APPLIED LINGUISTICS for BA Students in English
CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT
Classroom arrangement – various work-forms in classes
Whole class grouping (Frontal/Lockstep)
This work-form is used at the presentation stage of the lesson when students need the same input. It reinforces a sense of belonging among the group members, something which teachers need to foster (Williams and Burden 1997:79).
Advantages of whole class grouping:
- it is suitable for activities where the teacher is acting as a controller,
- an ideal way of showing pictures, texts or audio/video tape,
- it is cost efficient as well,
- it is the preferred class style where students and teachers feel secure when the whole class is working in lockstep and under the direct authority of the teacher.
Disadvantages of whole class grouping:
- individual students do not have much of a chance to say something on their own,
- a lot of students are inhibited to participate in front of the whole class since they do not want to take the risk of public failure,
- this work-form does not encourage students to take responsibility for their own learning, it is the teacher who is responsible here for the learning process,
- frontal activities are not suitable for communicative language teaching specifically for task-based sequences, communication between individuals is more difficult in a group of twenty or thirty than it is in groups of four or five.
