About Interaction in class

About Interaction in class

江苏朗阁外语培训中心 托福口语主讲 刘恒

I have noticed in many of the classes I have taught that there can be a tendency for the learners to want to interact with me but less enthusiasm when it comes to interacting with each other.

Most people agree that learning anything involves participation. You can't learn to play a musical instrument without actually picking up the instrument and similarly it is difficult to learn a language without engaging with that language. Given that language primarily exists to facilitate communication, interaction in that language must have an important role to play in developing a learner's ability in that language. In other words, teachers need to promote learner interaction in order to help the learners succeed.

Learners need to practise as much as possible if they are to be successful. Interaction through pair and group work maximises the opportunities to practise as more learners speak for more of the time. Besides, motivation is a fundamental aspect of successful learning. Interaction gives learners the opportunity to use language successfully and to measure their progress which in turn should lead to an increase in motivation.

Interaction seems so desirable and sensible in theory but we all know that actually promoting and increasing it can be an uphill struggle. On one hand, while theoretically the more students there are in a class the more possibilities for interaction there should be, this is not the case in practice. The more learners there are, the more difficult developing interaction can be since there are more people to monitor and, therefore, more chances of problems. In addition there is, of course, a greater likelihood of excessive noise which can mask bad behaviour and use of L1. On the other hand, pairing and grouping students appropriately in classes that have a wide variety of levels (e.g. secondary schools) is much more difficult than in small classes of a homogeneous level.

As a result, how we can promote an increase in student interaction became somewhat necessary nowadays. As for the solutions, here are some thoughts.

Providing support

As well as providing language for tasks, where appropriate I try to provide ideas too. These can be brainstormed before the task and put on the board so that the learners have plenty of things to talk about.

Giving preparation time

I have often found that interaction breaks down because the learners haven't had time to think about what they want to say and how to say it. I plan to give some thinking time before starting a task during which the students can ask me or each other for support.

Providing a supportive atmosphere

I try to raise confidence by giving lots of praise and giving feedback on task achievement as well as language use. When monitoring I try to do so as unobtrusively as possible so the students don't feel that I'm necessarily listening to them personally. On the other hand in feedback I try to make it clear to the class that I have been listening to them and through feedback show them that there is a point to interaction and thereby overcome student resistance.

Varying the interaction and repeating tasks

When teaching large classes I plan to move students around so that they are not always talking to the same partner. A good way to do this I have found is by asking the learners to perform the same task a number of times but each time with a different partner. As well as providing variety of interaction, this approach also maximises practice of the language being worked on.

Having different levels of task

With mixed ability classes I prepare an easy, medium, and difficult version of the same task so students of different levels can interact together at a level appropriate to the language level. For example, after some listening practice students with different tasks can tell each other what they have found out.

Conclusion

Interaction helps learners develop language learning and social skills and so maximising interaction in the classroom is an important part of the teacher's role. Interaction will not necessarily happen spontaneously, however, and in my view it has to be considered before teaching. The approaches suggested above all have this in common - they require forethought and are, therefore, a part of the lesson planning process.