TUNIS CLASS BLOG: Teaching English Radio 'Using Group Work with Large Classes'

Hello everybody and welcome back to Teaching English Radio!

After our adventures in Gafsa we're back in Tunis!

Today the topic was 'Using Group Work with Large Classes'

In the studio audience were Ridha Maknine,Primary school teacher,Bizerte
Myriam Matmsti,Secondary School Teacher of English,El Kram High School,Tunis

Hayfa Majoub,Secondary School teacher,Ben Arous, Tunis and Ian Smith,Senior Teacher Academic,British Council

Tunisia.

Some of the key points of using group work is the importance of the setting up of group work and classroom management skills for instance the teacher’s role can change to monitoring, listening and giving advice.Some advantages of group discussion is that it allows students to relax, express themselves and really use the language. It can be very motivating and dynamic.
It can be adapted to suit all classes and different activities.

The studio guests also talked about their first teaching memory,how they felt when they saw their first class for the first time,the advantages and disadvantage of teaching a large group.Ian talked about his first teaching experience in Japan,a class of 45 students and though there's this image of Japanese people being polite;they were actually normal rowdy teenagers;as a young teacher it was an intimidating experience and another problem was that the course book wasn't culturally interesting - pop songs from the 1970's for students from the 1980's! Despite this daunting situation Ian said it was a good learning experience and gradually he developed strategies to deal with the large class and to make the lessons interesting.

One of the disadvantages that one of the Tunisian teachers mentioned was about assessing the students in group work and that it was difficult to assess them individually,Ian said that could be resolved by ensuring that everyone said something in their presentation and he found that the stronger students made an effort to help the weaker students participate.
Another interesting point that Ian made was about the process of feedback and it was important for the students to do their feedback in their groups before a whole feedback as it helped the students to be more confident and prepared.