15 suggestions for clarifying your classroom language
Alex Case
1. Stress
One of the problems students often have trying to understand the teacher
speaking is picking out the important information from all the things they say.
One way of helping them with this is just stressing the words they really need
to understand more than you would usually (making sure it still sounds like
English rather than Italian of course!) You can prepare and train yourself for
this by marking the stress on any explanations you have written down.
2. Repeat yourself
Using the same phrases every time you start the class, ask them to work in
pairs, want them to open their books, want to ask them about their weekend etc.
will help them understand by context and give them the confidence that they can
actually understand or at least respond correctly to things they hear in English
even without understanding every word. You can also use those phrases once they
have heard them many times to introduce future grammar points, e.g. use “How was
your weekend?” from the first lesson of the course and then use it for the Past
Simple grammar presentation several weeks later.
3. Give them written instructions
This will allow each student to take their time, allow them to help each other
understand, and allow them to use their dictionaries. It is also great reading
practice, as unlike most reading tasks there are obvious negative consequences
if they don’t understand properly and a clear motivation to understand.
4. Look up important words in a bilingual dictionary
Even if you have a policy of not using L1 in the English class, at least you
will be able to confirm when they think they have understood, e.g. answering “Do
you mean ‘madrugada’?” This could also help you spot potential similarities and
differences and difficulties, such as false friends.
5. Use similar words and structures to L1
For example, if there are two English words like “hint” and “clue” and one is
more similar to the one used in L1, stick to that one until the other word is a
specific point you want to introduce, e.g. it comes up in the textbook.
6. Be explicit
For example, include relative pronouns that could be left out, use names rather
than pronouns, use linking expressions like “on the other hand” even when you
naturally wouldn’t, and include time clauses as well as the right tense.
7. Think about the grammar too
Teachers often concentrate too much on eliminating the difficult vocabulary
in their explanations and end up leaving in grammar that students don’t know yet
or that could have been simplified.
8. Avoid homophones and difficult minimal pairs
Another reason students don’t understand that isn’t often given the priority of
vocabulary is words that are difficult to understand for pronunciation reasons.
9. Avoid short forms
Students are going to have to get used to the fact that native speakers use lots
of short forms like “we’d’ve” and that “I’m” has a very different meaning to “I
AM!” sooner or later (unless they are only interested in communicating with
other non-native speakers), but during a grammar explanation is probably not the
best time to have to take a diversion and explain that you meant “they’re”
rather than “their” or “there”.
10. Avoid phrasal verbs
This is by far the most difficult part of the English language, and even
students who are familiar with the phrasal verb you are using will probably need
to use their brains more to interpret it than if you had used a more formal
equivalent, taking their attention away from the content of what you are trying
to explain. Writing explanations you are going to use, or used and were
difficult to understand, and specifically checking for phrasal verbs is good for
this, or you could introduce similar sentences in a workshop and work together
to find the simplest way of replacing the phrasal verbs.
11. Reduce the mental load
Students are sometimes distracted and confused by non-language factors such
as mention of unfamiliar people and places, other cultural factors, difficult
logical connections etc, and this can make comprehension of the language more
difficult. You can practice simplifying these factors by checking for each one
in each explanation you have found or written down, or by analysing each lack of
understanding or very extended explanation in the class for why it happened. You
could also ask an observer to concentrate on looking for that point when they
come into your lesson. This can also be brought into a workshop by analysing
each sentence for why the misunderstanding happened, including examples of
non-language complications, or (more fun) adding those complications to language
that is otherwise nice and simple, e.g. changing a question about a textbook
character into “Is Ricky Gervais fat?”
12. Teach classroom language
Many lower level textbooks have a specific focus on language like “How do you
spell…?” or “Close your books”. There are also games for this point like Simon
Says that can be used with some adult classes. Alternatively, you can give them
a sheet with translated phrases like “See you next week” and “Work in pairs”
translated into L1 before they start the course or have a similar poster on the
wall. You can combine the two by getting students to make posters of useful
classroom language. A third possibility is to bring classroom language into as
many lessons on the syllabus as you can, e.g. when teaching imperatives,
prepositions, modals of prohibition or transitive and intransitive verbs.
13. Be observed/ observe
Ask anyone who observes you to concentrate specifically on this, e.g. writing
down each time there is a misunderstanding or explanations take two or three
attempts and why it happened, or analysing the difference between the language
suggested in the textbook or on your lesson plan and what you actually said. In
either case, make sure the observer gives some positive feedback on when things
went right as well. You can observe other classes for the same factors, giving
them feedback or not as they wish. This is useful if you observe more
experienced teachers (for what they do right) or less experienced teachers (to
spot things you didn’t realise you were also doing). If you have any non-native
speaker teachers you can watch, they can be particularly good illustrations
either for their ability to see what problems students have understanding or for
their tendency to use difficult words just because they’ve learnt them and they
want to use them.
14. Imagine you are a student
Picture asking a specific (lowish level) student in your class to explain the
thing you are going to in the next class, and imagine the language they would
use to explain it to the other students. That is the kind of language you
will need to use (but without errors and pidgin English), especially with a
class that are losing confidence in their ability to understand you (if that is
not a problem, you can push the level up a little to use instructions language
etc as another source of language learning)
15. Elicit
For example, asking students to explain the language first will allow you to
respond to what they say with a simple sentence (maybe even as short as “Yes,
that’s right!”) or give you some simple language from them that you can use in
your own explanation. If you are really in trouble, it is also a good delaying
tactic!