Effective Class Management Strategies for Language Teaching

Posted on May 14, 2025 in Early Childhood and Primary Education

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Aspects of Class Management: Pupil Grouping, Space and Time Management, Methodology Selection, Role of the Teacher, etc.

Index

0. Introduction

1. Student Groupings

  • Whole class
  • Pair and group work
  • Individual study

2. Space and Time Management

  • Space management
  • Time management

3. Selection of Methodologies

  1. The Communicative Approach
  2. The Natural Approach
  3. Globalization
  4. Active Methodology

4. The Role of the Teacher

  1. Teaching roles
  2. Classroom control and discipline

5. Conclusion

6. Bibliography

Introduction

Nowadays, the main aim in foreign language teaching is developing students’ communicative competence. This implies adopting an approach based on communication: the communicative approach. This consists of providing the students with enough communicative practice to develop their ability to use the language in a variety of situations, which is the aim of our current educational law.

Knowledge of classroom management is essential to seek success in language learning. If a teacher, for example, does not use a variety of student groupings, he/she is missing valuable opportunities to create a communicative atmosphere in the class and to maximize student practice. If the teacher, for instance, does not know how to cope with discipline problems, even the best-planned class will be ruined.

The teacher must have sufficient management skills to make teaching more effective. These skills include specific actions and routines, such as:

  • Organizing student groupings
  • Organizing space and time
  • Maintaining discipline
  • Selecting materials and methodologies

All these variables, as we will see in this topic, must be oriented towards achieving students’ communicative competence.

  1. Student Groupings

The classroom is not the best place to learn a language. It has space and time limitations that prevent real communicative situations. In fact, it is outside the classroom where a language is learned better: in an English-speaking family or in the country where the language is spoken.

The circumstances surrounding a family or country favor communication: a great variety of interpersonal relationships, plenty of time to practice, varied situations…

The use of varied groupings in the English class mitigates, in some way, the unfavorable conditions of the classroom and will improve our students’ communicative strategies. The choice of one grouping or another will depend on the stage of the lesson we’re at (imitation stage, practice stage, or production stage). We will consider the following groupings: whole class, pair and group work, and individual study.

1.1. Whole Class

The whole class is the traditional teaching situation in which all the students are working with the teacher in the same activity. The author Jeremy Harmer calls this type of grouping lockstep, because all the students are “locked into” the same rhythm and pace.

Lockstep is useful in the imitation stage, where choral repetition and drills take place (once the language forms have been presented). The advantages of using lockstep in the imitation stage are:

  • Everyone hears the same model from the teacher
  • Lockstep provides practice in speaking for many students at the same time. It is a good technique to improve accuracy
  • The teacher can easily monitor the students’ performances
  • Lockstep encourages the shyest students to speak

Whole class groupings are also useful in other teaching situations, such as giving instructions to students, giving explanations, checking tasks, and so on.

1.2. Pair and Group Work

Pair and group work are important techniques to improve the students’ use of English, and they are very useful in large classes, where students have few opportunities to participate. Using these activities in the practice and production stages allows students to talk about their opinions, ideas, and interests. Besides, these groupings encourage pupil cooperation and learning autonomy.

  • Pair Work

Although it can be complicated at the beginning, pair work is a very good method to practice in a lively way what has already been learned. The main advantages are:

  • More practice
  • It improves personal relationships
  • Similarity with real life

Pair work also presents problems: more noise, loss of time during organization, impossibility of correcting all couples, risk of them using their mother tongue… but, all in all, the advantages of pair work outweigh the disadvantages.

Pair work is usually used in the practice stage and in a great number of activities whether speaking, reading, or writing.

  • Group Work

If students are used to pair work, they will have had great training for working in groups. Group work is ideal for activities of freer production. In fact, fluency is developed with this type of grouping.

There are many reasons for using group work in the class:

  • It increases the amount of student talking time
  • It gives students the sense of using the language communicatively
  • It increases self-confidence in the use of language
  • It is more dynamic than pair work, because there is greater scope for discussion
  • It is more relaxing than pair work

Of course, the problems that apply to pair work (noise, lack of discipline, use of the mother tongue) can equally be applied to group work. The solutions depend mainly on good organization and a confident and positive attitude towards these techniques.

To conclude, group work has enormous learning potential: it can be used for oral practice, reading and listening tasks, cooperative writing, games, etc.

1.3. Individual Study

In some practice activities, the teacher must let students work at their own pace. Individual study is generally used in reading and writing tasks, which usually require concentration and silence. The advantages are:

  • Students can relax from outside pressure (teacher or partner)
  • Individual study is a break from oral work
  • It allows them to internalize what has been learned orally
  • It respects the learning pace of each child

2. Space and Time Management

As we have said before, the classroom is not the best place to learn a language, from a communicative point of view. It has space and time limitations:

  • Space limitations: large classes and the arrangement of desks, which rarely favors communication.
  • Time limitations: the number of hours available for learning the foreign language is usually not enough

Despite these drawbacks, the teacher should try to create the best conditions for learning by organizing space and time in the most efficient way.

2.1. Space Management

Careful arrangement of the classroom is important to create an organized and secure atmosphere. The teacher will have to decide on the arrangement of desks and the areas of the classroom for different uses. The ideal classroom should be large enough to accommodate all the students’ desks, allow sufficient extra space for activities such as role-play and dramatization, and have “English corners.”

– Classroom Layout

  • Rows: This is the traditional layout of chairs and desks. The students are facing the teacher and can easily look at the blackboard.
  • Horseshoe Shape: In this layout, the students also face the teacher and, at the same time, they can see each other.
  • In Pairs: Students can sit in pairs facing the teacher.
  • In Groups: Students can sit in groups of four: two students facing the other two.

Each layout has its own advantages and uses. What the teacher has to bear in mind is that the foreign language class is concerned with communication, and this implies a variety of interactions: he/she must find the best ways to meet this aim.

Another aspect that the teacher must think about is that it’s a good idea for the children to change position. Research has shown that there are action zones: students who sit nearer the teacher concentrate more and work harder.

– Classroom Corners

Our main task is providing the students with enough communicative practice to develop their ability to use the language in a variety of situations, and for that, the classroom should have particular areas or corners for different uses. Although many corners can be created, depending on what you want to teach or revise, I suggest the following ones:

– Book corner, listening corner, computer corner, travel agency, restaurant, game corner, theatre.

The way of working is very similar to how it is done in Infant Education, with routines and games, where students interact and learn through cooperative learning. In these corners, students will work with authentic materials.

– Classroom Display

The teacher can think of an area of the classroom where the students can display their work. Displays encourage a purposeful working atmosphere and lead to higher motivation because the students’ work is made public. Besides, the classroom will look more colorful and brighter.

2.2. Time Management

And for time, the teacher should anticipate the length of the didactic units, the stages of a lesson, and the activities (although this will be just an orientation: the pace of each student must be respected).

The time devoted to the units will depend on the following factors:

  • The age of the students
  • The number of hours available for learning the foreign language
  • The type of contents
  • The learners’ previous knowledge

With practice, a teacher becomes more able to judge how much time will be needed for each stage. A class of 55 minutes usually consists of:

  • Starting the class: warm-up stage (5 minutes)
  • Presentation of the linguistic forms (10 minutes)
  • Oral and written activities (35 minutes)
  • Finishing the class (5 minutes)

The teacher can find that a particular stage of the lesson takes much longer (or much less) than anticipated. With experience, teachers learn how to vary the amount of time given to a particular activity.

When the lesson takes longer than planned, we can make the first stage (review/warm-up) shorter, substitute individual responses for more choral practice, leave the feedback of the activities’ answers for the next lesson, or set written work as homework.

When the lesson is shorter than planned, the teacher can either have activities “on reserve,” or he/she can extend particular activities.

Teachers must imagine each activity as being composed of three parts: explaining the activity, performing the activity, and checking the activity.

3. Selection of Methodologies

Methodology includes the techniques, procedures, and strategies that the teacher will use to carry out learning activities. Our current educational system bases its methodological foundations on three premises, from which different methods will derive:

  • The Nature of Language: Nowadays, language is seen as an instrument of communication, not simply structures and words. This view has given way to the communicative approach to language teaching.
  • The Nature of Second Language Acquisition: Foreign language teaching must be based on how children learn a second language. Two of the most influential views have been the natural approach and the cognitive view (cognitivism).
  • Children’s Psychological Characteristics: The teaching of an L2 language must also be based on the particular psychological features of children in Primary Education: globalization, active methodologies.
  1. The Communicative Approach (Rober Langs)

Principles:

  • Communicative competence: The goal of language learning is for the pupils to develop communicative competence.
  • Contextualization of language: Teaching items are introduced in a meaningful context.
  • Cognitivism: Learners are considered to be the agents of their own language competence.

Activities:

The communicative approach believes that the practice of communicative activities will produce an unconscious learning of the structures of the language. A communicative activity must be: interactive, unpredictable, within a context, and authentic.

There are two types of activities:

  • Functional communication activities: which include activities in which the students look for missing information. Examples: following directions, completing information, solving problems…
  • Social interaction activities: in which the development of the students’ interactive abilities is the aim. Examples: role-plays, simulations, dialogues, debates…

The use of pair and group work will provide practice opportunities for students who aren’t living in an English-speaking country.

Materials: We will use three types of materials: text-based materials, task-based materials, and realia.

Students Groupings: Groupings should be flexible to ensure a rich and varied interaction.

Procedure: The methodological procedure in Communicative Teaching classroom follows this sequence of activities: presentation, practice, and production.

Errors: They must be seen as something natural and logical, since they are a positive evidence of the learning progress.

3.2. The Natural Approach (Krashen and Terrell)

Principles:

  • Acquisition/learning hypothesis: There are two distinct ways of developing competence in a second language. One is acquiring the language, which is a natural and unconscious type of language development, parallel to L1 acquisition. Learning, by contrast, refers to a process in which conscious rules about the language are developed. Learning, according to the theory, cannot lead to acquisition.
  • The input hypothesis: It states that acquisition takes place as a result of learners having understood input that is a little beyond their level of competence (comprehensible input).
  • The affective filter hypothesis: Krashen sees the learner’s emotional state as a filter that blocks the necessary input for acquisition. A low affective filter is desirable, and it’s related to learners’ motivation, self-confidence, and level of anxiety.

Methodological Implications:

  • Comprehensive input: In the early stages, the oral receptive skill (listening) is essential. The level of difficulty must be slightly beyond the learner’s competence.
  • Silent period: Teachers should respect a learner’s natural silent period. They must not insist on the pupils speaking all the time. Pupils must show a desire to communicate and feel ready for it.
  • Pleasant classroom atmosphere: Learning cannot lead to genuine acquisition if learners’ attitudes aren’t favorable to learning. The classroom atmosphere must be interesting and friendly. The teacher should promote activities that foster a positive approach to the foreign language.
  • Oral skills precede the written ones: At early stages, oral skills have priority, since speech is the most direct and natural way of interaction in a communicative act.

3.3. Globalization

Principles:

Children in Primary Education are characterized by the globalization principle, which is how children approach knowledge and perceive reality. Children perceive in a global way, that is establishing associations between objects and events without previous analysis.

Teaching Implications:

  • Gradual complexity: Simple language elements based on students’ interests will be taught before others that are more complex and distant from the students’ real life.
  • Relation to other subjects: Children must relate the English subject to other subjects: Maths, Science, Art, Music, cross-curricular subjects…

3.4. Active Methodology

Principles:

Nowadays, the role of the learner differs from that in traditional language teaching. Before, learners were seen as a stimulus-response mechanism whose learning depended on repetitive practice (behaviorist view). This passive role has now become an active one.

Methodological Implications:

  • Motivation: Teachers must find as many ways as possible of creating in their pupils a desire to learn. This can be done by devising activities that are close to the learners’ interests.
  • Teaching learning to learn: Learners can construct their own competence quite autonomously and independently with the help of the teacher and materials. Therefore, the teacher must enable the students to learn how to learn. This can be done by promoting active participation of the pupils (learning by doing).

4. The Role of the Teacher

4.1. Teaching Roles

Nowadays, the role of the teacher is far removed from the authoritarian attitudes of traditional teaching. The role of the teacher has changed because the role of the learner has changed.

As a consequence, the teacher now has a less dominant role in the classroom, although this doesn’t mean that he/she will lose the respect of the class or will have problems controlling the class.

Several roles are assumed for teachers in current language teaching:

  • Organizer: The teacher facilitates the communication process between the students.
  • Participant: The teachers are an independent participant within the group. Not only do they organize resources, they’re also a resource in themselves.
  • Encourager: The teacher must make sure that, once the activity has started, everyone is involved. The students also need to receive encouragement; they like to hear how well they are doing.
  • Language Consultant: The teacher must be a source of information on vocabulary or structures.
  • Monitor: The teacher should observe students’ performances and make a note of major errors. Errors might be treated in subsequent lessons. However, at particular times, a certain amount of correction is advisable.

4.2. Classroom Control and Discipline

This is an area of classroom management that has an important effect on the atmosphere of the classroom and on students’ learning.

Jeremy Harmer finds three areas that can cause discipline problems: the teacher, the students, and the institution.

The behavior and attitude of the teacher is one of the most important factors concerning discipline and control. The teacher should be firm, but kind and encouraging.

A teacher may be doing everything to avoid trouble and still have problems. There are some reasons why students behave badly: time of the day, negative attitude towards the class, students’ company…

The attitude of the school towards disruptive behavior is also essential for keeping control. A student who causes severe problems has to be handled by the school authorities, rather than by the teacher on their own. Usually, schools seek the help of the child’s parents. This is a reasonable thing to do, since it’s important for parents to be involved in their children’s education.

5. Conclusion

In this topic, we have discussed the subject of class management. We have seen that there are many variables the teacher must be aware of to be able to create the best learning conditions for students.

Knowledge in classroom management will avoid time being wasted and disruptive behavior, making the teaching more effective.

Nowadays, foreign language teaching aims at developing students’ communicative competence. This implies adopting an approach based on communication: the communicative approach. It consists of providing the students with enough practice to develop their ability to use the language in a variety of situations, which is the aim of our current educational system. The English teacher must ensure that the activities he/she organizes will aim at the students’ communicative competence.

6. Bibliography

  • Brewster, J: The Primary English Teacher’s Guide
  • Byrne, D: Teaching Oral English
  • Harmer, J: The Practice of English Language Teaching
  • Richards, J and Rogers, T: Approaches and Methods in Language Teaching
  • Underwood, M: Effective Class Management