Problem
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Solution(s)
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There are disruptive students.
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· Give these learners a goal/responsibility, e.g. the ‘group secretary’ responsible for reporting to the rest of the class, collecting answers from the rest of the groups, etc.
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There are shy students.
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· Ask these learners to work in groups/pairs so that they have a chance to participate with their peers rather than with the teacher.
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The instructions to an activity are complicated / long / confusing.
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· Break the instructions down into meaningful chunks by eliciting rather than telling
· Break the activity down into different parts, i.e. first writing a set of questions and, then, participating in an interview using these questions.
· Ask simple questions to check the learners are following and have understood
· Demonstrate what the learners need to do
· Give examples
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Classroom equipment, e.g. IWb, laptop, speakers, etc might not work.
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· Arrive earlier to double-check everything works
· Have print-outs and additional handouts to give the learners, e.g. the slides you were planning to show during the lesson
· Have a copy of the transcript of the listening text you would be using so that you can read it out loud yourself
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Odd number of learners
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· Avoid participating in the activity as a student; instead, prepare more role-cards to facilitate a group of 3, or
· If you have a pairwork activity of Students A and B, create a group of 3 so that 1 learner can be A and 2 students can be B in that group.
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Lack of a homogenous group in terms of level, e.g. very strong students for the level and very weak students for the level in the same group
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· Vary the kinds of practice activities; for example, give weaker learners more prompts in speaking/writing tasks.
· Vary your feedback and correction, e.g. give more information to weaker learners, less info to stronger ones.
· In speaking/writing tasks, pair weaker students with stronger ones so that they can help one another
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