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Most teachers prefer teaching small classes, as they provide more opportunities to pay individual attention to each student and are usually easier to manage. However, due to limited resources and other reasons many English language classes around the world have more students than the teacher would prefer. When teaching large classes, especially large classes of young learners, one of the biggest challenges for many teachers is maintaining discipline. This article will look at the common reasons why problematic behaviour occurs, effective techniques that help to prevent such behaviour, as well as ways of dealing with discipline issues when they arise. Roots of problems with discipline in large classes are mostly the same as with smaller classes, but they are amplified by the number of students. Teacher have little influence over external factors, such as family problems, but they can take measures to eliminate other common causes of problem behaviour, e.g. boredom, not understanding the rules or instructions etc. The teacher should set basic rules at the start of the course, preferably together with his students, and discuss and explain each rule. The rules can be put on a poster in order to be easily seen by the students throughout the course. Arguably the most common cause of disruptive behaviour in a class of young learners is boredom. Careful preparation for the lesson can help with keeping all students interested and involved. A wide range of attractive activities should be used, and the length of activities should be appropriate to the age of students and their attention span. It is important to choose activities appropriate to students’ level. If the difficulty is too low students will get bored. If it is too high they wont be able complete them. The classroom should be arranged in a way that allows the teacher to move around and monitor and involve all students. The teacher should prepare additional, challenging questions or activities for fast students. Many teachers resort to lecturing when faced with a large class, but this minimises the student talk time and young learners will often quickly lose interest when they are not actively involved in the class. To maximise student talk time and involvement pair-work and group-work should be used as often as possible. The teacher can also select group leaders for each group to help with monitoring, and handing out and collecting the materials. Another common cause of disruptive behaviour is that students don’t understand instructions. The teacher’s instructions and board-work should be kept simple and clear. To avoid distractions teachers should do demonstration and check students’ understanding by asking comprehension questions before handing out materials. Using the same, simple classroom language is also very helpful. Teachers have to distinguish between communicative noise and disruptive noise. Students can often be Immersed in an activity and don’t realise the level of noise. When dealing with discipline problems in a class of young learners the teacher should always be patient, polite, and focus on the problem rather than individual student. It is also important to be fair and consistent. Discipline in a classroom depends largely on the teacher. Almost all problems with discipline can be prevented by careful preparation and planning. When problems arise, timely and adequate response ensures that they will not recur.
