Dear Carol

I am glad you enjoyed 'The Experience of Language Teaching' and believe that it would be a useful reference book for all aspiring ESL/EFL teachers - and a confirmation for all experienced teachers.

In a section of the book on low-key ways of registering disapproval I give as an example a teacher who would aim an imaginary rifle at any student who started to speak their mother tongue during class, or who continued talking when he had called for the attention of the class. You point out that students from war-torn countries might well be upset by any teacher whose behaviour reminded them of recent violent events in their lives. You are quite right. As language teachers we need to be highly aware of the sensibilities of our students - particularly when teaching classes of recently-arrived refugees who may be highly traumatized and/or in culture shock.

However, the example that I gave was of the regular classroom practice of a teacher who worked in a private language school that provided short courses for young adults holidaying Australia. This teacher had a lively and outgoing personality and regularly behaved in comic ways during the course of his lessons. He was able to encourage high levels of spontaneous student interaction within the class, while at the same time keeping good control. The technique of jokingly threatening to 'shoot' students whenever they made minor transgressions - a behaviour that I personally would not recommend - was one that appeared to work effectively for this particular teacher in this particular teaching context.

In my view disciplining students with a light touch (in whichever way the teacher feels comfortable in doing so) is a useful class-management technique. When a teacher comes down heavily on a student who has transgressed a classroom code of behaviour, the individual concerned (and sometimes even the whole class) may feel disgruntled. If, on the other hand the teacher pulls a student into line with a twinkle in the eye, everyone understands that there are no hard feelings. The incident can be quickly forgotten and the attention of the class can re-focus on the learning activity at hand.

I trust you find this explanation satisfactory. You have certainly put your finger on a highly complex and sensitive issue in classroom language teaching: the ways in teachers can unwittingly offend the students in their classes during the course of their daily teaching.

Best wishes,
Rose Senior

Dear Robin

I am glad that you enjoyed 'The Experience of Language Teaching' and that it stimulated your thinking on a number of aspects of classroom language teaching.

I am pleased that you have raised the question of assessment and testing. You are quite right: the book does not deal with the issues of assessment and testing in CLT classrooms. Although this might be considered an oversight, there are good reasons why I did not include teachers' views on assessment and testing in the pages of the book.

The book is based on a series of grounded-theory studies in which I collected and integrated the perceptions of large numbers of language teachers on aspects of classroom teaching that were of central concern to them all - and to which every teacher could relate. The theoretical framework that eventually emerged was that of class cohesion: the notion that successful language classes are those that function effectively as groups. For the teachers who provided data for the book (the majority of whom were teaching on intensive English language courses for adults for which there were no institutionalized testing procedures) assessment and testing did not emerge as a central issue relating to class cohesion.

A few teachers did, however, provide interesting insights regarding assessment and testing. Several teachers believed that class cohesion was often high in exam preparation classes (such as those preparing for Cambridge ESOL exams such as the First Certificate in English, or the Proficiency exam) since everyone is working towards a common, clearly designated goal. One teacher remarked how uneasy she felt at having to adopt a formal, judge-like persona (in place of her normal 'friendly facilitator' one) when required to conduct formal assessments in class.

Assessment and testing are clearly important issues for many language teachers - particularly for those engaged in preparing students for external exams, such as foreign language teachers in secondary schools. Maybe you could persuade a masters or PhD student to conduct a grounded theory study on the topic of assessment and testing in language teaching? By so doing this person could fill in another important part of the complex jigsaw puzzle picture of everything that is involved in being a classroom language teacher.

Kind regards,
Rose Senior

Dear John

Thank you for your most interesting questions which raise the whole issue of teacher professionalism - and the degree to which the professional judgement of trained language teachers is (or is not) respected by the commercially-oriented language schools in which they work. The situation in which you find yourself in is a challenging one. Here is my response.

I believe that your school administrators have acted unwisely in dictating what the focus of your lessons should be. You are a trained teacher and your professional judgement regarding the suitability of learning activities for your class should be respected.

I do not know your personal circumstances, but I suspect that you are a diligent teacher who expects their students to work hard on all the various language learning activities that you organize for your class. I also suspect that there may be other teachers in your establishment who are not as committed as you - and who may be happy to let the students in their classes mess around and have fun in the name of language learning (I wrote an article in the Guardian Weekly newspaper of 26 May 2006 entitled 'Don't play communication for laughs' which addresses precisely this point). My third suspicion is that your school administrators, having received feedback from certain students that you are more demanding than other teachers, have stepped in without considering the consequences and demanded that you teach in a less rigorous way (so that your class is more in line with the other classes). The prime concern of your administrators is to 'sell a product' and 'keep the customer happy' (a maxim for all retail businesses). Unfortunately the product that your school is selling is education - which depends for its success on the establishment of positive working relationships between teachers and their classes.

It often happens that in the early days of each new class there is a mismatch between a teacher's planned teaching program - and the needs, wants and expectations of the students in their class. When this happens administrators should not step in and dictate what the teacher should do. Rather, teachers and students should negotiate with each other, so that an accommodation is reached between what the teacher believes is in best for their class - and what the students believe they want. We must bear in mind that students often do not know precisely what they do want - or what is best for their learning. For instance, they may say they want nothing but free-speaking activities, when they really mean that they want a variety of interesting and engaging classroom activities. These could include anything from learning the lyrics of songs to investigating opinions of people in the community and reporting back.

In order for negotiation of the content and focus of the course to be successful, teachers must explain to their students their own beliefs about classroom language learning, describe some of the activities that might be done by the class, and show that they are prepared to be flexible in their teaching approach. In a spirit of openness and mutual respect they should then ask the students in the class to express their own needs, concerns and aspirations (a worksheet can be developed, or stimulus questions written on the board, to get the ball rolling). Topics and themes can usefully be brainstormed at this point. Once everything is out in the open a general class discussion can ensue. The teacher can then prepare a program that accommodates both their own desire to teach worthwhile things in effective ways, and their students' desire to engage in stimulating classroom activities that relate to their own interests.

I hope you find these points helpful.

Good luck!
Rose Senior

Dear Henry

It is a pleasure to receive a question from China. The question that you ask highlights the fact that language teachers all around the world face similar kinds of problems in their classrooms - how to cope with unruly children, how to teach multi-level classes and so on. Teachers in countries such as the UK, the US and Australia sometimes imagine that schoolchildren in countries with more traditional educational systems such as China are well-behaved and attentive at all times. How wrong they are!

Unfortunately there are no easy answers to the question that you raise: where a teacher should pitch their teaching in order to best meet the learning needs of the majority of the children in the class. Should a teacher concentrate on teaching those who already understand the most - and leave other children floundering? Or should they focus their attention on the less able children - and leave the more able ones unchallenged? Or perhaps they should split their class in two and have each half engage in different activities?

I would not recommend the third option because it amounts to teaching two classes at once - and destroys the feeling of togetherness that should exist in any class, regardless of the number of learners it contains. Instead I want to introduce the term class-centred teaching: the notion that a key aspect of successful language teaching anywhere in the world involves keeping each class as united as possible, with everyone feeling that the class is collectively moving towards the achievement of whole-class learning goals - and that their individual learning needs are also being met. It follows that being class-centred involves attending to the learning needs of children at either end of the ability spectrum from time to time - but pitching our teaching at a level appropriate for the majority of children in the class. This may sound difficult, but experienced teachers develop the habit of returning regularly to the middle ground. A further technique that they use is a psychological one: drawing the class together and along by highlighting at regular intervals what has been achieved and congratulating the class as a whole for its progress.

A further technique used by experienced language teachers is to enlist the help of able children to support less able children in the class. Rearranging where children sit in the classroom (by having high achievers sit in alternate seats, for example), can have a dramatic effect on the dynamics of the class group. Once they understand that their efforts to help their less able classmates are valued by their teacher, high-achieving children regularly become more committed to the well-being of the class as a whole. They realize not only that they have an important role to play in the successful collective learning of the class - but also that their own understanding is deepened by the process of helping others.

If duplicating facilities are readily available, tasks of differing levels of difficulty can be designed for students of differing levels of ability - so that children within the same class can follow different programs of work. In reality this is a time-consuming business that is difficult to sustain in the long term (although it provides a welcome change if it can occasionally be managed). Most teachers find it easier to have all the children in the class engage in the same basic learning activity - but to have an open-ended task at the end of the activity (perhaps in the form of an additional question written on the board), so that students who are quick to finish have something challenging to occupy them while waiting for the rest of the class to finish.

I hope you find these suggestions helpful and relevant to your teaching situation in China.

All good wishes,
Rose Senior