Mixed level classes

[bustour]

Does anyone have much experience with teaching English to a class with mixed levels of speaking English?
I know this can be a problem with any subject area, but what specific problems come up in TESL?

[gfell]

Yes, this is quite difficult and a real challenge. You cannot use the same material for different students in the classroom with different abilities.

The most a teacher could manage is teaching a class with max 2 different student abilities. Anymore than that is absurd in trying to teach, and the class then really needs to be split.

Of course, it will also depend on how wide the gap in abilities are.

When teaching, you really need to ensure ALL students enjoy the class and gain something from it. The moment things become overly difficult for students, then that's when the fun of learning ceases and the student would just simple "switch off".

[exported_kiwi]

Yep, I've done this and it wasn't easy! The best way I could figure it out was to mentor the more junior students with ones on the higher level and given that the higher level students were helping the lower level, they'd then be working harder and using more vocabulary etc. I'd also give them credits for their assistance etc as it's always nice to recognised for being helpful.

The real problem comes at exam time I guess, when you've basically taught the same content to both levels, but have to make 2 exams up, one for each level.

What I did there was to make the questions a little harder to understand and answer for the upper level and made it the same for the lower level without the why questions etc.

It all depends on which levels you're talking about too. High school and College students, for example, should already have a decent enough proficiency to be able to take it all in their strides and realise what's happening. It always pays to explain what's happening to your students beforehand just in case though. I know of some students who told their parents that I was concentrating too much on the lower levels and not enough on the higher level. It's a hard thing to do both, but it can be done. There isn't really any "right" way to do it so just do the best you can!

Good luck!