Автор: Рубан Оксана Александровна
Должность: учитель английского языка
Учебное заведение: ГБОУ СОШ № 603
Населённый пункт: Санкт–Петербург
Наименование материала: статья
Тема: Обучение учащихся в больших группах или целом классе
Раздел: среднее образование
Methodology: teaching large classes
Often when teachers are faced with large classes they begin to worry about how they will teach. It’s
tempting to simply let the classes become teacher fronted and turn into lectures. If the entire course is
like this it’s a bit of a shame, as opportunities for students to practise and use the language are quite
limited. In this respect, large classes are viewed as problematic and in a negative light. However, this
does not need to be the case. Yes, large classes, especially those of 100+, are a challenge but there are
many positive aspects to such classes. For us, one of the biggest plusses is the dynamic nature of such
classes. With so many students there are lots of opportunities to get people to work together, compare,
discuss and benefit from the variety of voices.
Of course, there are practical implications both in terms of arranging activities and issues with things such
as photocopying. So, here are a few tips on how to deal with large classes including using reading texts.
We go from the easiest to the more challenging.
Choral drilling
With a large group, choral drilling can work quite well. In its most basic form, choral drilling involves you
giving an oral model of a word or phrase and the whole class repeating it.
Choral drilling can be quite a lot of fun, and it can make some bits of language more memorable. Just ask
Li Yang, the founder of Crazy English – a method of learning English in China. He has classes of over
twenty thousand (20,000 that’s right!) and uses choral drilling as part of his method – getting his students
to shout phrases out loud.
Use choral drilling to practise new words or phrases, especially phrases that will be useful in a future
communicative activity. You can also do choral drilling for dialogues (first you say and they repeat, then
you say one bit and they say the other, then they do it in two large groups) before asking students to
practice it in pairs together. See the sections on drills and dialogues in the Teaching with Minimal
Resources section for more ideas and material.
Note: if you feel uncomfortable always giving the model sentence then use a listening exercise from a CD
or tape if you have one.
Think, pair, share
This is a technique we learned from large university lectures in North America. Put up on the board or
project the words: THINK-PAIR-SHARE. Briefly explain the meaning:
Think individually about your answer to the question.
Pair with the person next to you.
Share your thoughts, in English.
Then ask your first question and point to the word THINK. Ask them to think quietly about their answer.
Then point to PAIR and let them turn to a partner. Then point to SHARE and gesture for them to share
their answers – in English.
Use this technique for short pairwork speaking activities (search the Speaking Skills lessons section for
material containing discussion questions) or for comprehension tasks based on texts (use the Topical
News lessons section).
Dictogloss
A wonderful technique that really lends itself well to large classes, especially when there is limited
movement because of layout issues. Pick a short text (perhaps a paragraph from one of the Topical News
lessonssection). Ask your students to close their notebooks and put down their pens. Explain that you will
read a text and you want them to listen carefully.
Read the text and then ask students to write down everything they can remember. Put students in pairs or
small groups and ask them to share ideas and try and reconstruct the text. If you want you can read it out
again, but make sure students aren’t writing while you are dictating. You could also write up a series of
questions on the board (these could be the comprehension questions) and tell students that the answers
to the questions will help them reconstruct the text.
Using an anecdote
Choose one of the anecdotes from the Teacher Anecdotes section and tell your students you are going to
read out a short story that happened to someone. You might want to take the opportunity to turn this into
a prediction activity. You could read out a few lines and then ask students to talk in pairs or small groups
and predict what happened next. Then continue the story and watch a few of your students to see who
got it right – you’ll easily be able to tell from their reaction.
You could also turn it into a vocabulary prediction activity. Read a part of the story and then stop. Ask
students to write down the next word. Again, get them to compare with a partner before continuing with
the story. Both of these ideas give students an extra reason to listen and will help them focus. Of course,
as a follow-up you could ask students to work in small groups and share their own anecdotes around a
certain topic.
Group leaders
With a class of 148 students, groupwork is going to be very difficult. However, we have seen groupwork
used in large classes. One thing that helps is asking groups to assign a leader. So, in a class of 100 you
might have twenty groups of 5 students. The group leaders can:
report back on a speaking activity
collect written work and hand it back to the teacher (or exchange with another group and do peer
correction)
be responsible for checking answers to an exercise (you prepare copies of the answers and give
a copy to each group leader once they have finished doing the exercise)
If you and your students get into using groups, you may want to experiment with the following favourite
techniques.
Jigsaw texts
Another technique is to take a longer text and make 30 copies. You could use the material in the Reading
Skills section. Cut the text into five sections (A-E). Put your students into groups of five and give each
student within a group one section of the text. Each student reads their text and then summarises the
content for the other students.
Follow-up activities can include deciding on the correct order of the five sections and the standard
comprehension question that would normally be done for the whole text. Of course, both these activities
require the students within a group to work together and help each other.
Running Dictation
This activity is a favourite of many teachers but requires a little extra thought with large classes. After all,
you can’t really have 74 students running backwards and forwards! However, if you divide your class into
groups of five or six, one student can be the messenger and must read a text that is posted on the wall of
the classroom. They then run between the text and the other four or five students in their group. These
students listen to the ‘runner’ and write the text. Each time the ‘runner’ goes back to the text to read the
next piece the ‘scribes’ can compare what they have written and help each other. This means in a class of
148 there are thirty runners. This activity works best where the texts are no longer than a paragraph.