Marmara Elt Resources

Effective Classroom Management Is About Getting Pupils To Follow Your Instructions
When we are put in stressful situations the directions and instructions we give out to pupils who are causing problems us are often very unclear and impulsive. As such they virtually guarantee conflict when they are stated.Children become confused unless the instructions we give them are very specific – especially when they are in a state of anxiety themselves.
Let’s not also forget that a large proportion of pupils in our classes are EBD, ADHD or on the autistic spectrum and as such, have a genuine need for unambiguous, precise instructions.
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Giving and Checking Instructions

Some of the activities that we use in the classroom are fairly complex in terms of the way they’re organised, and I doubt if there are many teachers who can honestly claim that they’ve never got a class totally confused by the way they’ve given instructions. How can you make sure that your instructions are as clear and comprehensible as possible? Here are some guidelines :

* Plan how you’re going to give the instructions before you go into the classroom, and make sure that you can explain them within the limits of the language which the students can understand. For example, the following instruction would be fine for an intermediate class, but would lose a group of beginners : You’re going to hear a description of a famous person and you have to guess who it is. For beginners, Listen to my description of a famous person. Who is it? would be far more comprehensible. Think too about the speed of your speech - slow down slightly if necessary - and insert pauses to allow students to take in each piece of information before you go on to the next.

* Make sure that your instructions are fully explicit – don’t take anything for granted. Because we are so familiar with the activity types, we often assume that certain things are obvious. How often have you explained an activity but forgotten to say explicitly Don’t show your information to your partner - only to find students happily doing just that. Read the rest of this entry »

Using the L1 in the EFL Classroom

Should you or shouldn’t you use the students’ first language (L1) in the classroom? This is one of the questions which most divides EFL/ESL teachers – whether they are for it or against it, there are few who don’t have a strong opinion about it.

The main argument against the use of the L1 in language teaching is that students will become dependent on it, and not even try to understand meaning from context and explanation, or express what they want to say within their limited command of the target language (L2) – both of which are important skills which they will need to use when communicating in the real situation.

But there are other, historical reasons why the use of the students’ mother tongue went out of favour. Initially it was part of a reaction against the Grammar-Translation method, which had dominated late 19th and early 20th century teaching, and which saw language learning as a means towards intellectual development rather than as being for utilitarian, communicative purposes. The Direct Method of the early 20th century reacted against this – it aimed at oral/aural competence and believed languages were best learnt in a way that emulated the “natural” language learning of the child – ie with no analysis or translation. The move away from L1 use was later reinforced by Audiolingualism (1940s-1960s) which saw language as a matter of habit formation. The L1 was seen as a collection of already established linguistic habits which would “interfere” with the establishment of the new set of linguistic habits that constituted the target language, and was thus to be avoided at all costs.
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Do you have a blackboard, a whiteboard or an IWB? Whatever type of board you have in your classroom it is important to be organised and to put yourself in your students’ shoes for a moment. What do they see when they look at your board? In this article we will consider ways of getting the best use out of your board and perhaps give suggestions for exploiting your board in a different way.

Board basics
Organising your board
What we can do with the board
Displaying
Playing games
Using visuals
Final tips
Board basics

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