Teaching Conversational English to 60 Students

[Eteachernumber1]

Question, how do you teach conversational English to a class of 60 students?

 

I usually only teach around 25, but for the last 2 weeks I have had to take on much larger classes. There is barely room to sit in my classroom, so forget standing up to perform role plays. Also, I work in a public school, so just getting students to respond with a one word answer can be a challenge sometimes. Last week and this week I have taught Christmas vocabulary, played a game and issued a couple of worksheets such as match the pictures to the words. I am beating myself up a bit, feeling as if I'm not achieving very much with my students, and feeling as though I'm not really teaching 'conversation.' Any tips or advice from experienced professionals? I've only been in the game for 5 weeks.

[ChTTay]

There is a fair amount of stuff online for teaching large classes. Including stuff directed at Chinese schools. 

 

Essentially, in a class of 30-60 you’re going to need to try and use mixed teams and pair work. For the mixed teams, make someone the team leader and give them some kind of responsibility. For example, giving out worksheets, organising the team, making sure everyone is working etc. You can rotate team leaders. 

 

There is 100% opportunity for role play in large classes. If you’ve got mixed teams, they don’t need to stand up to do it. Just do it sat down. 

 

I’m not sure of the level but try put everything in a question and answer or at least a sentence. If you’re teaching one word vocabulary then they’ll likely say one word.

 

Once you’ve got a nice Q/A for them to practice just think / find team or pair games that involves using that. A no-prep example would be “rock paper scissors”. Introduce the question so students understand (e.g. a video, a demo, role play, modelling) then do some drilling. For a big class you can drill as a class, by team, by row, by boy/girl etc. Mix it up.

 

You then demo how to “play”. For this you’d ideally use a teaching assistant. If not, a student. Show them how to play RPS and that the “winner” gets to ask the question. Repeat a few times. Play again and ask “who asks?” To check understanding. 

 

Once that’s done break off into pairs and groups. Walk round and listen. If your class students aren’t confident, you can avoid individual correction at first during this phase. Just walk round and make notes. Stop the class and review together the different issues you spotted. You can do this written or verbal depending on the level. For older students, write them up and get them to come to the front to write the correction. 

 

If you have some time, see if any pairs want to stand up and demonstrate for the class. You can also pick a few that have tried hard during pairwork. 

 

Replace RPS with another pair or group activity and repeat the process.

 

You can buy small dice very cheaply and they can be useful for a lot of activities. I used to like having a question up like:

 

What do you like to do?

I like to _____

1) play ball 2) dance 3) fly a kite etc

 

I then gave each pair a dice and a cup. The dice MUST remain in the cup. The student without the cup asks the question. The student with the cup shakes it (with hand over the cup) and looks at the dice. If the dice is (1) then they use answer 1 from the board. 

 

Hope it helps!

[ChTTay]

First page searching “Teaching large classes China” in google gave me some good hits. Bound to be more out there.

 

davesESL discussion

 

British council - things to consider

 

Teaching ESL website - 27 games

[Eteachernumber1]

Thanks a lot, solid response. Appreciate the simplicity too.

[imron]

1 hour ago, Eteachernumber1 said:

Also, I work in a public school, so just getting students to respond with a one word answer can be a challenge sometimes

Before asking questions, split people into pairs or groups and give them time to talk and discuss about the things you want them to answer.  If you ask someone cold you'll get nothing.  If someone has just spent 5 minutes practising with their friends the things they can say then you'll get much better responses (especially if you've been walking from group to group giving suggestions).

 

When splitting in to groups, *don't* let the students pick the groups.  It will take too long, so just split them up in to the appropriate size for the activity based on where they are sitting.

 

Also never just ask a question out to the class and expect an answer (Anyone? Anyone?).   Instead always choose someone specifically to give you an answer.  If they've already spent a few minutes practising they should be able to do it.  If they really can't, ask the other group members to tell you the things they discussed.

 

I'd also forget roleplays - or at least role plays where groups have to present to the class.  The problem with using them in large classes is that the other students get bored while the rest of the performances are going on.  They also have nothing to do except listen - which may not be so interesting and so they'll look for other things to do (talk among themselves, read books) and that's when you start losing the class.  If you're going to role play set a task, split the class in to groups, and let them discuss among themselves while you walk from group to group making notes, offering suggestions and so forth, but limit their roleplay activity to that time in the group, with no presentation to the class.  This way most people spend most of the class with something to do.

 

Simple ideas: have one person be an employer and one person a job applicant - then get them to roleplay a job interview.  Provide relevant vocab and phrases at the start of class and then allow for a few minutes of discussion and preparation time *before* the activity begins so they can do things like figure out things like the details of the company, the type of job they are looking to fill and the background of the applicant and so on.  Once finished, swap roles, have them prepare new background information and then go again.

 

One of the best role play activities I ever did was cut out pictures of people from a magazine, enough for one per person (or one picture per two people) with an even number of male and female pictures, split the class in to pairs and then got everyone to come up with a background story for their picture - name, occupation, age (make all pictures of adults, and stipulating 20 as the minimum age for reasons you'll see in a minute),  *plus* 3 positive attributes and 3 negative attributes about their person.  Give them 10-15 minutes to do that, then tell the class they are the parent of the person in the picture and they are trying to find a suitable partner for their child to marry and they have to go and talk to all the other groups to find the right person (don't reveal this before they have created the persona for their person otherwise they won't put anything bad for the negative attributes, and the negative attributes will be where half the fun of this lesson comes from).  The entire process should be carried out entirely in English.   10-15 minutes before the end of class, stop the activity and get people to discuss if they found anyone suitable.  You'll get some hilarious stories.  This activity probably won't work with 60 students and no room to move (the most I ever had to do it with was about 45 and it got quite rowdy), but if you get back to teaching smaller classes, it'll probably be one of the most fun lessons your students have.

 

If your students are capable of it, I'd also implement a strict 'no speaking in chinese' rule.  The way I used to do this, was to teach the class the words and actions to 'I'm a little teapot' in the very first lesson of the semester, getting them all to sing along and do the actions.  They'll think it's great fun.  Then when they know it well, tell them that from now on, there's to be no Chinese spoken in class, and anyone caught speaking Chinese has to come up the front and perform "I'm a little teapot".   Once a couple of people have had to go up and sing, you'll get very little Chinese spoken in class for the rest of the semester - you'll even get people dobbing in their friends who are whispering in Chinese because they'll think it's funny if they have to go up and sing and dance.

 

 

 

[Eteachernumber1]

''If your students are capable of it, I'd also implement a strict 'no speaking in chinese' rule.  The way I used to do this, was to teach the class the words and actions to 'I'm a little teapot' in the very first lesson of the semester, getting them all to sing along and do the actions.  They'll think it's great fun.  Then when they know it well, tell them that from now on, there's to be no Chinese spoken in class, and anyone caught speaking Chinese has to come up the front and perform "I'm a little teapot".   Once a couple of people have had to go up and sing, you'll get very little Chinese spoken in class for the rest of the semester - you'll even get people dobbing in their friends who are whispering in Chinese because they'll think it's funny if they have to go up and sing and dance.''

 

That is golden. Thank you. Definitely implementing next term.

[ChTTay]

Good addition there! Definitely reccomend doing everything Imron and I have said 

[imron]

44 minutes ago, Eteachernumber1 said:

That is golden. Thank you. Definitely implementing next term.

It made classes so much easier to manage!  Normally there would always be a few students in each class with poor English and they'd start talking in Chinese and drag the rest of the class down with them.  Once you implement this rule those students will either make more effort to participate or they'll stay silent - either way they won't be disrupting the rest of the class.

[Flickserve]

On 20/12/2017 at 10:46 PM, Eteachernumber1 said:

That is golden. Thank you. Definitely implementing next term.

 

Come back and tell us how it worked it. 

[Eteachernumber1]

2 hours ago, Flickserve said:

Come back and tell us how it worked it. 

 

I couldn’t resist using it straight away so yesterday in the last 2 lessons I told students that if they were caught talking when they shouldn’t be, they would have to stand up by themselves and sing “I wish you a merry Christmas.” It 100% helped. The couple of times I did ask a student to stand they became extremely embarrassed and very thankful that I allowed that to be their final warning.

[Yangguo]

  Id sure look for a school that did not require such a large class. You can accomplish more with smaller classes.