Job Discussion Forums

[basiltherat]

hi
i'd like to know, from those who teach a majority of 'communicative' general english classes, how big your class sizes (number of students per class) are and how effectively you deal with large groups 30+ if u have any.
i teach groups of guys 6 hrs a day 6 days a week. started last year with just 15 which i thought was reasonable. its now grown to 30 +. it just doesnt seem to work well for me (or, i should say, the trainees) at all anymore.its a real struggle to see any positives for either teacher or the trainees in classes of such sizes. unfortunately, the course director hasnt reacted well to my suggestion that the groups ought to be split (economics perhaps ??).
i'm interested in your/others' situations re this subject.
regards
basil

[Freaky Deaky]

Classes with over 15 students are a joke!

Of course, the moronic, greedy school owners don't give a flying *beep*...

[shenyanggerry]

My typical class size was around thirty. With the English majors who always attended and tried, groupwork really succeeded. With the others, it worked but not as well.

[ls650]

Most of my classes have 10 to 12 students. I have one class right now with only 4 students, and the most students my school will place in one class is 14.

[Celeste]

When I taught at a private English school in Canada, our classes were from 4-12 students. Here in Japan, I do teach up to 30 at one time, but I have a CALL lab that seats 30 people, and it works very well. I can have half of the class working on the computers with headphones while I do something with the other half of the class, or I can assign work groups or partners over the computers and the students really seem to enjoy this.

[Gordon]

Last year, I taught a class of 70. It was a class that I inherited and was terrible because of its size. I eventually turned it into more of a listening class and some speaking in smaller groups.

[FGT]

You have both my sympathy and my respect - sympathy because no teacher should be expected to teach for six hours a day, six days a week. Six days a week is more than enough on its own - a 5-day week shouldn't average more than 5 hours teaching per day.

Respect because you're obviously good. Students want to learn from you, students stay in your classes, class size grows. Your employer obviously knows a good thing when he sees it. You (and your students) are suffering the consequences.

Advice: Change schools. You are good, sell yourself.

[basiltherat]

fgt
that's precisely what i intend to do (quit) when this term finishes. the course, as it is running now (30+ trainees), is turning into a farce. the strong students still seem interested and are keen to continue participating actively. the weaker ones have completely lost the plot mainly due, i believe, to being in such a large group and ,as a result, my being unable to monitor ,guide and give that personal touch effectively (i even tried getting the strongest trainee to help me monitor pair/groupwork) at the same time as getting through the course material on time. there now exists a chasm between strong and weak trainees. i think that, while i will hate myself for doing it, i might just have to wing it until the term ends and then .....
oh, well
regards
basil

[been_there]

I had a class of 70 in China. I would do things like 20 questions and current events discussions

One thing that worked well was what I called "mass information gap".

Here's what I did:

Get them in pairs (first time was CHAOS, but after a while, they got the idea) and numbered them 1 and 2.

Tell #2 to look in their book bag and see what they had.

Put a sample dialogue on the board (i.e.:
1. "Do you have a book in your bag?"
2. "Yes I do/No I don't.")

Tell them to ask the question untill they have guessed everything in the bag.

I would do this with whatever structure they were doing. For past tense:
1. "Did you go to school yesterday?"
2. "Yes I did/No I didn't"

Then they swap and #2 asks the questions.
etc.

I also had them draw pictures ("Draw your room at home."), then they had to describe it to the other person and they other person had to draw it.

I would always bring two of the brighter stars up to the front and have them demonstrate first before releasing the masses....

It was sloppy, but it kept the occupied. The ones that WANTED to learn gravitated to each other and used English. The ones who didn't didn't.

Also, work with the classroom setup. If it is a basic group, set them up in two lines facing each other and have them practice a simple dialogue ("Hello, what's your name? Where are you from? CD DVD CD-ROM?")
THEN take one pupil from the end of one line and move him to the other end of the line and everyone in that line takes a step down so they all have a NEW partner. Repeat untill boredom or comprehension set in.

With advanced groups: Circle games. I don't know your classroom setup, but GET RID OF THE DESKS and put the chairs in a circle. Fruit basket turnover is good for both vocabulary and communication. Have one less chair than student, and the extra student is in the middle. Give the other students vocabulary words (days of the week, animals, reasons why Tiawan is part of the Motherland) and when the person in the middle says their word, they have to get up and go to another chair. the person in the middle tries to get a chair, and the new person has to say a vocabulary word (encourage sentences, as they usually will just shout the word). This can be done freestyle for advanced groups: Say characteristics of people (i.e. "Everyone with black hair." or "Everyone who ate eggs for breakfast") then THOSE folk have to get a new chair.

Any dialoge can be practiced in a circle. Each student says their bit, then asks a question to the person next to them, sending it around the group. Can be done structured or freestyle.....

[Roger]

My very first classes in China numbered 60 students each in a normal school.
Next stop: An adult training centre: seldom more than 30, usually around 20. What a difference in terms of noise and distraction!

Later, in a kindergarten: around 25, infrequently 35, once 17 kids.

Recently in a college: 45.

Before that, in a vocational school: 70, and increasing...to 96.

I don't think any communicative technique can usefully be applied in China, since students simply lack intellectual abilities to tackle questions and problems, and the more students there are the lower the cjommon denominator.
You can pair them, but it's of little use beyond the repetitive reading aloud of model sentences and patterns. When they have to develop arguments and talk about something broad and general, they invariably stray from the topic, laugh about each other, and hardly pay any attention to what's being said.