking range would be the
same. In practice, reliability is enhanced by making the test instructions absolutely clear, restricting the
scope for variety in the answers and making sure that test conditions remain constant. Reliability also
depends on the people who mark the tests - the scorers. Clearly a test is unreliable if the result depends
to any large extent on who is marking it. Much thought has gone into making the scoring of tests as
reliable as possible.

Types of test item

Whatever purpose a test or exam has, a major factor in its success or failure as a good measuring
instrument will be determined by the item types that it contains.

Direct and indirect test items

A test item is direct if it asks candidates to perform the communicative skill which is being tested. Indirect test
items, on the other hand, try to measure a student's knowledge and ability by getting at what lies beneath
their receptive and productive skills. Whereas direct test items try to be as much like real-life language use
as possible, indirect items try to find out about a student's language knowledge through more controlled
items, such as multiple-choice questions or grammar transformation items. These are often quicker to design
and, crucially, easier to mark, and produce greater scorer reliability.
Another distinction needs to be made between discrete-point testing and integrative testing.
Whereas discrete-point testing only tests one thing at a time (such as asking students to choose the correct
tense of a verb), integrative test items expect students to use a variety of language at anyone given time - as
they will have to do when writing a composition or doing a conversational oral test.
In many proficiency tests where students sit a number of different papers, there is a mixture of direct and
indirect, discrete-point and integrative testing. Test designers find that this combination gives a good overall
picture of student ability. Placement tests often use discrete-point testing to measure students against an
existing language syllabus, but may then compare this with more direct and integrative tasks to get a fuller

Unit 4 47 Module 2
picture.

Indirect test item types

Although there is a wide range of indirect test possibilities, certain types are in common use.

 Multiple-choice questions: a traditional vocabulary multiple-choice question (MCQ) looks like this:

For many years, MCQs were considered to be ideal test instruments for measuring students' knowledge
of grammar and vocabulary. Above all, this was because they were easy to mark. Moreover, since the
advent of computers, the answer sheets for these tests can be read by machines, thereby cutting out the
possibility of scorer error.
However, there are a number of problems with MCQs. In the first place, they are extremely difficult to
write well, especially in terms of the design of the incorrect choices. These 'distractors' may actually put
ideas into students' heads that they did not have before they read them. Secondly, while it is possible to train
students so that their MCQ abilities are enhanced, this may not actually improve their English. The difference
between two student scores may be between the person who has been trained in the technique and a
person who has not, rather than being a difference of language knowledge and ability.
MCQs are still widely used, but though they score highly in terms of practicality and scorer reliability, their
validity and overall reliability are suspect.

 Cloze procedures: cloze procedures seem to offer us the ideal indirect but integrative testing item.
They can be prepared quickly and, if the claims made for them are true, they are an extremely cost-
effective way of finding out about a testee's overall knowledge. Cloze, in its purest form, is the deletion
of every nth word in a text (somewhere between every fifth or tenth word). Because the procedure is
random, it avoids test designer failings. It produces test items like this:

Cloze testing seems, on the face of it, like a perfect test instrument, since, because of the randomness of the
deleted words, anything may be tested (e.g. grammar, collocation, fixed phrases, reading comprehension),
and therefore it becomes more integrative in its reach. However, it turns out that the actual score a student
gets depends on the particular words that are deleted, rather than on any general English knowledge. Some
are more difficult to supply than others, and in some cases there are several possible answers. Even in the
short sample text above, it is clear that while there is no doubt about items such as 1 and 8, for example,
item 4 is less predictable. Different passages produce different results. Despite such problems of reliability,
cloze is too useful a technique to abandon altogether because it is clear that supplying the correct word for a
blank does imply an understanding of context and a knowledge of that word and how it operates. Perhaps it
would be better, therefore, to use 'rational' or 'modified' cloze procedures where the test designer can be
sure that the deleted words are recoverable from the context. This means abandoning the completely
random nature of traditional cloze procedure. Instead, every eighth or tenth word is deleted, but the teacher
has the option to delete a word to the left or right if the context makes this more sensible. Modified cloze is
useful for placement tests since students can be given texts that they would be expected to cope with at
certain levels - thus allowing us to judge their suitability for those levels. They are useful, too, as part of a
test battery in either achievement or proficiency tests.

 Transformation and paraphrase: a common test item asks candidates to re- write sentences in a

Unit 4 48 Module 2
 slightly different form, retaining the exact meaning of the original. For example, the following item
tests the candidates' knowledge of verb and clause patterns that are triggered by the use of I wish.

I’m sorry that I didn’t get her an anniversary present.

I wish _____________________________________

In order to complete the item successfully, the student has to understand the first sentence, and then
know how to construct an equivalent which is grammatically possible. As such, they do tell us
something about the candidates' knowledge of the language system.

 Sentence re-ordering: getting students to put words in the right order to make appropriate
sentences tells us quite a lot about their underlying knowledge of syntax and lexicogrammatical
elements. The following example is typical:

Put the words in order to make correct sentences:

Called / I / I’m / in / sorry / wasn’t / when / you

Re-ordering exercises are fairly easy to write, though it is not always possible to ensure only one correct
order.
There are many other indirect techniques, too, including sentence fill-ins (Jon __ to the gym every Tuesday
morning), choosing the correct tense of verbs in sentences and passages (I have arrived/arrived yesterday),
finding errors in sentences (She noticed about his new jacket), and choosing the correct form of a word (He
didn't enjoy being on the [lose] __ side). All of these offer items which are quick and efficient to score and which
aim to tell us something about a student's underlying knowledge.

Direct test item types

For direct test items to achieve validity and to be reliable, test designers need to do the following:

1) Create a 'level playing field': in the case of a written test, teachers and candidates would almost
certainly complain about the following essay question:

Why was the discovery of DNA so important for the science of the twentieth century?
since it unfairly favours candidates who have sound scientific knowledge and presupposes a knowledge of
twentieth-century scientific history. However, the following topic comes close to ensuring that all candidates
have the same chance of success:

Unit 4 49 Module 2
Receptive skill testing also needs to avoid making excessive demands on the student's general or specialist
knowledge. Receptive ability testing can also be undermined if the means of testing requires students to
perform well in writing or speaking (when it is a test of reading or listening). In such a situation we can no
longer be sure that it is the receptive skill we are measuring.

2) Replicate real-life interaction: in real life when people speak or write, they generally do so with
some real purpose. Yet traditional writing tests have often been based exclusively on general essay
questions, and speaking tests have often included hypothetical questions about what candidates might say if
they happened to be in a certain situation. More modern test writers now include tasks which attempt to
replicate features of real life tests of reading and listening should also, as far as possible, reflect real life.
This means that texts should be as realistic as possible, even where they are not authentic. Although there
are ways of assessing student understanding (using matching tasks or multiple-choice questions) which do
not necessarily satisfy these criteria, test items should be as much like real reading and listening as possible.

Writing and marking tests

At various times during our teaching careers we may have to write tests for the students we are teaching,
and mark the tests they have completed for us. These may range from a lesson test at the end of the week
to an achievement test at the end of a term or a year.

Writing tests
Before designing a test and then giving it to a group of students, there are a number of things we need to do:

 Assess the test situation: before we start to write the test we need to remind ourselves of the context
in which the test takes place. We have to decide how much time should be given to the test - taking,
when and where it will take place, and how much time there is for marking.
 Decide what to test: we have to list what we want to include in our test. This means taking a conscious
decision to include or exclude skills such as reading comprehension or speaking (if speaking tests are
impractical). It means knowing what syllabus items can be legitimately included (in an achievement
test), and what kinds of topics and situations are appropriate for our students. Just because we have a
list of all the vocabulary items or grammar points the students have studied over the term, this does not
mean we have to test every single item. If we include a representative sample from across the whole
list, the students' success or failure with those items will be a good indicator of how well they have learnt
all of the language they have studied.
 Balance the elements: if we are to include direct and indirect test items, we have to make a decision
about how many of each we should put in our test. A 200-item multiple-choice test with a short real-life
writing task tacked onto the end suggests that we think that MCQs are a better way of finding out about
students than more integrative writing tasks would be. Balancing elements involves estimating how long
we want each section of the test to take and then writing test items within those time constraints. The
amount of space and time we give to the various elements should also reflect their importance in our
teaching.
 Weight the scores: however well we have balanced the elements in our test, our perception of our
students' success or failure will depend upon how many marks are given to each section of the test. If
we give two marks for each of our ten MCQs but only one mark for each of our ten transformation items,
it means that it is more important for students to do well in the former than in the latter.

 Make the test work: it is absolutely vital that we try out individual items and/or whole tests on

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 colleagues and other students before administering them to real candidates. When we write test items,
the first thing to do is to get fellow teachers to try them out. Frequently they spot problems which we are
not aware of and/or come up with possible answers and alternatives that we had not anticipated. Later,
having made changes based on our colleagues' reactions, we will want to try out the test on students.
We will not do this with the students who are going to take the test, of course, but if we can find a class
that is roughly similar - or a class one level above the proposed test - then we will soon find out what
items cause unnecessary problems. We can also discover how long the test takes. Such trialling is
designed to avoid disaster and to yield a whole range of possible answers/responses to the various test
items. This means that when other people finally mark the test, we can give them a list of possible
alternatives and thus ensure reliable scoring.

Marking tests
There are a number of considerations to avoid scorer subjectivity.

 Training: if scorers have seen examples of scripts at various different levels and discussed what marks
they should be given, then their marking is likely to be less erratic than if they come to the task fresh. If
scorers are allowed to watch and discuss videoed oral tests, they can be trained to 'rate the samples of
spoken English accurately and consistently in terms of the pre-defined descriptions of performance'
(Saville and Hargreaves 1999).

 More than one scorer: reliability can be greatly enhanced by having more than one scorer.The more
people who look at a script, the greater the chance that its true worth will be located somewhere
between the various scores it is given. Two examiners watching an oral test are likely to agree on a
more reliable score than one. Many public examination boards use moderators whose job it is to check
samples of individual scorer's work to see that it conforms with the general standards laid down for the
exam.

 Global assessment scales: a way of specifying scores that can be given to productive skill work is to
create ‘pre-defined descriptions of performance’. Such descriptions say what students need to be
capable of in order to gain the required marks, as in the following assessment (or rating) scale for oral
ability:

Global assessment scales are not without problems, however: perhaps the description does not exactly
match the student who is speaking, as would be the case (for the scale above) where he or she had very
poor pronunciation but was nevertheless grammatically accurate. There is also the danger that different
teachers 'will not agree on the meaning of scale descriptors' (Upshur and Turner 1995: 5). Global
assessment, on its own, still falls short of the kind of reliability we wish to achieve.
 Analytic profiles: marking gets more reliable when a student's performance is analysed in much
greater detail. Instead of just a general assessment, marks are awarded for different elements. For oral
assessment we can judge a student's speaking in a number of different ways, such as pronunciation,
fluency, use of lexis and grammar and intelligibility. We may want to rate their ability to get themselves
out of trouble (repair skills) and how successfully they completed the task which we set them. The
resulting analytic profile might end up looking like this:

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A combination of global and analytic scoring gives us the best chance of reliable marking.
However, a profusion of criteria may make the marking of a test extremely lengthy and cumbersome; test
designers and administrators will have to decide how to accommodate the competing claims of reliability and
practicality.

 Scoring and interacting during oral tests: scorer reliability in oral tests is helped not only by global
assessment scores and analytic profiles but also by separating the role of scorer (or examiner) from the
role of interlocutor (the examiner who guides and provokes conversation). This may cause practical
problems, but it will allow the scorer to observe and assess, free from the responsibility of keeping the
interaction with the candidate or candidates going. In many tests of speaking, students are now put in
pairs or groups for certain tasks since it is felt that this will ensure genuine interaction and will help to
relax students in a way that interlocutor-candidate interaction might not. However, at least one
commentator worries that pairing students in this way leads candidates to perform below their level of
proficiency, and that when students with the same mother tongue are paired together, their intelligibility
to the examiner may suffer (Foot 1999: 52).

Teaching for tests

One of the things that preoccupies test designers and teachers alike is what has been called the washback or
backwash effect. This refers to the fact that since teachers quite reasonably want their students to pass the
tests and exams they are going to take, their teaching becomes dominated by the test and, especially, by the
items that are in it. Where non-exam teachers might use a range of different activities, exam teachers
suffering from the washback effect might stick rigidly to exam-format activities. In such a situation, the format
of the exam is determining the format of the lessons.
Two points need to be taken into account when discussing the washback effect, however.
In the first place, modern tests - especially the direct items included in them - are grounded far more in
mainstream classroom activities and methodologies than some earlier examples of the genre. In other
words, there are many direct test questions which would not look out of place in a modern lesson anyway.
But secondly, even if preparing students for a particular test format is a necessity, 'it is as important to build
variety and fun into an exam course as it is to drive students towards the goal of passing their exam'
(Burgess and Head 2005: 1).

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And we can go further: many teachers find teaching exam classes to be extremely satisfying in that where
students perceive a clear sense of purpose - and are highly motivated to do as well as possible - they are in
some senses 'easier' to teach than students whose focus is less clear. When a whole class has something to
aim at, they may work with greater diligence than when they do not. Furthermore, in training students to
develop good exam skills (including working on their own, reviewing what they have done, learning to use
reference tools - e.g. dictionaries, grammar books, the Internet - keeping an independent learning record or
diary, etc.), we are encouraging exactly those attributes that contribute towards autonomous learning.
Good exam-preparation teachers need to familiarise themselves with the tests their students are taking,
and they need to be able to answer their students' concerns and worries. Above all, they need to be able to
walk a fine line between good exam preparation on the one hand, and not being swept away by the
washback effect on the other.

Adapted from The Practice of English Language Teaching, Jeremy Harmer 2007, Longman.

Copyright INTESOL Worldwide 2015

Unit 4 53 Module 2