Филологические науки. Методика и приемы контроля уровня владения иностранным языком.

I.G. Kozubskaya

National technical university of Ukraine “Kiev Politechnic Institute”

Teaching English in Multilevel Classes

To begin with, it will be useful to define what is considered to be “a large multilevel” class. Hess [3; 43] defines a large class as thirty or more in her book. Ur [4; 15] suggests that 40-50 students constitute a large class. However, Baker and Westrup [1; 27] provide a useful definition by stating that: “a large class can be any number of students, if the teacher feels there are too many students for them all to make progress”.

In this paper we will speak about multilevel class that consists of 28-30 students who communicate in English at a variety of different levels, from beginners to upper-intermediate. The existence of such classes is often caused by limited budgets of schools and universities that can’t afford themselves to employ more teachers.

There are some advantages of the multilevel classroom that can help teacher to achieve success and challenges to be overcome.

Advantages of multilevel classrooms are:

1. Students are able to learn at their own pace.

2. Students learn to work well in a group.

3. Students become independent learners.

4. Students develop strong relationships with their peers.

5. Students become partners in learning.

Challenges of multilevel classrooms are:

1. Finding appropriate teaching resources and material.

2. Organizing appropriate groupings within the class.

3. Building an effective self-access centre in the classroom.

4. Determining the individual needs of each student.

5. Ensuring that all students are challenged and interested.

6. Enforcing English only policies when teacher is occupied and students are working in small groups or pairs.

However, these challenges are not insurmountable. There are a number of ways for coping with such issues. We will describe five of them which are, to our mind, the most important.

I. Group work.

According to CALPRO article [2] on managing the multilevel classroom “the use of grouping strategies has been found to be an effective management tool in multilevel setting to provide efficient use of teacher and student time. Students can assist each other, which frees the teacher to work with individuals or small groups”.

There are four ways to group students:

· Pair work (2 students working together);

· Group work (3 to 10 students working together );

· Teamwork (teams of students working together in competition with other teams);

· Whole-class work (the entire class participating in an activity).

II. Variety of activities and techniques.

Students cannot concentrate on an activity for more than a limited length of time. If an activity goes on too long, the mind begins to wander, no matter how fascinating the subject. So, if the students have been reading silently for a while, the teacher should let them join a partner and read to each other. If they have been working on something very challenging, perhaps it is time to switch to something lighter.

III. Student motivation and activation.

Hess [3; 103] points out that there are a few important things to remember: it is not necessary to hear everything said or read everything written, students should talk about real issues of importance to them, and there should be activities with many choices of expression. Some suggested topics and themes that might of interest to students include: people I admire, special places, friendship, favorite things, carriers, etc.

Also, it is important to consider individualization, which allows for personalization, choice, and open endedness that can inspire motivation and lead to activation. Ur [4; 156] describes individualization as a situation in which learners are given freedom to choose what they learn and adopt or select tasks and materials, which suit them as individuals.

IV. Appropriate selecting of materials.

Unfortunately, there are no books for multilevel students, especially when there are students with both the level of beginners and upper intermediate. That’s why it’s a challenge for a teacher to select appropriate materials for students that would reflect their needs and interest. One of the options is to use a theme based approach. Keeping all students working on activities based on the same theme is a great way of maintaining a class-like atmosphere in a multilevel classroom. The teacher may photocopy many copies of worksheets and exercises from different textbooks, divide the class into groups according to students’ level and give each of the group copies on the particular topic.

Another suggestion is using pictures from magazines or drawn to illustrate vocabulary or create interest in reading, speaking or writing activities.

V. Setting up routines.

In the large class, where so many personalities interact and so much human energy is expended, both teacher and students need the comfort and stability of established routines. The class operates much more smoothly if early in the semester certain conventions are established. Some examples of routine procedures are: starting the lesson with a warm up activity (for example, preparing recent news and discussing it), the way attendance is checked, and the way students sign up for special projects.

So, as we see, there are ways to keep teacher’s head above water when teaching in a multilevel classroom. It is the individual teacher’s role that is effective in determining the rate of language acquisition and learning in the classroom. If the teacher is open to reorganizing the classroom and allowing more activities, then a student will be in a better position to learn. There are always ways to make learning more fun, easier for the teacher and students, so it’s important to keep looking for better more effective ways of instruction.

Literature:

1. Baker J., Westrup H. The English teacher’s handbook: How to teach large classes with few resources/Baker J., Westrup H. – London: Continuum, 2000. – l75 p.

2. General strategies for managing a multilevel ESL class. // www.calpro-online org.

3. Hess N. Teaching large multilevel classes/Hess N. – Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001. – 197 p.

4. Ur P. A course in language teaching/ Ur P. – Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. – 154 p.