Reflections on Teaching for Week 4: Choral Repetition in large classes

UPDATE: Here is video of the lesson in question.

Reflections on Teaching for Week 4: Choral Repetition in large classes

I’m trying to adjust my teaching style to better suit a 35 student middle-school class after teaching small (4-12 student) university classes for the past few years. It’s a challenge and one of the things I’m noticing is I have to apply different methods than I would in an intimate adult EFL classroom where I can engage more easily one-on-one with the students. It’s kind of like reprogramming yourself and examining, sometimes reluctantly, which of your teaching techniques are still effective and which should be scaled back or discarded. One technique I find myself employing more these days is choral repetition. Since it’s a public school with standardized exams, I have to prepare the students to remember and become familiar with new vocabulary.  I show them a PPT of different terms and then we repeat the name and definition. I try individual repetition and dialogic exchanges when I can, but with such large classes I find myself relying on choral repetition and monologic or more specifically the dreaded (at least for me) closed display questions to keep the pace of the class flowing uninterrupted. I’ve found with middle-school students, if some students are neglected while you engage with others, they can easily lose focus and that’s when you’re at risk of losing control of the class.

            The problem is I question how challenging or impactful such an approach is, even with basic EFL learners. There is no room for critical thinking when you are teaching a lesson based around memorizing terms for a test. This kind of “teaching for the test” goes against my personal teaching philosophy (I would prefer much heavier interaction and to see practical application of the terms in their own sentences), but the school requires it to be taught in this method. I tried to insert dialogic questions when I could, but they were more open questions to the entire class than targeted towards individual students. I’m trying to reassess at this point what I can do to become happier with this new class dynamic. I’ve considered grouping the students and giving them hand-outs based on the terms, so they can engage in student-to-student interaction and have dialogic discourse with each other, but when I’ve tried this in other classes I’ve noticed their conversation rarely stays on topic and as previously mentioned there’s the loss of classroom control to take into account.

             I think an additional hurdle to take into account is that they’re used to the more traditional Korean approach of monologic discourse and choral repetition, so to introduce and have them adapt to a new style of learning is something that might prove difficult, since they could misinterpret a more open and casual classroom environment as an excuse for chaos and disengagement. After the Chuseok break, I will seriously evaluate my approach and search for a way I can keep my students focused while teaching the way I’d prefer to teach. The first thing I might try is ditching the very dry, boilerplate PPTs the school provides me with, and make my own that will have questions focusing on personalization (such as for ‘tooth’, talk about how you lost your last tooth with a partner) that will open up more avenues for discussion. I might couple that with handouts and if I do divide them up into pairs or groups I might create a point system to keep their attention focused.