Managing mixed ability classes | Teaching English | British Council

Yuvaraj from India in his email message to me has raised an issue relating to the management of mixed ability classes and I would like to discuss it as a forum topic here. I think the ability heterogeneity of the learners is a common problem teachers face in their daily classroom teaching. In my teaching career, I have always encountered students of varying interests, attitude and the levels of intelligence: some students are sharp; others are rather slow. The fundamental question is how to be fair to all the types. There is no easy answer to this question, but still I would like respond to the issue by sharing some of the ways that I have either seen or have practised in my own teaching.

a) Most private schools in Nepal divide classes into different sections depending upon the performance of the students. The best ones are placed in one section and others are divided accordingly. This allows the teachers to plan the lessons suitable for the sections they are going to teach. The government schools also try to follow this strategy.

b) In my earlier years, I chose a middle path: I did not move with the very intelligent ones nor did I wait for the slowest ones.

c) These days, I actually “teach” less and manage the class more: I set the tasks and help the slow ones. When the intelligent ones finish the tasks, I ask them to help those who haven’t. The slow ones are given more time in advisement sessions in which they receive help with their tasks as well as counselling for study skills. I can do this because I have only 20 students in my class. But with the class of 60 or 100 (these numbers are common in Nepal), I really do not know how to manage the classes. Referring to this issue, Penny Ur (2005) in her Keynote speech she delivered at the 10th International Conference of NELTA in Kathmandu said, “As with many educational problems, there are no easy solutions. We could, perhaps largely solve [the problem of mixed ability classes] by preparing different tasks to suit different groups within the class; or by preparing several texts at varying levels of difficulty, as suggested by some methodologists. But most of us have neither the time nor the money to invest in such elaborate preparation, let alone the time to check the results later.”

So friends, please share your experiences of handling the mixed ability classes whether your strategies have worked or they have not.

Regards

Laxman from Nepal

Comments

giganick

are there classes not of mixed ability?

Submitted on 25 July, 2008 - 09:50

Hi Laxman,

This is a very interesting issue.

The easiest lesson for mixed abilities is setting an open task, such as write about your summer holiday.

In formative assessment and practice tasks, I set problems at a range of levels. All students who try should be able to get 30 per cent, and none will get 100 without a little assistance.

As with you, I set tasks and assist weak students or ensure that other students are.

I change the pace continuously so as to challenge the top students while also allowing the weakest students to succeed.

The most important factor in determining the success of all these activities is that the students have very clear targets of action, all have high possibility of achieving what they would consider success, and they know how these activities will improve their English.

I do this with classes of 40 very reluctant students to mixed levels of success. My biggest concern is that in allowing students to work at different levels, support peers, discuss, and assess each other, I am encouraging riotous loud classrooms that create a poor impression among the many chalk and talk teachers of my school.

Good luck,

Nick