Teach English in Xiwa'ertu Zhen - Hulunbei'er Shi — Hulunbuir

Seating arrangements have always been taken into consideration by EFL teachers to generate a conducive teaching and learning environment. Varied seating arrangements have been tried and tested by teachers to improve the efficiency of tasks, delivery of lessons, improve the efficacy of a session, control disruptive behaviour of students, and increase student-student interaction, thus increasing student talk time. Some popular types of seating arrangements are Horseshoe, Rows/Columns, Clusters, Combination, Runway, and Stadium. While each arrangement has its own set of pros and cons, I believe it’s best to be agnostic about it because the classroom setup should be, more importantly, in harmony with the teacher’s teaching style, the students in the class, their individual behavioural patterns and the space and furniture a teacher needs to work with. In the next few paragraphs, let’s look at the three most common seating arrangements along with their pros and cons. 1. Rows/Columns: The most conventional seating arrangement of all, probably the one most teachers experienced when they were students, works well for lectures or dictations. In lectures, there is no need for two way communication, so the teacher can stand at a pedestal and deliver a lecture or a dictation. It’s easier to be heard when speaking from a higher level; it gives the facilitator some authority which helps in controlling noise and interaction amongst students. Often, this arrangement doesn’t work well when it comes to teaching a foreign language because, in language teaching, student talk time needs to be higher than teacher talk time. Students who aren’t very outgoing and are shy, tend to hide behind other students, thus completely avoiding speaking practice. 2. Horseshoe: This seating arrangement really helps with visibility. Each student can see the teacher and the other students, thus increasing eye contact which is an integral attribute that needs to be taken care of while language learning. The teacher is also able to engage each student equally. Since students sit next to each other, it allows them to mingle and speak with each other but in a controlled manner as the teacher is still within sight. This seating arrangement is a great choice in the Engage and Study phases involving choral repetition and drills. Another variation to this style is the Circular arrangement, which increases collaboration among students and is perfect for group tasks. For instance, think of activities like a group survey or a warm-up engage session of get-to-know-each-other on a typical first class. The teacher can choose to be inside or more preferably outside the circle depending on his/her role and requirement. 3. Clusters: This is my most preferred seating arrangement for the Activate phase of a lesson. Students feel safe to experiment with the newly learnt language point in the tiny environment/space they create for themselves while the teacher gets the space to move around outside the clusters and passively overhear their conversation while taking notes of errors (which are to be addressed after the activity is over, in the feedback session). The two major problems I face with this arrangement are: (a) It’s almost impossible to use this seating style for large classes of over 15 students (b) It can get quite noisy (c) Students may start conversing in their native language in their private space (this can be tackled if the teacher takes a stroll once in a while during the activity) It’s important to test what works for you and your students, apart from what works for which kind of activity and stages of learning. With a little initial experiment, classroom arrangements can be very well be used as the cherry on the top of a great curriculum, a creative lesson plan, and extra-ordinary teaching skills, in order to conduct a productive session.