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Classroom Management Techniques 

1. Refer to the main characteristics of young learners. Why is it said that teachers should be
more skilful when teaching them? 
● When teaching young learners teachers should be more skilful because YLs
have specific characteristics that should be managed properly. The main
characteristic of young learners and how is it likely to deal with them are:
- Children are energetic and physically active. Young children cannot sit still for
long periods of time, so we should incorporate kinaesthetic activities that
encourage young learners to get up and move. We might use the Total Physical
Response (TPR) that connects language to movement in games such as ‘Simon
Says’.
- Children are spontaneous and not afraid to speak out or participate. Students
are much willing to participate and speak out in English, they are not embarrassed.
They also are good imitators of language. So teachers take advantage and create
activities that are very effective for improving oral proficiency.
- Children are curious and receptive to new ideas. Teachers should prepare
activities that arouse students’ curiosity. In instance teaching about topics that
don’t exist in their local environment are likely to capture their attention.
- Children are imaginative and enjoy make-believe. YLs love activities that
encourage them to use their imagination, such as ‘role plays’.
- Children are easily distracted and have short attention spans, they can
concentrate on longer activities if they are fun and interesting for them. It is useful
to plan lessons as a series of short activities (5 – 10 minutes long).
- Children are egocentric and relate new ideas to themselves and their
surroundings. In that sense teachers must provide opportunities for YLs to
personalise what they are learning.
- Children are social and are learning to relate to others. Students commonly like
to talk to each other, so teachers should have a balance of activities that allow
students to have various types of interaction.

2. What’s the difference between the timing and the pace of a lesson? 
Why are these two aspects so important during a lesson?

● The Timing is connected to how much time you assign to each activity and it is
planned. On the other hand, the pace of the lesson is the rhythm of it. This brings
balance and variety into the lesson. The pace keeps the class moving from activity
to activity and interjects fun activities throughout the class period. These two
aspects are important because both help to keep discipline.
3. How can we keep discipline effectively during our lessons?

● We can keep discipline effectively through:

- Good management of pace and timing of the lesson.
- Rapport, having a good relationship with your students. That is to remember their
names, observe them, talk to them and the like.
- Established rules that must be discussed with students, preparing a class contract
together. If students have co-constructed the rules and consequences, they will
have everything communicated openly and clearly.
- Enforcing school rules, as teachers we need to follow school rules and enforce
them consistently.

- Daily routines which will help students to feel secure. Young children gradually
become familiar with established routines that help them feel confident. Anxious
or immature learners will tend to react negatively to changes in the normal
classroom pattern, so it is a good idea to develop familiar patterns with young
learners. This gives students a sense of security and helps to keep the discipline
effectively.

4. How can we make sure students understand instructions? Why is it so important?

● We can make sure students understand instructions by grading our language

and simplifying them (giving them clearly step by step). If learners will be asked to
use copies, the teacher will provide the material before the instructions in order
for the students to have a first view of the activities. We can also repeat the
instructions twice or ask one student to repeat and explain, or even translate the
provided instructions. Giving examples and monitoring to help the ones who
couldn’t understand are also good strategies. To make students understand
instructions is important because we need to avoid misunderstandings. If students
are unable to get the instructions at first, they will keep asking how to do it and
we will waste time explaining the instructions to every student one by one.

5. How would you deal with bad and good behaviour during your lessons? What are some of
the routines and rules that you would apply to ensure a well- managed classroom? 

● As we have seen in a previous answer, it is a good idea to develop familiar

patterns with young learners to manage students' discipline. So I would deal with
bad and good behaviour during my lesson with daily routines and rules. By
establishing daily routines a teacher creates a sense of security for each student.
 On my class I would include a greeting, the designation of classroom helpers (the
ones that will help to clean the board, write the date, among other activities
during the lesson), a “roll call” (that means taking attendance), set date, day and
weather, the homework, clean the room and the end of the lesson.
To ensure a well – managed classroom I would also apply rules. Established at
the very beginning of the school year. The explanation of the rules will probably
be given in students’ native language and then in English so learners will
understand them. It would be a good idea to co-construct the rules with students
in order to communicate the statements clearly. The rules would be: do not talk
when someone is talking, raise your hand if you want to say something, be kind to
others, and cooperate, among other rules. To control that rules are being
followed, I will probably teach children that being disruptive affects the whole
class. That could be managed by dividing the class in different groups and points
are taken from a group whose members misbehave. This has the aim to encourage
students to monitor each other and help the teacher enforce the rules. Then the
group that has more points at the end of the week gets an appropriate reward.
This would be a way to reward positive behaviour instead of only punishing bad
behaviour.

6. What would you do in your lessons to create a nice lesson environment?

● To create a nice lesson environment I would do the following:

- Establish rapport, this means building a nice relationship with students.
Respecting and listening to them.
- Encouraging students to follow the rules (in this way I would ensure that everyone
is kind, wait for the rest and cooperate with each other).
- Arrange the room in order to have a comfortable place to monitor and create a
nice lesson environment physically.
- Cater YLs’ interests in order to create an engaging and motivating environment to
speak English.

7. What are the main aspects about the use of voice that we need to bear in mind while
teaching our class?
● While teaching we need to bear in mind the main aspects about the use of
voice. Those are:
- Marking the different stages of the lesson. To mark transitions, to stop an activity,
to call students’ attention (as an attention getter), etc.
 - Grading our voice not too high and not too low. In this way students will be able to
note the changes among the different stages of the lesson.
- Avoiding shouts. If this happens students will shout louder than us, which will lead
to waste of time and misbehaviour.
8. What are the main roles teachers should adopt when teaching young learners?

● The main roles that teachers should adopt when teaching young learners are to
be the model to follow. This means to manage students' behaviour by example.
Teachers must follow their own rules and be punctual, wait if they want to talk,
and the rest. We also want to be a model for YLs on how to be kind and respectful
to everyone. Treating all students equally and fairly is very important too because
we want to encourage all students to do their best.

Developing Listening and Speaking skills

1. What do we mean by contextualization? Why should we contextualise activities in

our lessons? 
- By contextualization we mean giving every task a real meaning. It is
important to contextualise activities in our lessons because using real – life
text types helps YLs use English to mirror and contextualise language
instruction. This typically involves authentic language and real world
contexts as much as possible to make the learning more meaningful,
motivating and useful for students.
We also have to bear in mind that contextualization is important
because listening is an interpretative language and is divided into two
psycholinguistic processes: bottom-up and top-down (as teachers we
should develop both). If we talk about contextualization top-down
processing is the best option to explain it. This process refers to
interpreting the message through the context in which this is being
delivered. Learners learn how to gain meaning from the context and might
be able to predict what to expect from it and what will be said. That is to
say that through the context established on the activities learners are able
to understand more effectively the content of the listening. Then we have
bottom-up processing that is to use linguistic knowledge to make sense of
an utterance.

2. Why are students asked to listen and point, and listen and repeat during the first
stages?

● Students are asked to listen and point, and listen and repeat during the
first stages because every listening activity should give YLs a purpose for
listening and a task to complete. Students are also asked to do this because
it helps them to focus on meaning and pronunciation of the new words
 learned. For example, the teacher should ask students to listen and point to
the correct picture, then they will pay attention to the listening in order to
figure out which picture is right. It will focus them on the listening and
make them more active in the listening process.

3. What are the aims of encouraging learners to use “unanalysed chunks” at the
beginning?
 
● The aims of encouraging learners to use “unanalysed chunks” at the
beginning are to begin interactions with others. It allows students to move
from listening to speaking, and to start to participate in interactions with
others. It also has the aim to begin to figure out meanings by context. For
example “unanalysed chunks” appears when the teacher says “Good
morning!” in every class as a greeting. It becomes a fixed chunk that
students don’t have to analyse or discover it’s meaning and understand it
when the teacher uses the chunk to greet the class.

4. Activities may be controlled, guided or independent. Explain the differences.

 
● Controlled activities are those in which the responses are completely
predictable, with very little chance of making a mistake, and the use of
target language structures is completely controlled by the teacher.
● Guided activities are those that are still structured but give students some
choice. 
● Independent activities are the ones that are open-ended and do not have
predictable responses. These are message oriented and more focused on
meaning and communication than correctness. This is the most challenging
because there are more chances for error.

5. Why should we set activities before asking learners to listen to a text?

 
● We should set activities before asking learners to listen to a text because
students must have a reason to listen. Asking them to solve something by
listening learners will be forced to focus on the listening and make them
more active in the listening process. This means once learners are asked to
pay attention to a certain language to complete the task, they will expect
something from the audio. So they will pay attention to certain words to be
said.
Teaching Reading and writing
1. How would you define reading? 

● Reading is a receptive skill and an interactive process involving the

reader, the text, and the writer. It is interactive because when we read,
we interact with the text, bringing our knowledge of the world, of language,
and of discourse or specific text types to what we read. Our
understanding increases or lesses depending on our background knowledge
of the language, and our experience with discourse and text structure. I will
add that reading is a process of relating and decoding written symbols to
oral language.

2. What are the main aims of each stage: pre-reading, while reading and post
reading?

● Pre-reading: it consist on finding clues to what the text might be about

(from the cover, the title, pictures, or prior knowledge of the context) 
● While-reading: is to work on comprehension, to develop reading strategies
and to read with a purpose. 
● Post-reading: helps learners to remember or extend what they have read.
To incorporate vocabulary and practice what they have learned from the
text.

3. Reading aloud: is this a good idea?

● Reading aloud is thought not to be a good idea because students have

their own peace while reading. So, while reading aloud not all students will
be able to follow the story that is being read at the same time. It might be
correct for the teacher to create comprehension activities where it is better
to read alone (on this kind of reading it is better to give students their own
time). It also might be a good idea, if we want to read aloud, to make small
groups of students who are at the same reading level, providing support
while they read.

Reading aloud has good points too because beginning readers need
multiple opportunities to hear poems, songs and stories read aloud, with
opportunities to chime in where words or lines are repeated. With texts,
where both repetition and rhyme are present, it is easy for children to learn
 parts and to participate after the teacher has sung the song, pointing to the
words written on the board. In this case reading aloud is a great
opportunity for learners to practice and repeat new pronunciation.

4. What should every writing task have? Why are these aspects so important? 

● Every writing task should have a context to make it meaningful, with a

purpose. The context must be believable and possible in our reality. As
teachers it is important to give writing tasks a real context and purpose
because children need the opportunity to engage in creative writing and to
write with authentic purposes.

5. What types of writing activities do we have? Explain the differences.

● Writing activities are usually classified as controlled, guided, or free.

Both controlled and guided writing activities focus on reinforcing
learning of some level of language: vocabulary, grammar, or
mechanics. The difference is in the amount of independence provided
for the writer. 
- Controlled activities: for students to practice writing the language
with careful control. These activities only ask the students to copy or
fill in a blank with possible words provided.
- Guided activities: help learners experience success while they also
learn the relationship between their ideas, words and writing. 
- Free activities: these encourage creativity, providing only the writing
prompt or allowing the student to choose what to write.

6. How can written activities be corrected?

● Written activities can be corrected by providing a model for the

next entry without over correction. If the student wrote a word with a
spelling mistake, the teacher may respond with positive feedback and
re-writing the word correctly. With this regular and positive feedback
students become more confident of themselves as writers. They also
improve their writing over time as they engage in meaningful
communication at their own language level.