LARGE CLASSES
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EDITOR'S NOTE: This file contains comments, suggestions, and references
for teaching large classes from TESL-Lers over the past
six years. A related helprul file in the TESL-L archives
is an annotated bibliography on using collaborative groups
called COOP COLLAB.
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Date: Wed, 26 Jun 91
From: "Peter Tung" <ET>
Subject: Question of Week 1 : Class size

I think the class size question is an interesting
one as well and I would like to get the reference to
the Manchester study. I am aware of a project on
Language Learning in Large Classes managed jointly by the
University of Leeds and the University of Lancaster. One of
the coordinators of the project is Hywel Coleman. The
project has produced at least 12 reports so far. Anyone
interested in getting the research reports can write to
Hywel Coleman at the Overseas Education Unit, School of
Education, University of Leeds, Leeds LS2 9JT, U.K.

A while back, I heard a public lecture by Prof. Bruce Joyce
from the States. He reviewed a large number of research
studies on class size and came to the conclusion that in order
for the teacher to make a really big difference to students'
learning, the size of a class ought to be about five or less.
He insisted that this finding is true across all school subjects
and for children and adults.

I look forward to hearing other comments.

Peter Tung
Department of English, City Polytechnic of Hong Kong
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Date: Thu, 19 Mar 1992
From:
Subject: Optimum class sizes

There is a group based in the U.K. whose main area of interest is teaching
large classes, and one of their main areas o interest is the relationship
between class-size and language learning. One of the founders of the group
is Dick Allwright at the Department of Linguistics and English Language,
Lancaster University, Bailrigg, Lancaster LA1 4YT, U.K.. He has the
following e-mail address - ral1 -, but I'm not
sure if he's a regular user of e-mail.

Another co-founder of the group is Hywel Coleman at the Overseas Education
Unit, The University of Leeds, Leeds, U.K.. I don't know if he has an
e-mail number, but you could try s and ask for the
message to be passed on.

I think there have been a couple of colloquia at TESOL in recent years on
this topic.
Scott Windeatt, Language Centre, Old Library Building,
The University, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, UK
e-mail: astle
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Date: Sat, 29 Jun 91
From: "Peter Tung" <ET>
Subject: Project reports on Language Learning in Large Classes

For anyone who is interested, the titles of the project reports
I have seen on Language Learning in Large Classes at Lancaster/Leeds are:

1. Learning and Teaching in Large Classes: A Bibliography by Hywel Coleman.
2. The Study of Large Classes by Hywel Coleman.
3. Is Class Size a Problem? by Dick Allwright.
4. How Large are Large Classes? by Hywel Coleman.
5. Large Size Classes: The Situation in Japan by Virginia LoCastro.
7. What Teachers Cannot Do in Large Classes by Nicki McLeod.
8. Language Learning in Large Classes: A Pilot Study of South African Data
by Linda Peachey.
9. Langauge Learning in Large Classes in Indonesia by Jacob Sabandar.
10. A Consideration of Methodological Issues in Analysing the
Problems of Language Teachers in Large Classes by Usha Sarangi.
11. Approaches to the Management of Large Classes by Hywel Coleman.
12. How Important Are Lessons, Anyway? by Dick Allwright.

These were all published in 1989 and are obtainable by writing Hywel
Coleman at the Overseas Education Unit, School of Education,
University of Leeds, Leeds LS2 9JT, UK.

Peter Tung
*****************************************************
Date: Thu, 27 Jun 91
From: Numa Markee <>
Subject: class size (reply to russell bacon)

Concerning optimal class size - rather than worrying about the optimal
class size for ESL instruction prescribed by research, I suspect it is more
useful to think about what to do with large classes that one may already be
stuck with. In this regard, I think that Holliday and Cooke (1982) An
Ecological Approach to ESP in Alan Waters (ed.) Issues in ESP, Lancaster
Practical Papers in English Language Education 5:123-143 are on the right
track - rather than regarding large class size as an impediment to using
techniques that are innovative in certain contexts of implementation (such
as group work in Middle Eastern countries), they point out that this
situation may be used as a rationale for *introducing* these techniques.
More specifically, the use of teacher-centered instruction restricts the
amount of interaction in English that students can get, since by definition
they will only interact with the teacher, which, with classes of 50 or more
students, means that learners will get to speak two or three times per
lesson if they are lucky. On the other hand, far more interaction will
result in large classes if group work is used, even though learners will
have to be persuaded that interacting with each other rather than the
teacher is a valuable learning activity - no small feat in itself

Numa
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Date: Mon, 1 Jul 91 22:07 +0900
From: ET
Subject: Large Classes

The November 1988 issue of The Language Teacher was entitled "The Learner in
the Large Class" and contains the following articles:

Research on Large-Size Classes: A Progress Report
by Virginia LoCastro p. 7
Divide & Conquer: Survival and Success in Large Classes
by Chris Crowe, Susan Jackson and Linda Viswat, p. 11
Motivation in the Large Classroom by Joseph P. Luckett, p. 13
Generally Addressed Questions in Large Classes
by Rudolf Reinelt, p. 15

How to get a copy can be a problem. Many large institutions do subscribe. The
TESOL Central Office has a complete set of issues, I know, but whether they
send out copies of articles upon request, I don't know.

You could write to the JALT office:
Shamporu Dai-2 Kawasaki #305
1-3-3 Kaizuka
Kawasaki-ku, Kawasaki-shi 210
Fax: +81-44-245-9754 Voice: +81-44-245-9753

Tom Robb
et
*****************************************************
Date: Sat, 5 Dec 1992
From: Brian David Phillips <ET>
Subject: Re: group work and EFL

On Fri, 4 Dec 1992 16:14:29 -0600 Maria B. Crawford <.
UIUC.EDU> said:
>Here's a question for all you EFL'ers out there or people who teach
>language-homogeneous classes ...... .

>...... when I taught in Germany, I spent all my time during group work
>"policing" my students who found it much more efficient to get their tasks
>accomplished in German!

Oh what a familiar feeling! With large classes I have yet to find any
workable solution to this phenomenon other than walking from group to
group "policing" as you say. This was particularly true when I was teaching
in a Junior College in central Taiwan ...... where my conversation classes
numbered about fifty (one composition class was seventy-five, ugh!) and
the students were so spread out in ability that it was well nigh impossible
to find the working mean. In this situation, group work almost invariably
deteriorated into a Chinese discussion of what the group spokesperson should
say when the task was completed and they needed to report to the class.

>So, the question: how do you deal with that? How much L1 chatter do you
>allow, and under what circumstances?

In situations like the above, many teachers I've talked to have pretty much
given up on group and stuck with the ol' lecture method. One teacher called
teaching in such classes "glorified baby sitting."

In my present situation, my conversation class is small -- sixteen students -
- and group work progresses much more smoothly. I have found my students
occassionally lapsing into their first language -- Chinese -- but it hasn't
been a large hassle this year (although in previous years it has been).

The first day of our using an RPG (role playing game) as an activity there
was a bit more slippage into Mandarin than usual. This was primarily because
of the newness of the activity and the vocabulary involved with the system.
One of the four groups was getting particularly bad about this -- but once
I pointed this out to them that I thought some Wizard must have thrown a
magical spell on their corner of the room so that whenever I was close to
them their English sounded like English but whenever I was in another part of
the room the spell made their English sound just like Chinese!, they got the
point and buckled down to trying to use the English they'd learned to play
the game (which had Wizards in it).

With my class this year I've found gentle reminders or jokes about the
language use has been enough to keep them on track. Writing ENGLISH on the
blackboard and then just pointing to the borad has been enough in many cases
to get errant groups back on track.

While I still find myself in the role of "Language Policeman" sometimes, it
hasn't been a trying or difficult experience as it has been in the past.

Peace and all that,

Brian David Phillips
Meiguo Langren Zai Taibei ET
{An American Werewolf in Taipei}

Department of English
NATIONAL CHENGCHI UNIVERSITY
64 Chinan Road, Section 2
Wen-Shan District, Mucha, Taipei 116
Taiwan, Republic of China
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Date: Mon, 31 Jan 1994
From: Paul Kei Matsuda <>
Subject: Conversation in a Big Class

This semester I am teaching a course in "intercultural communication with
Japanese people." Aside from Japanese communication style, students wish
to learn conversational Japanese. My problem is I have about 80 student
in the class, and getting all of them to practice with their partners has
been difficult since I am the only one to supervise their activities.

If anyone knows how to teach beginning conversation to a large number of
students, please share your wisdom with me. Please send replies personally
to my e-mail address.

Paul Kei Matsuda
Miami University, Ohio

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Date: Mon, 31 Jan 1994
From: Kaz Hagiwara <>
Subject: Re: Conversation in a Big Class

I have a hundred students in my Japanese course.
I sometimes make them conversation this way.

1 let students make pairs with another one sitting next to.
2 Give them a topic (self introduction, etc.) and let them talk for, say,
five minutes.
3 Tell them to change partners and start conversation with the same topic
for another while.
4 Stop them talking and collect their questions about what they didn't know
how to say in their conversations. Give them right phrases and grammatical
background.
5 Tell them to find another partner to start another five minutes conversation
with the same topic.

In this way, in a large classroom, you may not be able to monitor each
pair's conversation. However it provides students in a large classroom
with a good opportunity to practice conversation.

Kazuhiko Hagiwara
Faculty of Asian & International Studies
Griffith University
QLD
AUSTRALIA
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Date: Mon, 31 Jan 199
From: (Todd Stradford)
Subject: Re: Conversation in a Big Class

I didn't have 80 per class but 3 of 45 at Yatsushiro Kosen, Kumamoto. I
used a text with only pictures called the Communicative English Program (CEP),
a business oriented book but one which you can assign any level of spoken
English. By having the conversation semi-structured around the pictures in the
book, and having everyone working on the same pages, the response and practice
was much better than with "free" conversation, albeit probably more boring. The
text I assigned to the pictures orally was taken from their more GT approach
text to keep the grammar and listening at about the same level.

Todd Stradford
Department of Geography
University of Oklahoma

*****************************************************
Date: Mon, 31 Jan 1994
From: "Alice A. Harman" <>
Subject: Re: Conversation in a Big Class

Hi Paul,
I got my students in Japan (60 per class) to practice beginning
English conversation using an idea I got from another teacher in Japan
I arranged them in pairs, using long rows of two's. (The
permanent seating helped this). The seating arrangement looked something
like this:
FRONT OF CLASS
ab ab ab ab
ab ab ab ab
ab ab ab ab
ab ab ab ab
ab ab ab ab

I had them ask/answer questions, starting with one-two questions, written
on the board; then (and this is the important part), I had student 'a' get
up and move forward one seat; the 'a' student in the front row went to the
back. Then, with their new partners, they practiced the same set of
questions. With each move, I would add one more question to the list on
the board, up to a maximum of 6. When everybody had talked with one
person in their row, I had 'a' and 'b' students get up and cross the
aisle, and then continue in the same rotational format.
After it looked like everyone was doing well with their six
questions, I would erase part of the board -- usually just running the
eraser in an "X" shape; then again and again, until eventually the only
thing remaining on the board were the numbers 1-6. Oddly enough, students
continued to look up at the board!
Example of some of the questions I used were:

1. What's your name?
2. Where are you from?
3. What's your major?
4. How old are you?
5. When is your birthday?
6. What are you interested in?

1. Where did you go this summer?
2. Who did you go with?
3. How did you get there?
4. How long did you stay?
5. What did you do there?
6. Did you have a good time?

1. Do you have a part-time job?
2. What do you do?
3. How many hours do you work?
4. How much do you make?
5. Do you like your job?
6. Why or why not?

The students really enjoyed doing this kind of conversation, since
they got better and better at asking their questions, and got different
answers from each student they talked with. Just be sure they are
interested in the topics!
Hope this helps.

Alice Harman
Seattle University

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Date: Mon, 31 Jan 94
From: Hema Ramanathan <>
Subject: Re: Large Classes

Paul,

_Large Classes_ by Nolasco (?) and (?) has a lot of ideas for large classes.
I'm sorry I don't ahve the details of the authors and the publications .
For what it's worth, it is a British publication.
I wish we were on-line with Indian univs. Practiclly all the successful ESL
teachers would be able to share stories with you!
Good luck

Hema Ramanathan
*****************************************************
From: Berberich Frank <>
Date: Tue, 1 Feb 94
Subject: Teaching large conversation classes

Hi Paul,

I have one class of first-year English students with over 80
Ss, and it runs quite nicely, I think. I probably spend
10-20% of class time on presentation and the rest on Ss
practice and production.

For pair and group work to work, you usually need some clear
task and interesting goal that Ss can only reach by
communicating with each other.