Suggestions for Mixed Level ESL Classrooms
Teaching English as a Second language is hard enough to teach to non-native speakers. But it is even more difficult if the class is composed of students who have varying learning abilities, or are on different levels, or maybe even both. In order for teachers to be able to effectively teach the ESL Curriculum, the class should be organized in a way that nobody feels like they are wasting time waiting for the other students to understand the English Activities and lessons or feels pressure in needing to catch up with the more advanced students.
An effective way to deal with this situation is to give up the lockstep teaching, in which the students are simultaneously working on the same ESL activity. By doing this, the teacher can work intensely with a particular group while letting the others work independently. The necessary thing with this is that the teacher should have suitable ESL teaching materials for independent study on hand. It could be in any format but the most ideal is by using computers so the students would have easy access to online materials.
The ESL teaching materials and curriculum should be the basis for all the lessons. This way, the students could work at their own level and pace while the teacher would go around the classroom to monitor each student and provide help and explanation, if necessary. This is the best solution for classes that have obvious difference in learning abilities. But if there were only a little disparity, then the teacher could possibly just integrate the independent work into the more traditional class lessons.
The key in teaching English as a second language to students of mixed level is to be able to develop the identity of each group in class and be able to provide them with independent lesson plans. The teacher cannot treat the entire class as just a single group. Extra planning is definitely needed in mixed level ESL classrooms. This may seem like more workload for the teacher, but one way to reduce the load is by selecting just a single topic and then creating exercises that have varying level of difficulty around it. The teacher should bear in mind that students have different capabilities in various skills. Some can speak better than they write or read, and vice versa.
Although it would be less time-consuming for students to work simultaneously, with this case, the teacher has to adjust to the students and let them work accordingly to their own level. There may be times that one group would do oral activities while the others would concentrate on just reading and writing. The teacher should effectively be able to handle classroom management by explaining to students why there are sub-groups in class and how all these groups work. Also, the teacher should clarify to the students that the instructions would be different for all groups and that they should carefully listen and pay attention to the given instructions. Finally, the teacher should make sure that the students understand the instructions.