How to Teach English if the class is very big. Useful tips.

Rather often we have to teach large classes or groups of students. The teacher’s work in large classes differs from that one in small groups. Firstly in big classes it’s difficult for the teacher to have constant contact with all the students during the lesson, especially with those at the back of the classroom. At the same time it’s rather difficult for the students to ask for and to receive individual attention from the teacher. It sometimes may seem impossible to organize dynamic and creative teaching and learning sessions. Moreover big classes frequently mean that it’s not easy to rearrange students in groups or change pairs as it’s uncomfortable to move about the classroom. Most important thing is that big classes can be quite a problem for inexperienced teachers. Despite the prob-lems of big classes there are things which teacher can do.
Use pair work and group work as much as possible instead of individual work. In large classes pair work and group work play an important role as they allow the teacher to maximize the students’ participation in the lesson. Even where chairs and desks cannot be moved easily, there are ways of doing this: first rows turn to face second rows, third rows turn to face fourth rows, left rows turn to face right rows etc. When using pair work or group work with large groups, it is important to make instructions especially clear and short. It’s also important to agree about the signal to start doing and to finish doing the activity. You may use a raised hand, clapping your hands, or a bell ringing or any other idea.
While you teach reading use “jigsaw reading”. Divide the text into parts and put the students into groups. Distribute the paragraphs and the tasks among the groups. Then give the groups the limited time to do the task. After the work is finished, rearrange the students to share the information, or ask each group to present their feedback. You can give different paragraphs to different groups or different tasks to the same text.
When you teach students speaking it becomes difficult to use a lot of individual repetition and controlled practice. It may be more appropriate to drill students in chorus. Sometimes to avoid too much noise, the class can be divided into halves. For example, the front rows and the back rows or the left-hand side and the right-hand side of the classroom. Each half can then speak a part of a dialogue, ask or answer questions, repeat sentences or words etc. This is especially useful at lower level.
When you teach students listening, it’s vital to think about acoustics and vision. Big classes are often in big rooms. Teachers have to make sure that what they show or write can be seen and what they say or play to the whole group can be heard clearly.
One good solution for the teacher in a large group is to hand out worksheets for many of the tasks. When the feedback stage is reached the teacher can go through the worksheets with the whole class and each student will get the benefit and evaluation. The only problem for the teacher is to prepare the necessary number of copies each time.
Use group leaders when working in big classes. Some students can help the teacher to distribute textbooks, notebooks, handouts, worksheets, copies and other materials. They can collect papers, works and give feedback. The best students in the class can be put into different groups and maintain the work of the whole group. They can be given special tasks, they can be used as guides and be responsible for the work of the whole group.
Use exchange checking of students’ papers when you give your students any grammar test or spelling quiz, dictation or other kind of written work. After the activity is completed ask your students to exchange their notebooks and give them the key to check up their peers’ papers. Or you may ask some of the students to check up the papers of the whole class (of course you should assess their work).
There is a problem the teacher can face while using pair work or group work. The students keep using their native language instead of English to perform classroom tasks. They certainly find speaking in their language a lot easier than struggling with English. Teachers can discuss this situation with students and try to get their students’ agreement that overuse of their own language means that they will have less chance and time to learn English. A little bit of the students’ native language when they are working for example at the reading text is not a great problem. But a speaking activity will lose its purpose if not done in English. Teachers can also make it clear that they want to hear English; they can ignore what the students say in their native language. Teachers themselves should speak English for the majority of the time. Together with the use of listening material and video the students are constantly exposed how English sounds and what it feels like. While the students put in small groups are doing an activity, the teacher should be prepared to go round the class reminding, asking, encouraging, even pleading with the students to use English and offering help if necessary. This technique, constantly repeated, will gradually change most students’ behavior over a period of time.
If the student is uncooperative while working in the group try to develop individual tasks for each student inside the group or for this student only. Construct the group tasks so they can be fully achieved if only every student benefits. Ask groups to present their feedback in chain inside the group, distribute not only the tasks but the roles inside the group or let the students in the group do it themselves (for example, one can be a manager, another one or two generate ideas, one makes notes, still other summarize the ideas; one can be the reader while another one is the judge or the speaker for the whole group, somebody should mind the time or work with reference materials. The list is endless.).
Sometimes we come across students who don’t want to talk in class. There are different reasons for this. To encourage such students, use pair work, it will help to provoke quiet students into talking. While they are with one or two other students they are not under so much pressure as if they are asked to speak in front of the whole class.
When teachers put students into groups and ask them to complete a task they can be prepared that some group or groups will finish earlier than others. It the activity has a competitive element it’s OK. If not, the teacher is puzzled what to do: to stop the activity not finished or to go on waiting for all the groups to complete it. Common sense has to prevail here. If only one group is the first to finish, you can give them another task or tasks to do. Or you can prepare some ‘spare activities’ beforehand to cope with the situation. If only one group hasn’t finished the activity it may be sensible to stop it.
If the students in a large group are at different language levels it makes the problem of teaching and learning in such group even harder. There are some possible ways of dealing with this situation. First the teacher can use different materials for different groups of students in the class. For example, while one group is doing some grammar exercise the other group can work with reading text. Later on when a better group is discussing a topic, a weaker group can do writing exercise, etc.
The teacher can also give different tasks to different groups or pairs on the same material depending on their language level. For instance, while reading the text the weaker students should find the English equivalents of some phrases but the more advanced students will answer the comprehension questions on the story. It’s a good idea to adopt a strategy of peer help and teaching so that better students can help the weaker ones. They can work with them in pairs or groups explaining things or providing good models of language performance in speaking or writing. So when you put your students in groups be sure you put weak and strong students in one group together. However this should be done very sensitively so that students don’t feel oppressed or humiliated. The best way is to use a mixture of solutions.
Large groups of students have their disadvantages of course, but they also have one main advantage – they are bigger, so the humour, for example, in such groups is funnier, the drama is more dramatic, a good class feeling is warmer. Experienced teachers use this potential to organize exciting and involving classes.
No one chooses a large group: it makes the job of teaching students a foreign language more challenging than it already is. We hope some of the suggestions above will help to turn a potential disaster into some kind of a success.