CLASSROOM DYNAMICS By Benjamin Moore Language Insitute, Thammasat University

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1 CLASSROOM DYNAMICS By Benjamin Moore Language Insitute, Thammasat University Your classroom is a potential gold mine for the discovery of a diverse mix of different personalities, interests, insights and contributors. Being at a university, teachers are often faced with a broad range of abilities and experiences in English language learning. It is paramount that the group is developed into an effective working environment where the affective filter of individuals is reduced as much as possible, and anxiety is at a minimum. Sacrificing course content for the first session or two in which time is effectively used to develop the group might, quite possibly, pay large rewards in the future. In Thammasat, as we move away from traditional classroom based instruction with the teacher as the dominant figure towards more student-focused, tasked-based pedagogy, it is crucial to remind ourselves of the culture of learning are students have been used to and the kind of classroom experiences they have been through before stepping into your class, where you expect them to think critically about an article you ve just found in The Economist magazine. The best resource teachers have at their disposal to aid in this transition is the students themselves. Many of them will be familiar with task-based instruction, while others may just be more extroverted and more willing to take risks. By introducing activities which actively seek collaboration between students, which reduce anxiety and are more likely to encourage participation, the overall atmosphere and what is gained from the course can be greatly enhanced. FIRST CLASS It s sometimes difficult to know what exactly to do for the first class of a new course. Some people may feel that going through the course outline and book is enough, however, this is also the time to start opening up your new resource, the students. Remember that any activities should: be light and fun be engaging and encourage collaboration reduce anxiety enable students to begin to form relationships with their peers have very little to do with the course at this point A great activity to start a class is a mill-drill in which students are asked to find student s names. Traditionally known a s a find someone who activity, students are given short statements such as Find someone who has been scuba diving. They then walked around class asking students questions trying to find names for all their statements as quickly as possible. Mill drills can be kept simple for low levels or they can be encouraged to make the questions themselves if they are more advanced.

2 P a g e 2 Simple Mill Drill Find someone who...? NAME 1. Do you have a cat? _Bird 2. Can you drive a car? Tik Mill drill in which students need to formulate the question Find someone who...? NAME 1. has a cat Toon 2. is fan of Lady Gaga Roger 3. can say I love you in five different languages Benu 4. has been to Doi Inthanon Julie Some of you may think that the questions above are a little random. You do need to really consider what is going on in the world and what you students are showing interest in at this moment. Indeed, it is a teacher s responsiblity to know their students, and this goes well beyond their English level. For example, in the present climate an engaging question could be, find someone who has ever been planking! (an activity where people lie flat out on random objects a bit like a plank of wood). Another useful idea is to embed elements of the course secretly into the questions. For example, in an economics class, find someone who knows what the currency of India is called. This could also work with vocabulary items, e.g. find someone who knows what sustainability means. It is probably best at this stage of the course to not make the mill drill too much about the course. Now, hopefully your students have walked around the room talking to people they ve never spoken to before and shared some personal information. Remember they do have to walk around; it won t be very effective in they just ask one person. If all has gone well, this small amount of interaction has helped break the ice to an English class which, let s face it, can be very intimidating for certain people. Now, the next part is to go through the mill drill as a group. With everyone sitting down the teacher can now elicit the correct questions from the milldrill and then share the group s stories and experiences with students shouting out the names of the students they ve found. This can be an entertaining experience for all, and great for learning names and personalities. Hopefully all students have relaxed somewhat as a result of this process and are ready to begin studying with a reduced feeling of anxiety. Additionally, similar mill-drill activities can be used again later when you want students to practice fluency with a language point from the class.

3 P a g e 3 CLASSROOM INTRODUCTIONS If the course is to be going on for some time, then it is critical then you give students an opportunity to share themselves with the group. Making connections early on in class is sure to aid group collaborations later on. Therefore, I like students to introduce themselves, or rather a friend. How this works is that I split the class into two halves. So, if there are 24 students, there are two halves of 12. I then randomly assign a number to each student 1-12 two times. Next the students are paired-up together with the student that has the same number as themselves (if there is an odd number of students them may be one group of three). Another useful way to pair students is to use opposites - word pairs where the students are given a card and they have to locate the student who has the opposite card (e.g. loud quiet). This is also a useful technique for introducing new vocabulary items. This person is who they will interview and present to the class. Having to present someone else helps to reduce anxiety a little, as people generally find it easier talking about someone else. The students then have to present their new friend to the class. It is useful to give them some kind of outline of what to present, for example they could present: Name/Nickname Hometown Favourite band/film An interesting fact Future dream/dream job/why they want to study in this class If the students are of a lower level, to reduce the pressure of standing up in front of the class and taking in foreign language, give them a simple framework to fill-in. Her/His name is. She s/he s from. When she/he gets some free-time she/he likes to. An interesting fact about him/her is that. In the future she/he would love to. By interviewing and presenting someone they have just met, you have started off the class by demonstrating the importance of working together in order to complete tasks and promoting the importance of good working relationships in your classroom. Instantly, the two people have made a small connection with each other, even though they could well be very different kinds of people. To some students, just the idea of standing up in front of the class can cause them to go wobbly at the knees, and some teachers may feel that this activity could put students off. However, it is important to establish the philosophy that your class in about active participation, that everyone is equal and interesting and it will give them an experience of presenting something light before they get into academic style presentations demanded in your class.

4 P a g e 4 NOUGHTS AND CROSSES Noughts and crosses, also known as tic-tak-toe (X,O) is a useful game to present language elements and encourage students to use new language elements. Divide the class into two groups and present the table on the board. Students have to successfully use the elements in the box in a sentence to win the square. For example: (i) past simple X, O. (ii) Question word X,O love play buy How? What? Can? eat watch be drink give have When? Which? Do? Where? Is/Are? Who? Students have to use the words in the boxes to win an X or O in that square. For instance, Which country would you like to visit? When do you go to bed at the weekends? These grids can be combined with other language elements, for example, frequency adverbs I rarely eat popcorn, I sometimes drink coffee. Once the game has been demonstrated it is useful to present students with their own grids, so that they can play the game in pairs or small groups to increase individual student s participation.

5 P a g e 5 PRONUNCIATION Consciousness raising exercise Many teachers make pronunciation teaching an integral part of their pedagogy, while others feel that it is something which is absorbed naturally when the language is presented. Although I do think that pronunciation teaching is important, I personally don t tend to teach full-on pronunciation classes, but instead address pronunciation concerns when they arise, or those particular problem areas which are common to all of my learners in general. In Thai students, these include sounds such as the /S/, /Z/, and /IZ/, which make up the endings of many present simple third person verbs, the distinction between /L/ and /R/ in English and past simple /ed/ endings. Therefore, for example, when teaching the past simple or ed adjectives I find it useful to provide exercises which provide the opportunity for students to notice a difference in the sounds. The following such activity is based on a popular fairy tale, which nearly everyone knows, and provides a useful way of understanding the difference in past simple sounds. 1. First of all, the following passage is presented, and whilst reading, the students are encouraged to fill in the gaps to engage themselves with the story. GOLDILOCKS Once upon a time there was a little girl. She had long golden hair and her mother called her goldilocks. She went one day deep into the forest to look for mushrooms. She saw a house, and she felt hungry so she walked up to the door and knocked. She heard no answer, so she opened the door and stepped in. There were three bowls of porridge on the table; a big one, a medium one and a small one. She tasted the big one but it was too hot. She tasted the medium one but it was too cold. She tasted the small one and it tasted just right, so she ate it all up. Then Goldilocks felt sleepy, so she climbed the stairs and crept into the bedroom. There were beds. A bed, a medium-sized bed and a bed. She tried the big bed but hard. She tried the medium bed but soft, then she tried the small bed and it felt just right, so she fell asleep. Then the three bears came back into their house. Daddy bear noticed his bowl. Somebody s been eating my porridge he said. Somebody s been eating my porridge said Mummy bear. Then the baby bear cried Somebody s been eating my porridge and they ve eaten it all up! So the three bears wasted no time. They crept slowly upstairs. Daddy bear noticed his bed. Somebody s sleeping he said. Somebody s been said Mummy bear. Then baby bear cried s, s still! After the students have finished, the whole passage is read by the teacher and the answers for the gaps are elicited from the students.

6 P a g e 6 3. Now, it s time to focus on the sounds of ed endings. Students are asked to identify all of the past verbs and to arrange them into the following table based on the whether they are regular or irregular. regular t regular d regular id irregular called was/were 4. By this point, the student s consciousness, with regard to the sound of the three ed past simple endings, will have been raised. The teacher can then drill these words and sounds with the students. They are then in a position to begin using the past simple in conversations and to be able to tell their own stories effectively. 5. If the teacher wanted to they could point out that we find the /t/ sound after words ending in voiceless consonants (e.g. walked); we hear the /d/ sound after voiced consonants (e.g. played); and we hear /Id/ if it follows the consonants /t/ or /d/ (e.g. started).