What is an ESOL classroom like? The same range of basic equipment and furniture is found in most school settings, so it is up to you to use what you have to the greatest advantage for you and your students.

Most schools encourage teachers and students to make their classrooms their own. This can be achieved by displaying student work on the walls, moving students around to encourage different types of interaction, calling them up to the whiteboard to show their ideas to the class, mingling and communicating with their classmates as much as possible.

Classroom management is how the teacher uses the physical space and resources found in the classroom to encourage learning to happen. This includes the ways in which teachers direct, instruct and guide their students through their learning process. Management of the interaction which occurs on a minute-to-minute basis requires some methodological knowhow to keep students active and to ensure that they are learning to their fullest potential.

While there is a huge range of teaching resources at your disposal thanks to the internet, interactive whiteboards and mobile technology, some of the most effective and imaginative teaching is done with very few materials, and simply evolves out of the different methods and routines that teachers have in their skill-set. It is not the resources themselves that make for effective teaching, but the person using them, so it is important to remember that all resources, including the classroom itself, are yours to adapt and use as you choose.

The basic toolkit for a language teacher consists of a set of whiteboard pens (preferably of at least three different colours), a whiteboard and equipment to play audio resources. More developed classrooms also have a pull-down projector screen for audiovisual resources, or an interactive whiteboard with ‘smart pens’ and the use of a screen, internet connection and programmable slideshows or connectivity to a computer.

ESOL classrooms vary greatly in size, from small one-to-one settings to large lecture halls, but the standard classroom seats up to about 20, with maximum class sizes in the private industry often set at around 16 students. However, this number is usually considerably higher in public-sector schools.

Desks can usually be moved around the room as you wish, though some schools have individual tables, or fold-down desktops attached to the chairs themselves, saving space and allowing more movement for students. If you do move furniture, it is good practice to return the room to the layout you found it in for the next teacher who uses it.

The resources you use to support your teaching are also down to you. Most schools use standard coursebooks or photocopied materials as a basis for their curricula, and these can be enhanced with supplementary materials selected by the teacher from other sources such as grammar reference books, photocopiable communication activities and authentic materials such as newspapers and magazines. The resource you will rely on most, however, is the traditional whiteboard and coloured pens.

Using a whiteboard effectively is a skill. Content can be displayed in stages as lessons evolve organically, allowing students visual reinforcement from point to point throughout a lesson. It is essential that you keep your boardwork tidy, legible and organised so that both you and your students can make the best use of it. Here are some pointers for whiteboard technique:

Firstly, check what kind of marker you are using! Every teacher has at some time realised that they were using a permanent marker, and then couldn’t clean the board for the next stage of their class. Whiteboard markers are NOT permanent, and should be marked ‘drywipe’ or ‘suitable for whiteboards’. If you do accidentally use a permanent marker, there are solvent cleaning solutions which will dissolve the ink. If you do not have access to this, however, write over the permanent ink with a whiteboard-friendly marker and it will quickly rub off.

Use a simple, legible script for boardwork. Many cultures do not use cursive (joined-up) handwriting so this can cause problems with legibility. Use clear, separated letters which you are comfortable writing at speed; if you write too slowly and carefully, students can get bored, so practise your style and spacing on the board you will use, and you will soon get comfortable with how much text you can write in the space you have.

Adopt a colour coding scheme for your whiteboard work, for example: black pen for general content, new vocabulary and target language, red for grammatical content (displaying word type, highlighting structural features, etc.), green for pronunciation work and phonetic transcriptions and blue for arrows, highlighting marks and underlining for emphasis. This will keep your boardwork systematic and easy to follow for students, saving time and aiding clarity in the long run.

Keep an area at one side of the board purely for new vocabulary which comes up during a lesson and quickly transfer any new words here before cleaning the board between lesson stages. Students will become accustomed to this routine, and have a visual reference if they want to use the new words or make further notes later in the class.

Be careful when presenting new vocabulary on screen slides; as you move through the pages of a screen-based presentation, the words you teach will disappear and your learners will not necessarily have access to them if they need them later in the lesson.

When displaying new vocabulary, don’t just write the word; include other aspects of meaning and use such as a synonym, antonym or picture, word type, phonetic transcription and/or word stress. This leads to a deeper understanding of a word or phrase, and helps to generate a ‘web of meaning’ which puts new language into context, leading in turn to the greater likelihood of deeper retention and use by students.

As you are becoming familiar with the process of lesson planning and delivery, make whiteboard plans for the lesson stages you want to teach. Include these with your lesson plans and refer to them during the lesson if necessary. Be aware, however, that no lesson ever goes exactly as anticipated, so leave room for unexpected drawings, words or other additions during the class.

Overall, a tidy, considered approach to your whiteboard aids depth and clarity of understanding for learners, and helps to consolidate your teaching as lessons move from stage to stage.

Most ESOL teaching is based on textbooks designed for use with students at specific levels of language study (beginner, elementary, pre-intermediate, intermediate, upper-intermediate, advanced and proficiency), or for specific purposes (such as Business English, English for Academic Purposes (EAP), or in preparation for a language exam such as IELTS or TOEFL).

Although published coursebooks are mostly well-designed and effectively organised, it is important to remember you are teaching the class, not the book. Every student in a group has different individual strengths and weaknesses; one methodology or approach will not fit all students’ learning styles. Relying on a single coursebook and teaching every activity page by page will never take all students’ needs into account. For this reason, you will need to supplement the coursebook with activities from other sources and materials you design yourself, according to the needs of the group.

Many photocopiable grammar, vocabulary and ESOL activity books are available for just this purpose, in addition to the huge amount of supplementary material available on the internet (though this is less reliable; always proofread and prepare online materials with a critical eye). Your school should have a resource library with a range of supplementary materials. As you develop as a teacher you will build your own stock of resources you know work for you, which you can use, adapt and reuse as you gain experience teaching with them.

The communicative approach to English Language Teaching has dominated TESOL for many years, and is the basis of most mainstream coursebooks and materials.

CLT works under the assumption that because the primary function of language is communication, the best way to teach new language to learners is through guided spoken interaction.

This means that whether the lesson focus is grammar, vocabulary, reading, writing, speaking or listening, classroom activities can be designed to promote communication between students, enabling them to discuss, criticise and explore the language they are learning both with each other and the teacher as they perform language tasks.

Communication and interaction are fundamental to learning, and should therefore be encouraged as much as possible during class.

The physical position of students relative to each other and the teacher is a major factor which affects classroom interaction. Room layouts can be changed for specific types of activity, leading to different communicative settings and therefore different interaction patterns for the learners in the class.

When planning, think about the types of interaction you want your students to take part in during your lesson, and plan the most effective seating arrangement to enable that to happen, stage by stage.

Students will often want to keep to their usual places or sit with their friends, but this is not an effective way to encourage a range of different types of interaction. Moving students around and getting them talking to different partners encourages more varied types of communication.

This is a simple and effective way of using the classroom space itself to encourage different group dynamics, and therefore facilitate different types of learning.

TASK 1: Look at the classroom layouts on the following pages; what kind of teacher-student or student-student interaction is likely to occur in these classrooms?

What kind of class activities might work/not work in these classrooms? Why?

Are you able to move easily? Are there any parts of the room that are difficult to reach?

How many of the students can you interact with individually, and how much student-to-student interaction is possible for those sitting in different parts of the room?

This is probably the most common layout found in ESOL classrooms. The semicircle of desks allows interaction between pairs and groups of three (students sitting next to each other), as well as whole-class discussion (across and around the horseshoe). The teacher is positioned in the middle of the students, so can monitor student talk and control interaction as necessary. For group activities, students can also be seated in the middle of the horseshoe, facing partners across the desks.

This layout is useful for group work, especially focused tasks such as projects or small group discussions. Students naturally face each other in groups of three or four, and the doubled-up tables provide large workspaces for papers and other materials. One drawback of this arrangement is students can place themselves with their backs to the teacher, meaning it can be harder to draw attention back to open-class or teacher-directed stages, and changes at the whiteboard may go unnoticed. Setting out chairs in mini-horseshoes around each island overcomes this issue.

This layout is familiar to many students from high-school classrooms, and tends to create a teacher-centred setting. While this may not be conducive to flexible mingling or communicative tasks, it can be useful for focused listening or lecture-style classes. By separating desks and positioning one student on the end of each desk, relatively secure test seating is also possible (depending on space and the size of the desks).

This layout is noteworthy as desks are not included in the classroom furniture. By removing physical barriers and paper materials such as dictionaries, students must rely on their communicative skills alone, an excellent way to encourage more spoken interaction. Notice the absence of a teacher’s desk, further reducing the barriers between the teacher and students. As this is quite an exposed setting for students, this layout is most effective with classes who have been studying together for some time. Many schools use chair-tables attached to the arms of student chairs, providing less table space for paper materials and forming a similar layout to this.

Pair and group tasks are the foundation of communicative language teaching. Putting students together to discuss their ideas encourages the use of target language through the primary form of classroom interaction: speaking. This gives learners the opportunity to try out what they have learnt independently and get feedback from others in the class before sharing their ideas in an open-class setting.

However you arrange the tables and chairs in your classroom, it is beneficial for students to communicate with different members of a group during particular stages of a lesson. Speaking to a range of people increases contact with a variety of opinions, experiences, accents and cultures, which can stimulate interaction as learners find out more about each other. You should always be thinking of ways to regroup students and have them moving around the classroom during different activities to encourage varied interaction patterns for different types of activity.

In addition, pair and group work encourages learners to think about each other’s language use, correct each other and give valuable comments on their ideas and performance in English (which should of course be monitored for accuracy).

When pairing and grouping students, use clear, direct instructions to show where you want different people to sit. Be clear and concise, and students will get up, move and sit down in their new places quickly and with a minimum of disruption. Use open-hand gestures to ‘collect’ groups together and ‘cut’ other students away from each other, using names as much as possible so that everyone knows where and with whom they are supposed to be working.

TASK 2: Think about the classroom plans on the previous pages, and suggest ways in which students could be paired or grouped for different tasks. In each case, how easy is it to group students in pairs, threes or fours? How easy is it to move students between groups, or regroup them so that they can interact with different partners?

Every student, except those sitting on the ends of rows, has two possible ‘partners’: one on his left and one on his right. Indicate clearly who you would like to work together at the beginning of every task by using open hand gestures, and encourage students to work together by instructing ‘share your ideas with your partner’ or ‘discuss with your partner and make notes together’. Pairwork increases cooperation between partners and ensure that students are prepared for later open-class work, where ideas are shared with the rest of the group.

To keep interaction varied, and in order for students to discuss their ideas and check their work with different partners, pairs can be changed simply by instructing students to turn to their other side, and work with their new partner. By moving one ‘end’ student to sit next to their opposite number, the whole class dynamic can quickly be changed:

Some activities, for example split reading or information gap tasks, can be set up by nominating one third of the class (e.g. those on your left) as As, those in the middle as Bs and those on the right as Cs. Students can prepare with their task partners (As together, Bs together, Cs together), working on different aspects of the same text or task before reforming as groups composed of As, Bs and Cs working together to complete the task by sharing their information or ideas.

‘Task groups’ can be set up by nominating students to form focus groups in different corners of the classroom, before coming together to discuss their ideas in their original seats. The same procedure is possible to form mixed groups of four students, nominating As, Bs, Cs and Ds:

With the classroom in the ‘islands’ formation, different tasks, or parts of a task, can be presented on each table. Students circulate around the tables to perform different mini-activities at each station, building to a final result after the fourth task cycle. By spending a set time at each table, working on different parts of a whole task or text (1, 2, 3 and 4), students can build their understanding of a text or series of materials in a staged way. As a second lesson stage, groups can be recombined (as ABCD, above) to discuss what they worked on during the task, bringing a collaborative element to the activity:

Mingling activities do not require desks or seats at all. The aim of this type of task is for students to circulate around the room, interviewing each other or sharing items of information as they pass from one person to the next.

‘Find a partner’ is a common activity of this type, where each student holds a card containing information relating to a ‘partner’ card held by another student. The activity ends when all students have matched up with a classmate by interacting with various members of the group, according to some criteria set by the activity focus.

‘Find someone who…’ is another common mingling activity, where students must interview each other using simple questions, perhaps designed to include a specific language structure, to find at least one person who fits their list of criteria, for example: Find someone who… …has eaten sushi, or …has slept outside all night. Students ask around the room until they find one person who fulfils each criterion.

After a mingling activity ends, student responses are collected and the gathered information is presented to the class in a post-task feedback stage.

For the time you are using it, the classroom belongs to you and your students. You should all feel comfortable making the space your own, and students should have no problem moving around to work with different members of the group. By personalising the physical learning environment, a positive, harmonious classroom atmosphere can be built and students can take ownership of their learning environment, an important psychological aid to their learning.

Ideas for personalising the classroom and creating a constructive learning environment for lower-level learners include:

Wall posters with useful classroom phrases to stick up around the whiteboard, for example:

How do you spell…?

What’s the word for…?

Could you repeat that, please?

How do you pronounce…?

What does … mean?

What’s the difference between … and … ?

Keep a vocabulary box in the classroom – write new words on cards as you teach them and store them in weekly bundles for students to review autonomously.

Have students create posters and displays for the wall, containing topic-linked vocabulary or grammar points for reference during class.

Display student work on the wall, or have a space on the wall dedicated to ‘essay of the week’ or ‘homework of the week’.

The ways in which you use the classroom and the resources available to you as a teacher affect the types of interaction which occur during language lessons. This in turn has an effect on the rapport which is built between the class and the teacher. Your use of the learning environment can be planned and managed effectively in the following ways:

What keeps learners engaged? How well a student responds to the material presented in an ESOL class depends on many motivational factors. In general, however, learners of all types will respond best to a teaching style with which they feel comfortable, materials which they find interesting and relevant to their needs, and which generate a feeling of progress as they work their way through the tasks you ask them to perform.

Learner motivation is a huge area of interest within ESOL, and one which is continuously being researched in order to enable more effective teaching and learning to take place. This chapter will investigate some ways that you can make your teaching appeal to the widest range of learner types, no matter where your students come from, how old they are, what first language or cultural background they come from, or what expectations they might have about the language learning environment. Keeping students engaged and motivated is a skill which underpins the whole practice of communicative language teaching.Intrinsic and extrinsic motivation

What makes someone want to develop their language skills? Are they looking for better job opportunities? Do they have an important language exam coming up, or do they simply enjoy learning and have a spare month to focus on their English?

Every student has their own reasons for being in the classroom. The first step to enabling effective learning is to understand those goals and motivations. As a teacher, this information helps you to plan activities that relate to the specific needs of your students and focus on areas of interest for them, increasing the probability that they will be motivated to engage with the content that you teach.

Every action we take in our lives is motivated from two possible sources: our own wants and needs (for example personal interest, likes and dislikes), and those of the world and people around us (the requirements of work, the rules of our society or the expectations of our peers). This is equally true of learner motivation.

Some of the reasons for wanting to study English come from the learners themselves; this is known as intrinsic motivation. By contrast, study activity which is performed as a requirement for others (for work, school or parents) comes from outside the learner; this is extrinsic motivation.

In many cases, as a student becomes settled into their language learning routines and settings, a combination of intrinsic and extrinsic factors affect how he or she engages with what they are doing in the classroom.

Task 3 considers some types of learner motivation which are often found in ESOL settings. The various pressures (or lack of them) that learners face can affect how they prioritise their learning as part of their wider experience, both inside and outside the classroom.

TASK 3: What kinds of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation might the following learners have for studying English?

An eight-year-old summer school student in England

An unemployed university graduate studying in the UK

An overseas student preparing for university in England

Three teenage friends on month-long trip to England

Which aspects of these learners’ motivation might have positive or negative effects on their learning process? Why?

Now consider that you have the last three types of learner in Task 3 studying together in the same class. The ways in which a teacher would need to address these diverse needs and keep the class interesting for all students presents a challenge. It is important to find a balance between the high-stakes needs of some learners, and the less-pressured situation of others in the class.

Some ways of promoting engagement with any group of students, regardless of their individual motivations, are:

With an informal, non-judgmental atmosphere, group engagement will increase, and more learning opportunities will be created. A relaxed learner is more willing to ask questions, make mistakes and experiment with new language, all of which contribute to better learning.

In order to facilitate this, it is important to find out how best to appeal to your students’ preferred ways of learning. Thinking more specifically about learners as individuals creates opportunities for this kind of targeted instruction.

People learn in different ways. Identifying the learning styles of your students helps to inform how to adapt your teaching for them. Targeting the intrinsic psychological characteristics of students increases their engagement with taught content.

The distinction between visual, auditory and kinaesthetic learners, known as the VAK model, claims that everyone has varying degrees of strength in these three areas. A strongly visual learner might retain information best when it is presented through pictures, film or use of colour. A strongly auditory learner might engage with information more readily through music, rhythm and spoken language. However, a kinaesthetic learner may work best with movement-based activities, gesture, mime and learning by physically performing actions.

The surest way of raising engagement levels in ESOL classes is to use a mix of stimulus types via the materials you present in class, to target these learner types. A lesson focus (a grammar point or group of new words) can be revisited from different teaching ‘angles’ to ensure the maximum retention from the greatest number of learners. This means using a combination of different resource types, including visual aids, audiovisual resources and movement to engage with different people in different ways.

TASK 4: Organise the following ESOL activity types into groups according to their main VAK skill. Which are mostly visual, auditory or movement-focused?

Organising vocabulary on word cards

Putting comic strip frames in order

Acting out a scene in a role-play activity

Sequencing lines from a story on slips of paper

Highlighting key words in a text

Monitoring other students’ spoken accuracy

Working with poetry and rhyme

Educational psychologist Howard Gardner extended the VAK model to define at least seven different ‘intelligence types’, which he suggested could be stimulated to promote more effective learning.

Gardner’s (1983) theory suggests that we all have a spectrum of strengths and weaknesses which he termed ‘intelligences’, including visual, spatial, logical/mathematical, musical, interpersonal (engagement through social interaction with others), kinaesthetic, intrapersonal (engagement through introverted thought to oneself), and other possible intelligences such as natural intelligence (learning through examining natural processes).

Gardner suggested that mainstream education was primarily based on logical/mathematical and intrapersonal activity, which means many learners are at a disadvantage as they have predominant skills which are not valued by educational institutions. Students with high levels of interpersonal or kinaesthetic skills, for example, may be labelled as too talkative or ‘fidgety’ in mainstream school. Due to their value to communication, however, these qualities are actually beneficial in the context of the communicative ESOL classroom.

Using a Multiple Intelligences model increases the range of activities and resources that ESOL teachers can use when working with a specific language area.

TASK 5: Look back at the activity types in task 4, above. Think about them in terms of the Multiple Intelligences model. Which activities would appeal to which intelligence types? Remember, more than one intelligence type can be targeted by each activity.

Another important factor affecting a learner’s engagement levels is the reason that they have decided to study English in the first place. As with individual learner styles, every student’s motivations will be slightly different. Learners respond best to material which they see as useful and relevant to them. Sometimes there will be a clash between what the student thinks he needs and what he demonstrates he needs. This can become a demotivating factor, leading to a negative impact on learning.

This kind of conflict can be prevented by conducting needs analysis with new students to understand their motivations. This provides information about the settings in which they use (or would like to use) English, and what aspects of language they think they need to work on in order to improve their performance.

Learners may not have a clear idea of their exact strengths and weaknesses, but this will give you a good idea of what they perceive their needs to be, and how they see the learning process ahead of them. This is valuable for both you and the student as this provides an opportunity for learners to think about their learning goals objectively.

Having clear goals is an important aspect of language development as it both ensures realistic expectations and focuses learning, leading to higher potential engagement with classroom activities.

See appendix 1 for an example needs analysis questionnaire which can be used with a group early in their period of study, or given to individuals to take away and complete. As a follow-up, a short one-to-one consultation can be a good forum to discuss the student’s responses and set some learning goals together. By planning goals and managing expectations from the outset of a course, focused motivation can be built, giving direction to students for the length of their language study experience.

In order to ensure that learners understand the relevance of the learning activity that will occur in your classroom, it is also a good idea to be clear about the purpose of the materials that you use, highlighting specific language or skills the activity aims to practise or improve. In this way, taught content can be applied to learners’ own language needs (as identified during needs analysis), leading to more objective, informed learning.

Learning is a cognitive activity, so when a new piece of language is processed for the first time, it follows that the amount of cognitive work performed by the student will be relatively high. If this target language is practised in different ways and retained deeply, its further use will entail less cognitive work, and the learner will be able to use it with less mental effort after the item has been learnt.

Cognitive approaches to learning assume that the retention of new information acts like a mental ‘reward’ for the brain work done in trying to understand and correctly produce new language. Many educational systems are based on this theory, including Socrates’ system of teaching through questions.

Socrates argued that rather than being a ‘teacher-dictator’ or ‘fountain of knowledge’, more effective learning is brought about by leading students through a series of questions, enabling them to bring themselves to a final answer through their own logical thought processes.