In the previous chapter, the researcher presented the major findings of the two teachers’ beliefs and classroom practices in teaching large multilevel classes. In this chapter, the findings will be further discussed in accordance with the research questions of this study. Research questions are listed as follows:
1. What are the teachers’ beliefs and practices toward teaching English in large multilevel classes?
2. What difficulties do the teachers encounter in the process of teaching?
3. What effective classroom teaching strategies are identified by the teachers to maximize students’ learning in large multilevel classes?
5.1 Teachers’ Beliefs and Practices Toward Teaching English in Large Multilevel Classes 5.1.1 Teachers Should Teach Towards the Majority
Ms. Chou and Ms. Yin both viewed elementary school education as compulsory education. Hence, when teaching large multilevel classes, teachers should focus on instructing the majority before accommodating diverse students’ needs. Besides, Ms.
Chou noted that most parents send their children to English cram schools before they attend elementary schools was one of the main reasons that lead to multilevel classes;
hence, in order to minimize the gap among the students’ proficiency in class, Ms.
Chou suggested that teachers should plan their lessons to facilitate learners who did not attend cram schools. This suggestion was also consistent with Ms. Yin’s proposal to provide immediate remedial support for slower English learners at the beginning of elementary school first grade.
As noted by Breen et al. (2001), “…language teachers of similar experience,
working with ESL students in a similar situation are likely to implement a shared principle through a diverse range of practices” (p. 496). Findings of the present study showed that Ms. Chou and Ms. Yin held similar beliefs towards teaching English to large multilevel classes. However, classroom observations revealed that the two teachers seemed to adopt slightly different practices to correspond with their beliefs.
The difference in the teachers’ classroom practices, as suggested by Smith (1996), might be the result of “teacher characteristics” and “context factors.”
Findings of the classroom observations revealed that Ms. Chou and Ms. Yin both divided their teaching layouts into two main sections: whole-class teaching and individual or group work. According to the two teachers, when teaching large multilevel classes, this arrangement is the best strategy in balancing between teaching towards the majority and providing differentiated instructions for individual needs.
In whole class activities, the teacher’s goals were to assure that the majority of the class understood the teaching objectives of the lesson, namely, vocabulary, sentence patterns, and the meaning of text contents. Ms. Chou would conduct communicative activities for her students to practice the language in meaningful contexts. Ms. Yin would ask students to read and translate the text contents and further discuss about issues of cultural differences. After making sure that most students understood the teaching objectives, Ms. Chou and Ms. Yin would leave five to ten minutes for group work or individual assignments. During individual activities, students were allowed to “participate in respectful work” (Tomlinson, 1999, p. 12) and practice the language in their own preferred pace; some would do more practice on the sentence patterns and others would write their workbooks and homework until the class ends. During such activities, the teachers would walk around the classroom and provide individual support for the students who needed special attention. This teaching strategy harmonized with Hess’s (2001) notion that “the large multilevel
class works better when we [teachers] provide a great deal of variety” (p. 112). That is to say, teachers should plan their lessons in the balance between individual work, pair work, and group work in order to achieve teaching effectiveness.
5.1.2 Teachers Should be Flexible in Their Teaching Methods
As Tomlinson (1999) suggested, “Flexibility is the hallmark of a differentiated classroom” (p. 15). The findings of this study found that Ms. Chou and Ms. Yin showed a great amount of flexibility in various teaching aspects such as teacher’s role, lesson planning, teaching practices, and assessment approaches in the large multilevel class.
Ms. Chou believed that teachers should be flexible in adjusting their roles when instructing different grade levels. For example, when teaching the lower grade levels, besides the role of a teacher, Ms. Chou would put on a more motherly role like teaching students to “respect” individual differences and taking notice of their personal hygiene manners. However, when teaching higher grade levels, she would transform into a more friend-like role and encourage her students to “challenge” their current proficiency as well as to take more responsibility of their own learning. Ms.
Chou’s flexible way in changing teacher’s roles harmonized with Brown’s (2001) claim that teachers should take students’ present intellectual development into consideration when approaching students’ needs. As for Ms. Yin, she reported that “a different class is a different teaching context” (TIY, 20080424). In order to promote effective teaching, she would adjust her teaching styles and pace in accordance with the learning characteristics of the class.
Besides the multiroles played in the classroom, Ms. Chou and Ms. Yin mentioned in their interviews that they planned their lessons in the form of a general outline rather than in detail. Ms. Chou said that teacher’s ability in predicting
students’ reactions about the classroom activities increases throughout the years of teaching. Learning from her experience, Ms. Chou would always leave a few extra minutes for each class when she plans her activities in case something unpredicted happens during the class. If the teaching process goes smoothly, the time left would be used for more communicative practices. Ms. Yin also addressed that “Everything needs to be flexible in teaching” (TIY, 20080424). Due to the two teachers’ rich teaching experiences, they became aware that teachers should always plan for the unexpected. The two teachers’ ability in predicting their students’ reactions and adjusting their lesson plan in accordance to students’ needs matched Wood’s (1996) notion that effective teachers would reflect on their teaching and evolve their expertise over time. As reported by Woods,
…teachers referred to their teaching experiences of prior events as playing an important role in their expectations about what will happen in the upcoming teaching,…It is through this process of experiencing the outcomes of the structures, refining them over time, that the teacher develops a repertoire of possibilities for use in other situations (p. 270).
In addition, Ms. Chou and Ms. Yin’s flexibility in teaching was also evidenced in their beliefs in adopting multiple assessment approaches. As Tomlinson (1999) suggested, “Assessment and instruction are inseparable” (p. 15). In addition to paper-and-pencil achievement tests, the two teachers reported that listening and oral tests, handouts, worksheets, additional work projects, and classroom participation also served as rich information about each individual’s learning achievement. To promote effective teaching in the differentiated classroom, teachers should practice on-going assessment and adjust their activities to fit the students’ needs (Errington, 2004;
Mathews-Aydinli & Horne, 2006).
To conclude, the findings showed that Ms. Chou and Ms. Yin shared common beliefs about teaching English to large multilevel classes. Both Ms. Chou and Ms. Yin
had no major complaints in implementing the Nine-year Integrated Curriculum Guidelines in their differentiated classrooms. In fact, both teachers have acknowledged large multilevel classes as a fact and have planned their practices in accordance with such teaching contexts. As noted by Tsui (2003), “For expert teachers, the context is very much an integral part of their teaching act” (p. 30). In other words, the two teachers’ present beliefs towards teaching had been modified and reshaped based on their teaching context and experiences (Borg, 1999; Woods, 1996). Hence, it can be suggested that after many years of teaching experiences, Ms. Chou and Ms.
Yin have already developed a holistic and integral understanding of Taiwan’s education policies, the situation of large multilevel classes, and to what extent they are able to maximize their students’ learning.
Findings from classroom observations showed that Ms. Chou and Ms. Yin have been able to include a great amount of flexibility in their lesson planning and teaching practices when instructing large multilevel classes. Besides the highly supported Communicative Language Teaching (CLT), the two teachers used a mixture of teaching approaches in their classroom practices. For example, when teaching a new sentence pattern, Ms. Chou believed that it was important to leave her slower learners a “silent period” before asking them to speak in front of the class. This practice echoed the aspects of the Natural Approach (NA) in emphasizing the importance of the “delay of oral production” (Brown, 2001, p. 33). Moreover, the researcher realized that both teachers were able to adopt an effective and alternative way in implementing the Grammar Translation Method (GTM) in their teaching to help their students comprehend the meaning of the text contents. For example, Ms. Yin would ask the students to read the passage in the text together. After asking some related comprehension questions, she would challenge her students to translate the whole text into Chinese sentence by sentence. For Ms. Yin, this is an effective way for her to
save time for more English practice activities, to check her students understanding of the text, and also to make sure that all the students would be able to understand the text after the class. Based on the students’ response, this kind of translation activity is fun, challenging, and rewarding.
The two teachers’ flexibility in teaching was also evidenced in how they balanced between teacher-centered and student-centered instructions in class. “Teachers are the chief architects of learning, but students should assist with the design and building”
(Tomlinson, 2001, p. 12). Even in whole-class activities, Ms. Chou and Ms. Yin both provided a large number of opportunities for students to contribute in the process of teaching. For example, if the advanced learners understood the grammar points or sentence patterns, the teachers would encourage their students to take the role of a teacher to share what they know with the class. In fact, observations showed that both teachers based their instructions on on-going teacher-student or student-student interactions. As reported by Tomlinson (2001), “teachers in healthy classrooms continuously invite their students to be part of the teaching” (p. 33). Also, when instructing communicative activities, both Ms. Chou and Ms. Yin would ask extensive questions such as “Why?” and “What else?” in hope to encourage students to contribute further responses in accordance with their proficiency levels.
Bailey (1996) stated that teaching is a dynamic process, teachers perform improvisational teaching in order (1) to serve the common good, (2) to teach to the moment, (3) to further the lesson, (4) to accommodate students’ learning styles, (5) to promote students’ involvement, and (6) to distribute the wealth (i.e. to provide slower learners with the same opportunities of practices). This kind of improvisational teaching was frequently observed in both Ms. Chou and Ms. Yin’s instructions. For example, when students raised questions or gave comments in class, the teachers would serve the common good by responding to the questions with a positive attitude
and praise the student for sharing their thoughts with classmates. Also, both teachers tried to promote students’ involvement by reducing the portion of teacher-talk in exchange for more student input. In Ms. Chou’s class, if students were able to teach the class the vocabulary or sentence patterns, she would let the student take the role of a teacher and would thank the student for being a wonderful helper. As for Ms. Chou, she served more like a “host” in class and allowed the students to do all the thinking.
In fact, most reading passages in the textbook were explained and translated into Chinese by her students.
Overall speaking, both Ms. Chou and Ms. Yin regarded “flexibility” as the key to effective teaching in large multilevel classes. The researcher did not detect major incongruence between the teachers’ beliefs and their classroom practices. It seemed that everything that happened in the classroom was completely under the teachers’
control, including the teaching processes, the students’ reactions and even their learning outcomes. Moreover, both teachers reported that sometimes they were even able to predict when they would have to perform improvisational teaching in the class.
These findings corroborated Tsui’s (2003) definition of expert teachers.
Experts teachers draw upon a wide range of knowledge when they are planning, including knowledge of the pupils, both as a group and as individuals, the curriculum, classroom organizations, student learning, and the subject matter.” (p. 28)
The characteristics of effective teachers were clearly evidenced in Ms. Chou and Ms. Yin’s teaching. The two teachers said that when planning lessons, they would consider various teaching factors such as the focus of the textbook context, the characteristics of the class, students’ interests, and students’ background knowledge.
5.2 Difficulties Teachers Encountered in the Process of Teaching
Teachers’ classroom practices are not only influenced by their beliefs, but are also constrained by contextual limitations (Johnson, 2001; Smith, 1996; Tsui, 2003;
Woods, 1996). Ms. Chou and Ms. Yin reported several difficulties that have been indicated in the previous studies such as large class sizes, limited class time, and inadequate teaching materials (Y. Z. Chiang, 2003; Su, 2001; Wang, 2006). Besides the common teaching setbacks, Ms. Chou and Ms. Yin also noted that students’
individual differences in their English reading and writing competence, teachers’
difficulty in classroom management, and parents’ inappropriate attitude towards students’ learning also hindered their teaching in large multilevel classes.
In response to large class sizes and limited instruction hours, Ms. Chou and Ms.
Yin stated that more than thirty students in each class made it challenging to practice communicative-based teaching. In fact, Ms. Chou’s interpretation of an ideal class size paralleled to Su’s (2001) notion that the optimum number for effective teaching was twenty students. However, since class size and time limit were officially arranged by the school and the administrators, difficulties caused by the two factors were somewhat beyond the teachers’ power to solve. In hope to support the needs of the majority, Ms. Chou and Ms. Yin chose to teach towards the majority and practiced as many group work and pair work activities as possible. Observation data also revealed that the teachers often resorted to Chinese when explaining complicated concepts or sentence patterns to save time for more language practices.
As for inadequate teaching materials, Ms. Chou and Ms. Yin instructed textbooks imported from the United States. Both teachers reported that the textbook contents were too challenging for their students to digest. However, they still were able to come up with effective solutions to solve this difficulty. For example, the textbook version Ms. Chou used was mainly based on short dialogues and conversations. To make the activities interesting and easier to comprehend, Ms. Chou planned her activities based on meaningful contexts such as story telling, role plays, and treasure finding. As for Ms. Yin, she had to teach a great number of long reading passages. To
make sure each student understood the meanings of the content, she adopted the practice of vocabulary and whole text translations. According to Ms. Yin, students were able to comprehend the context better through translations and were able to use the vocabulary correctly in sentence pattern practices.
Besides, students’ individual differences in English competence also constrained the teachers in conducting effective teaching. Ms. Chou stressed that the overabundance of English cram schools was one of the main causes for students’
mixed abilities. As commented by Chung and Hsu (2005), an overwhelming amount of children have already been exposed to English before they attend elementary school. Ms. Chou and Ms. Yin understood that they had no position in asking the parents to stop sending their children to cram schools, hence, both teachers made full use of the advanced students’ English competence in their instructions in order to promote effective teaching. This strategy meshed with Tomlinson’s (1999) notion that teachers should respect, appreciate, and build upon student differences when instructing multilevel classes. For example, Ms. Yin would ask the advanced students to help her translate the vocabulary and reading passages into Chinese. Similarly, Ms.
Chou would encourage the advanced learners to translate new vocabulary and explain grammatical rules for the class.
Another teaching difficulty the two teachers identified came from parental interference in teachers’ teaching practices. As reported by Ms. Chou, parents of advanced learners often complained that the textbook was too easy; they would request for more advanced practices and more challenging supplementary materials for their children. On the contrary, parents of slower learners showed little interest in their children’s schoolwork and relied on the teachers to do all the instructing.
According to Ms. Chou, this diversity of parental support led to a wider gap between the students’ English proficiency. That is to say, with the help from parents, the
advanced students became more advanced; however, without the support from parents, the slower learners find it more difficult to catch up with the class. Similar comments were given by Ms. Yin. However, Ms. Yin stressed that whether or not parents participate in their children’s learning is beyond the teachers’ power; teachers should try their best to facilitate each learner’s needs at school.
Besides the influencing factors mentioned above, Ms. Chou also commented on the difficulties encountered when teaching different grade levels. According to Ms.
Chou, large multilevel classes did not cause teaching difficulties in her second grade class because lower grade level students had little English background knowledge, were not afraid of making mistakes, and were more enthusiastic in participating in classroom activities. However, when teaching the fifth grade class, Ms. Chou noticed a clear-cut difference between the two extreme levels. Ms. Chou pointed out that some of the slower learners have already lost interest in learning. The same problem was also reported by Ms. Yin when she talked about some of her sixth-graders being indifferent towards classroom activities because of their poor English competence or lack of learning interest. The two teachers claimed that it becomes harder for slower learners to regain confidence in English when they reach higher grade levels; however, Ms. Chou and Ms. Yin still tried their best to arouse students’ interests by implementing meaningful and practical classroom activities. This finding was correspondent with Y. H. Chen’s (2004) statement that “the numbers of underachievers tended to increase with the students’ grade levels” (p. 92). In response to such dilemma, Ms. Yin gave the same suggestions as Chen, which was the urgent need to practice immediate remedial support starting from the lower grade levels.
5.3 Teaching Strategies Identified by the Teachers as Effective Classroom Practices Research in teaching effectiveness have suggested that, to promote effective
teaching, teachers should learn to reflect on their own teaching and change their deeply-held beliefs according to their teaching experiences, teaching context, and students’ characteristics, (Borg, 2003; Tsui, 2003; William & Burden, 1997). In this section, the researcher introduces the effective teaching strategies reported by Ms.
Chou and Ms. Yin, namely establish class rules and teaching routines, carry out
Chou and Ms. Yin, namely establish class rules and teaching routines, carry out