Sleepers at the back

[Steiner]

This question is for those of you who have large classes of kids with many different levels of English.

What do you do with the guys at the back, the ones who have a hard time answering "What is your name?" When I have them do pair and small group work I usually head straight for the back to talk with them, explain again, and try to get them to use what little English they do know. It seems like a lost cause--their English is so far behind the others and they have no desire to improve, but I hate to just let them sit there not participating.

So what do you do with the sleeping guys at the back?

[Chinasyndrome]

No system will work well always, especially with unwilling learners, but I've had some marked successes with changing the seating mix and using the buddy system. Also consider recognition for 'most improved/up and coming'.

To save their 'face' don't move them to the front as 'punishment'. Bring one sleeper up to the middle left seating with and around others who are middle of the road, not the clearly superior ones - yet. Another sleeper goes 2/3 up on the right in the same configuration. I try to see it as a chess board, where the pawns need some protection by the stronger pieces. Pretexts for doing this can be - new blood, new ideas; getting used to the speaking/listening styles of others; getting to know your classmates better - whatever you like.

I don't put very good or gifted's with sleepers. A waste of both their times. I've found this works about 95% of the time but you have to persevere. The longest I struggled with a placement that they were bucking was 3 weeks for 5 days a week, but finally they got it and the levels went up. Sometimes it comes down to just wearing out their opposition, sleepiness and poofulness.

[Wolf]

I teach at the university level.

In theory, they're only there because they want to be, and theoretically they chose English as thier major willingly. It's no skin off my back if they blow their tuition funds.

But we live in reality.

I do pair/group work in most of my converstaion classes. Very often I chose the pairs, and I like to do things like pair boys with girls (interact damnit! You're adults! I'm not teaching Grade 7s), pair stronger/weaker students, pair students who don't know each other quite as well (hard to do as many are roomates/neighbors of each other, but I try.)

As I re-arrange seating all the time, it doesn't come as a surprise.

Beyond this, the onus is on them. Fortunately, my classes (which are 70% girls for some reason) are mostly motivated.

[roaming kiwi]

I'm at a teachers college, with the smallest class being 40, the biggest 400. The average class size is about 150. I teach "listening and speaking" to non-English majors once every two weeks for 80 minutes; all 15-ish classes.

It has always been interesting to observe differing class dynamics even with the same teaching material.

Sleepers - some of the kids (whoops: young adults - being that they are first-years) sleep/doze/surreptitiously picking their noses are pretty stressed and need a bit of time out. But, you can always tell the slack-arses - usually the P.E. majors.

I make a point of wandering up the back of the lecture theatre during a speaking task and help some of the sleepers work out which book we are using (the same book in every class) and point to the page number (that has been mentioned several times and is on the data-projector). Most times 'tho, like Wolf, I just let them sleep their paid education away. Currently, my strike rate (think cricket rather than baseball) seems pretty good: in a class of 400, maybe about 5 might be asleep. ;D

It's the talkers that get me. Especially during a listening task. They seem to respond to the "old school" philosophy of warnings and a polite "Please close the door as you go - see you next time". In reality I use gestures and hold the door open. Some haven't worked out that if you don't like the lecture, don't go. Don't panic, I don't piss of students in every class.

It's heartbreaking to teach such massive classes of students that have had "6 years" of English and still don't recognise "What's your name?" (I say it in Kiwi, Australian, British and finally resort to American just to cover my bets!). I came to the conclusion early on that I can't help all of them in such conditions. But I still make a point of grading my lessons into multiple tiered monsters that even the completely non-English exposed kid should catch on - IF THEY WANT TO.

Actually that might explain my near burnout in teaching back in NZ....

Roaming Kiwi, I moved the last part of your post onto its own thread--What To Do With Large Classes. It's too good a question to be stuck in here. --Steiner

[Steiner]

roaming said:

It's heartbreaking to teach such massive classes of students that have had "6 years" of English and still don't recognise "What's your name?"

Today one of our students' sister talked to my wife on the phone. She asked my wife, "How can I call you?" She wanted to know what she could call my wife. She also asked, toward the end of the conversation, "Can you come here?" My wife was obviously not clear as to what she wanted. Turns out she was inviting us into town for dinner. The rest of the phone conversation was pretty rudimentary.

Here's the kicker...the girl has been studying English for nine years. She is a third year university student........and her major is English.

At the end of the conversation, she said, "Oh, my English is so poor!"
My wife's reply was, "That's too bad."

Back to what to do with the sleepers, now.

[Roger]

Chinese classes have some pretty distinct Chinese characteristics: their listening is, ehrr, limited.
SOme don't listen to you as you talk. I call that impolite, and sometimes I let them know it.
Unfortunately, they don't care, and during lessons there always are some that keep talking among themselves, oblivious to what's actually taking place...
I ascribe this to their communitarian learning, i.e. doing things under a teacher's instruction, obeying him or her rather than doing anything by themselves. Reading aloud - in chorus; learning new vocables - in chorus; speaking - chorussing.
So, they are not used to doing anything individually. I often catch them unawares. I ask the class a cquestion, for example, "what, do you think, should you write in your resume? No one volunteers, I point to a person there, he or she looks bewildered at me, then back to see if, perchance, I had pointed to the student behind him/her... Then, I repeat my question, the student will inevitably say, "can you say it again?" So, I let him stand, go up to another one and ask that student to repeat my question, as "you know, your fellow student does not understand my English - maybe YOUR English is BETTER than MINE..."
With a little luck, one of the students I ask to repeat my own question remembers it, but sometimes I am totally luckless, with not a soul in the whole class that had ...paid enough attention...
I think they are not studying Englsih, they are training, rehearsing, but not learning!

[Sandgropers]

While I don't have 'sleepers' as such, I've found that boys (young men?) which make up less than 20% of the class have a tendency to all congregate together at the back and only half-heartedly participate in the lesson. When it comes to group work, recently I have resorted to putting one boy with 3 or 4 girls. The girls seem to have a positive influence on the particular boy
in their group. It works for me!
Cheers

[Gonzo Journalist]

I've got two classes of Mechanics [automated factory machine type], with only a few girls in each. Do you reckon they want to study English? I agree with them. But what does the school do? 10 hours a week of foreign teachers. Intensive reading using an English majors text that bores the poo out of me, and they can't begin to understand. These guys haven't passed PET, and didn't graduate from high school. So I told the English Dept. that they'd "finished" their text , and have chosen a replacement they might begin to deal with.

If I were a student in this class, I'd be asleep at the back too. Can you imagine the reverse: a class of mechanics students in an Australian [or where-ever] tech. college being forced to study Chinese for 10 hours a week?