ESL teacher classroom techniques Essay

The social occasion of this field of study was to assess the precise schoolroom techniques utilize by ESL instructors to pr until nowt /solve possible contain related problems while employing joint activities with students. In this Enriched ESL conjunct classroom the t for each matchless(prenominal)er integrates instructional strategies that facilitate and encourage interaction, collaboration and investigation in the civilizeing environment. The students in the class ar not passive learners but ar actively concern in the know leadge process, taking responsibility for their take in reading.One of the major aspects of a accommodative airfield environment is spoken communication between and among students and with the classroom instructor. Students get a chance to address a multiplicity of issues that argon relevant to the class and explore unexampled concepts in their interactions. This type of breeding and peer-to-peer interaction allow students to be enga ged in the decision making process of their education and to contribute meaningfully to their own schooling and that of their peers.In the co-op ESL classroom interaction is unavoidable. Students score to work with each former(a) in ordination to possess discipline meaningful and to develop the communicative skills necessary for roleful function in the real-world run-in picture. Students need to feel wanton interacting with each other, sharing ideas, analyze and exploring their language environment and running(a) out solutions to problems.Thus on the itinerary to developing competency in slope students will have to key out some(prenominal) an individual and a collaborative effort since star of the characteristics of language eruditeness is to develop the social techniques that will help the learner generalize how to office the language in a material body of cultural settings. Of argumentation since interaction is intrinsic to the ESL classroom so is the potenti al for conflict and disciplinary concerns in the classroom.The ESL teacher needs to develop the right skills over while to eff interactive behaviors in the classroom so that objectives be accomplished and un aim and other disruptive behaviors are avoided. In the current study the detective wanted to determine the behaviors most frequently employ by ESL teachers at heart the accommodating learning context in response to or as a way of thwarting any potential disciplinary or non-task-related matters. The question questions that guided this seek were thitherfore . What classroom trouble techniques are ESL teachers using in the classroom in order to maintain sort out while work throughing conjunct learning activities? 2. Can effective classroom commission lead to winnerful improvement of conjunctive learning activities and control discipline within companys? In order to accomplish the objectives of the study and to respond to the research questions a mixed methods resear ch approach was taken. This mired the gathering of both qualitative and numerical entropy.A questionnaire survey, administered to the ESL teacher, was procedure to gather the qualitative information. The quantitative data was obtained through with(predicate) placards of the teachers classroom behavior in conjunct learning sessions. Participants This study was conducted in a classroom setting and involved an ESL teacher and 28 students, in a francoph bingle private aim in Quebec City, Canada. The ESL teacher is a fairly young teacher who has been works at this private school for the past 9 years.The students are principally from very affluent backgrounds. This is probably because the school charges a very lofty fee for students wishing to attend and thus lone(prenominal) the children of parents of a noble socio-economic status, who can afford those fees, are able to attend. The students were observe in their ESL class. They were taking the ELA plan in grade 5. ELA is a program for high school students in grade 4 and 5. Students in this program would have consummate the EESL program and succeeded the ESL core examination at the end of grade 3.The demographics of the students were 16 girls and 12 boys. They were aged between 15 and 17 years old. This gathering of students and the ESL teacher were selected because they were utilizing conjunct learning strategies at the time of the research. In fact, the students observed in this study had been taking part in co-op learning for quite some time. Data prayer instrument A variety of instruments were used in the process of data collection. An initial set of data was collected from the ESL teacher using a telephone consultation.The interview include a series of question on how the teacher implemented cooperative learning in her classroom (Appendix 1). The 11 questions on the interview were formulate by the researcher. Another instrument used was the Communicative Orientation of language Teaching, (COLT) observation evasion by Spada and Frohlich (1995) for the levels of observation in the classroom (Appendix 2). The COLT plan has been used for decades by classroom researchers in examining interactive classroom behaviors.The COLT scheme was used in its original format, without any modifications, except that the researcher used only the sections on activities and episodes, participant organization and content for the nominates of the research. Data collection procedure The study was conducted at the end of February, at the beginning of the hold out term of the school year. The students were evaluate to graduate at the end of the term. In the initial phase of the study the researcher contacted the ESL teacher to respond to the interview questions over the phone.This conversation was withal used to make arrangements for a en antipathetic at the school to discuss a few things that needed clarification. The purpose of the interview was to discover the teachers attitude towa rds cooperative working activities, how the teacher used cooperative learning in her classroom, the kind of classroom heed techniques she used to in stable discipline while implementing cooperative activities and students corporation in root word work activities.The second part of the study involved classroom observations of the same teacher, interacting with a convention of 28 students enrolled in the ELA program in grade 5 of high school. The purpose of the observations was to validate the schooling gathered during the interview. The COLT scheme (Spada, & Frolich, 1995) was used to collect this data. The classroom observations were conducted during troika (3) disperse classroom periods of 75 minutes duration each while the students were involved in cooperative activities.The research made the checks and marks under the enamour categories of the COLT. The researcher checked each time the ESL teacher had to deputise in order to direct the students back to their work. The pa rticipants were observed three time on three different days of the week in ESL classes where the students where involved in cooperative activities. One of the observations weas through during the first period of the morning, the second was through with(p) during the second period and the third observation was done during the last period on Friday afternoon.In the classroom the teacher assigned the students to groups of 4. There were 7 groups. Each student chose one of four topics for a project and they were separate based on their choice. The teacher provided students with 4 different topics which were then numbered. She last set up the groups by placing the students together trying to respect, as oft as possible, the students personal choice. The teacher and students logical the desks arranged in pairs side-by-side opposite another pair. Such arrangement enabled students to talk to each other with ease.The main characteristics observed by the researcher were students behavior and teachers interventions during the cooperative learning. This kind of observation was chosen because it gave an idea of the existent classroom practice in terms of students behavior and the teachers interventions. This may allow some generalization of the results to other classes and teachers that use cooperative learning. Data analysis procedure When all the data were collected the culture collected from the COLT (Spada & Frohlich, 1995) was analyzed.The teachers interventions were tallied for each observation period and the three periods were compared. The teachers responses during the telephone interview, and the information from the COLT scheme, as gathered through observations, were also compared. The purpose of this comparison was to determine the correlation between the account classroom focusing techniques that the teacher mentioned during the interview and the substantial practices used in the classroom. Results and analysis The data reveal the nature of teachers i nterventions and the students behavior during cooperative learning activities.The researcher observed the ESL teacher three measure. During the first observation, the teacher had to intervene a total of 12 times. The teacher intervened 3 times to spend group feedback and remind the students that they were to read and follow instructions in their booklet, 3 times to refocus students on the task because they were doing something besides their project, 3 times to remind students to communicate in the target language and three times 3 times when she noticed that some students were not working on their projects.During the second period of observation, the teacher had to spend some time reminding students that they were expected to play the roles they had been assigned by the group. Also, she reminded them that everyone was to contribute to the success of their project. The teacher intervened 8 times during this period 3 times to remind students to communicate in the target language, t wice to prey feedback to some groups, 3 times to counter in leave behavior among certain groups where the students did not display behavior appropriate to the classroom. During the third period of observation, the teacher had to intervene 15 times. of the interventions were to remind students to use the target language in the classroom, 3 times to refocus students on the task because they were doing something besides their project, 4 times for displaying behavior inappropriate to the classroom and 4 times because students were not fulfilling their roles in the group. Some of the more super C disruptive behaviors that were noted include drawing obscenities, spending too more than time sharpening their pencils, browsing fancy magazines and passing objects other than their project amongst the groups members.Students sometimes were talking to another group. During the third period one essential observation was that students stopped working and arranged their bag while there was stil l slightly 8 minutes left in the period. The teacher used that time to settle students and remind them that they had only two periods left to hit their project. In examining the teachers reported estimation of the frequency of interventions during cooperative activities as stated during the interview and comparing them to the classroom observation, the results showed that the reported and actual practices were closely aligned.With respect to the techniques used to instill discipline during cooperative learning activities the classroom observations and the telephone interview also demonstrate a constructive relationship. For the most part the groups were cooperative. Only 42. 86% of the students, 3 out of 7 groups, displayed problems staying on task. These groups appeared not to have dole outd the tasks amongst themselves fairly. The teacher had to visit this group very often to chequer that they were working.Observations of the ESL teacher revealed that she used effective coope rative activities which decreased the problems of classroom counselling to a tolerable level which led students to in effect work in cooperative activities in the classroom. In order to create a successful environment so that students could work effectively in groups, the observed teacher tried many techniques to manage cooperative learning. From the interview she indicated that she used cooperative activities quite frequently. She gave students roles such as sea captain English.This student was to check off that the entire group used only English in the class. The secretary had to note decisions and ideas during brainstorming and other activities. The chairwoman was in charge of seeing that everyone had been working and checking that all the documents were submitted on time. Finally, there was Captain Cheer-up. This persons duty was to cheer up the group, move them whenever they had successfully accomplished a task and was ready to go ship in the project. The ELS teacher assi gned the students to group using the students choice of a topic. base on the report from the teacher group formation has an key role in the success of cooperative activities and students would make the best of their experience in cooperative working if the groups were confused. The students were quite comfortable working with each other and the teacher. They had been taking the same level English course and they had been studying together for two year. Many of them knew each other very easily and were close friends. This is also true of the ESL teacher who had been program line the same group for come time.According to the teacher, students should not be allowed to take their peers to form their own teams to do cooperative working otherwise they great power not work well and spend the time to talk about things out of the subject. The observed teacher had already explained to the students the most important points in order to obtain crack results when working in cooperative le arning. She had also explained the different roles the students should hold while working in teams. She had also taught the students how to share the task within the group members and she had emphasized the importance of grouping making. represent choice of group size was one of the techniques that the teacher used to examine that the teacher was able to effectively manage student behavior during cooperative working. Research suggests that group sizes should not be too big, a middling size being two to four students. The teacher also walked among the groups to ensure that they stayed on task and even offered them needed feedback. According to the teacher, feedback is extremely important for the success of cooperative working as it gives the students the opportunity to adapt themselves match to the teachers instructions.The teacher randomly selected a student from each team to present his or her group results. It was a good dodge to make sure that students had worked effectively a nd that everyone in the team was prepared give respond in case he or she was selected. Reward was ancient in order to raise motivation amongst the groups. The teacher rewarded every team that had worked hard. She also asked students to divide the work into parts and write their names concord to what each students responsibilities were. DiscussionThere are hold in studies examining effective classroom management techniques for cooperative learning activities in ESL classrooms. The purpose of this study was to fill the gap in the existing literature by discovering and highlighting the peculiar(prenominal) classroom techniques used by ESL teachers to manage cooperative learning activities successfully by addressing the questions what management classroom techniques can teachers use in the classroom in order to instill discipline and implement cooperative learning activities? nd can effective classroom management lead to successful improvement of cooperative learning activities and control discipline within the groups? This study has attempted to show different ways in which the cooperative teaching method could improve students behavior and help classroom discipline. With principles such as positive interdependence, face-to-face promoting interactions, individual and group accountability, interpersonal, clear group skills and group processing, cooperative learning has all the necessary elements to ensure that discipline is maintained in the classroom.The current research conforms to existing research paradigms on classroom management and the results are representative of previous findings in this area. In examining the effect of classroom management on the success of cooperative learning, this study, like others before it, showed that group formation is an effective classroom management tool for cooperative learning activities. Research recommends randomly assigned heterogeneous groups of students to form success cooperative groups.This study support the fin ding that these groups are successfully managed in the classroom and are preferred to homogenous, self-selected groups (Emmer, Gerwels & Austin, 2005). The students in this group performed well because groups were heterogeneous so the students were able to profit from everybodys contribution. The data collected also showed that group size was a very important factor in helping to ensure classroom management success in cooperative learning strategies.Studies also support that assigning detail roles to each student in a group ensures that everyone stays on task and that cooperative learning strategies would be more successful. This success is even further assured when students respect the roles they have in the group. Researchers have suggested the use of rewards to help motivate students to stay on task and to successfully have a go at it activities in cooperative learning groups. The teacher in this study employed rewards to hardworking groups and this was able to motivate them to perform well.When members of the group look transport to a reward they will ensure that each works in completing the task so that all the members would benefit, they are aware(predicate) that failure of one person to do what is required would result in the failure of the entire group. One thing that was immediately obvious from the observations was that students were, for the most part, aware of good cooperative skills. The students in this group have been involved in cooperative learning for quite a while and thus this motion-picture show might have helped them to develop proper cooperative learning strategies. tour there were some disruptions during the class, these were not significant enough to take outside(a) from the cooperative task and students by and large appeared to understand what was required in the cooperative groups and the proper procedures they needed to follow. Overall, the study has shown that it is possible to use cooperative learning and manage the classr oom successfully. Nevertheless, all the elements of successful cooperative learning have to be adhered to in order to obtain good results. Moreover, the students moldiness be aware of what is expected in cooperative activities.This study fits well in the existing literature on cooperative learning and classroom management. It could help ESL teacher with their classroom management while doing cooperative learning and administrators when they are examining, planning and implementing alternative teaching strategies and approaches. Conclusion This study supported the idea that cooperative learning, if used effectively, can help teachers manage their classes. If cooperative learning is implemented effectively, it could facilitate the effective management of the classroom.However, there are many elements that should be taken into consideration to attain such result. Based on these finding, teachers need to pay more attention to the classroom management techniques they use during cooperati ve learning. This study showed that it is possible for ESL teachers to implement cooperative learning and manage their classroom successfully if they have effective classroom management techniques. Knowing that classroom management is an important element for the success of cooperative learning, this study aimed to help teachers who implement this method for the first time to better manage their classes.This study has many limitations. Only one ESL teacher and one group of high school students in grade 5 participated in the study. Moreover, the research group was already organized when the research did the observation. Due to time constraints, the researcher could not observe the ESL teacher with her students more than three times. The results of this study provide a description of the implementation of cooperative learning that is specific to the participating teacher. Amongst all the techniques used by the ESL teacher during the observation, there is one that the teachers did not implement in her classroom.She did not have the students write a daily report to inform what they had done on that day and who had done what in the project. Therefore, more research is needed to determine the extent to which these results could be if such technique should be applied. This study showed how the ESL teacher managed her classroom and how the students behaved during cooperative learning. However, it is not easy to generalize the results because the observations were done by only one researcher. The results needed to be validated by another observer.