Theyre Beginners. They Cant Speak Yet.

Right?

A lesson observation
I watched a class of beginners being taught last week. There were about 35 students in the room.
The teacher was using a good current coursebook. She had a clear voice. She moved around the
room and asked questions to different students. The pace was fast, the reading text was read and
all the grammar questions were answered. And yet, everything felt wrong.
The teacher approached the text by asking students to read it aloud, one word at a time. Every
word that a student mumbled, she immediately repeated in a loud voice, then translated it into their
language. This made sentences (and the text as a whole) entirely impossible to understand. As
soon as the text had been finished, she started on the comprehension and gap-fill grammar
exercises that followed. She read the questions aloud herself, waited for one or two seconds for a
student to hesitantly offer a word as an answer (which one or two faster students did, often
wrongly) then said the correct answer herself, repeated it and quickly moved on.
I was sitting in the back of the room, thinking, How sad.
I could see a class of capable teenagers (I always start with an assumption that all students are
capable!), some of whom were keen to learn English, some of whom were less interested or
motivated and what I kept thinking was:
They could all be so much more engaged, so much more involved, so much more active, so
much more a part of the lesson. You, the teacher, are doing all the work. You are getting all
the practice. You seem to have no faith that they are capable of saying anything and so
take all the opportunities from them. This lesson could be theirs, rather than yours. Their
limited and valuable time is just being talked away.
I imagined myself sitting down and chatting with that teacher.
I start with, You must find lessons like that exhausting!
And she replies, Yes! Theres so much to do.
I say, So Im wondering How about doing less?
She looks appalled. But they are beginners. There is so much I have to explain. They need to hear
me say everything. If I dont help them, they cant do anything. They dont understand the grammar.
And of course, they cant speak yet.
Low-level classes
Reflecting on the kinds of things that werent working in this lesson helped me to clarify what I
believe about low-level learners and what a low-level class could look like.

Even zero beginners in English are not zero beginner humans. They know everything they
know; they can do everything they can do. They like to do things, to think things, to be

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challenged. They hate being bored, being patronised, feeling stupid, feeling out of control.
They probably wont be keenly volunteering, pushing themselves forward, all scrambling
over each other to offer an answer because each attempt in this strange new language
can be odd and scary and a step in the dark. However, with encouragement and support
they will have a go.
When, with help and feedback, they eventually manage to say something successfully, and
get feedback that it was successful then that is a real kick, a boost, a thrill, the sense of a
challenge met. And humans thrive on that sort of thing. Its what life is about and it makes
us slightly more willing and eager to try and meet the next challenge.

High school beginners are becoming something of a rarity in many countries, where, increasingly,
you can only find real beginners in Primary (or Pre-Primary!) classes. However, in other places,
there are still real beginners who only start English in secondary school. And, if youve never taught
a class of beginners or very low-level learners before, facing your first class can be really daunting.
Maybe you share a language with them, but you might feel that the unwritten rules of language
teaching say you shouldnt be using that in class. You wonder, how on earth can you communicate
at all with them if you dont?
They can speak
Here are a few ideas, drawn from my own teaching, of starting points for getting very low-level
learners to speak.

Beginners are usually dying to say things, to communicate, to start owning the new
language. How can you get that happening? Not by doing it all yourself but by giving lots of
small, controlled opportunities for them to say things and do things.
Start by trying to feel for yourself what it must be like to know as little English as they do.
Can you climb inside anothers head? This kind of empathy putting yourself inside their
minds is a good strategy to keep revisiting. If you find that you can do it, it informs
everything else that you do. For example, it might discourage you from talking at length to
them because inside their heads, listening to you might just sound like noise noise noise
through a fog of panic that they dont understand a word the teacher is saying. And they
might also find that, despite thinking I feel terrified about speaking, the one thing they really
want their teacher to do is to give them a little push to encourage them to speak.
Dont assume that a low-level class must be quiet; on the contrary, assume that they could
be talking for most of the lesson. (Admittedly, not a thrilling debate about deforestation or the
death of printed books or whatever.) Mostly it will be fairly simple repetition, the same lines
and dialogues again and again, with small variations. But the amazing thing is that this
doesnt have to be dull. It can be buzzing, challenging, exciting and hilarious. Look at how
they grow in confidence while doing it! And look how they fight to get their personality
across, even given the huge restrictions of limited language! I love the way low-level classes
play with the sounds they are saying, how easily they create jokes, physical humour, even
word-play to bring those limited chunks of English alive. Enjoy it all! Revel in it! Look:
already, they are starting to exercise their ownership over this language.

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And if you, the teacher, still feel tempted to open your mouth and just start talking
remember: examples teach so much better than explanations. Let them hear you say a
small, interestingly pronounced, useful example of real English (perhaps from the sentences
or dialogues in your coursebook) and then get students to say it themselves not just
once, but lots of times, in varied, exciting, silly, funny ways, with hand gestures and facial
expressions. Make sure your own models are said in a lively, interesting, realistic (though
possibly slightly exaggerated) way. Get the students to also speak with interesting, bright
intonation.
Push for quality pronunciation especially on stress and intonation. When you do this,
grammar problems suddenly seem less important and often completely vanish.
If they dont understand a meaning, sketch a picture, mime, make a face, draw a diagram
or anything that helps clarify. Dont give mini lectures. In fact, dont explain anything. It really
isnt necessary.
Dont say yes or great when they make a stumbling first attempt. Instead, give feedback
that helps them to say it better to try again to get more feedback and to make a
further attempt. You could do this by pointing out a wrong word or an error, or by saying their
sentence yourself, asking them to listen to you saying their sentence and then trying it again
themselves. Or you could point out some feature of the language that they could improve on
(for example, the stress pattern of a word or the intonation of a whole sentence).
Almost any low-level learner can produce an amazingly good small piece of convincing, wellpronounced English if they are only given the chance to try it again a few times, supported
by focussed, supportive feedback. Over time, this builds into a huge, solid foundation for
everything else in the language.
Dont assume that grammar and vocabulary come first in years one and two and that you
only need to start adding in speaking and pronunciation in later years once they know
something. Start with them hearing and saying realistic language alongside feedback from
you that helps them to say it really well. You cant give them a better beginning in English.

There are principled language teaching methods (like Total Physical Response) that intentionally
do not ask learners to speak early on but perhaps these are more tuned to the personalities of
younger learners. In my own teaching with teenagers, Ive always found that they enjoy chances to
use the new language from the very start of a course, that it quickly builds a sense of real progress
and a pride in their achievement.
So, in response to the title of my own article, I would say Theyre beginners. They CAN speak
from day one! Right?

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