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This unit covers teaching different types of classes, ranging from individual lessons to business groups or multilingual students. The first section covers the various types of beginners; namely, the absolute beginner who has no English at all, the false beginner who can produce simple structures and has had some exposure to English, the adult beginner who is usually more motivated and has chosen to pursue English, the young beginner who has been placed in the class and while innately curious, may not be entirely self-motivated to learn English, and the beginner without Roman alphabet who will need more focus on reading and writing practice.
Next, the unit covers tips and tricks for teaching beginners as well as possible problems and how to deal with beginners. For example, some methods involve controlling the language to be clear and simple, being as visual as possible, asking lots of questions, and abstaining from using the mother tongue of the students even if you know it. Some possible issues are weaker students who can be paired with stronger students for additional help, running out of material which can easily be filled by games or other activities, and the opposite, where there isn't enough time to finish all the material planned for this lesson, in which case you wouldn't want to rush it and focus on ensuring the students are learning rather than completing all that is planned. Finally, there are tips on mitigating these risks such as avoiding over-correction which could dissuade students, responding to the students as individuals to ensure they receive enough attention and their individuality is recognized, focusing on what is easy rather than what is difficult to keep the overall dynamic of the class positive.
Then, the unit walks through the different types of learners:
1) Individuals: 1:1 lessons can often reduce the number of activities and exposure to different levels that a classroom setting offers. However, there are opportunities to still use exercises from the coursework and more flexibility to work in interests of the particular student in order to keep the lessons varied and interesting while catering to the needs of the individual student.
2) Children: this is one of the most rewarding group for many teachers, but there needs to be special attention to how children differ from older students. A teacher must be slow and precise with delivery, repeat information often, and provide positive feedback/ reinforcement. While many factors can cause disciplinary issues in the class for children, the teacher can control boredom by varying lessons and working in more interesting activities, attention seeking by making a student an assistant/ helper, peer pressure by rearranging the class and switching up groups.
3) Business English learners/ English for Specific Purposes: often, businesses will either require or encourage its employees to learn English for business reasons, such as hotel staff needing to cater to a global clientele, global companies needing English speaking employees, etc. This is a bit more challenging in groups because usually age range and language level vary, and the motivation may be lower if the class is required and held outside of work hours (completely understandable considering this cuts into their free time and after a full day of work which can be exhausting). However, the teacher can always do a needs analysis to make the students more involved in what the focus of the class is, and reinforce every student's need with mid-course evaluations that elicit information such as how beneficial the course has been, where the students think they are in terms of learning, etc.
4) The monolingual class & the multilingual class: the monolingual class is easy in the sense that most students will face the same problems in English and the overall cultural interests are likely to be similar. While this is not the case with multilingual classes, they. have an edge considering students will be forced to speak in English due to the lack of a common language, and the class will have a larger variety of ideas and culture considering students are from all over the world.
