Teaching Learners of Different Levels

Teaching Learners of Different Levels

How to fulfil the task of teaching English to students of differentiated English competence has long been a challenge, for in real class, students vary a lot in their learning progress, strategies, interest, personalities and etc. Educators thus tried to classify students according to their language levels and individuality as a way to tackling the challenge.

In 1868, Harris from United States put forward the idea of "banding", also known as the "flexible schedule system", in which students were divided into three levels from the advanced, the medium to the less competent. After a session of teaching, teachers let the first two groups go through exercises while offering additional teaching and guiding to the third group until they fully acquire the knowledge. Before moving to the next session, teachers rearrange the members of the three groups based on their latest performance.

In the late 19th century, such stratified teaching won much popularity in the United States and Germany. However, it started to be subject to criticism in 1930s, being opposed for the possible discrimination implied against less competent students. It was said to undermine the principle of fairness and equality, for discrimination might also take form in the possible better treatment and learning resources for more advanced learners.

After the second world war, the stratified teaching once again came to the educational stage in the backdrop of the highly competitive world where nations strove for talents and explored fast channels for fostering talents.

In the 1960s, quite a few nations attached great importance to this teaching approach and actively attempted varied theories and methods to maximize its advantage, minimize the disadvantage and adapted it to the nation’s own educational conditions.

Benjamin Bloom of the United States, for example, proposed the Mastery Learning Theory, believing that all students could master knowledge, only that the time for knowledge acquisition might differ. In Bloom’s view, student’s learning ability cannot decide whether or not he can acquire the knowledge, but for how long he can master, and was influenced by teaching conditions. Bloom then pointed out that teachers could try to offer additional and extra individualized training to students instead of having fixed or even biased expectations of students’ ability levels.

Another American scholar, C.R.Rogers, focused on Humanistic Education, a study springing from shared viewpoint that students are different individuals while stressing the effect of emotions, feelings, needs, views and values on learning, and that each student should be treated as a whole person in development. Rogers pointed out that teachers’ role should be likened to catalyst as to help students discover and delve into with spontaneous curiosity what they would like to learn and the meaning of learning in life. In this way, students are expected to take the initiative to learn and later conduct self-appraisal for learning. Also according to Rogers, teachers should not just impart knowledge, but should prepare teaching that could positively shape or affect students’ behaviors, attitudes, personalities and future choices. Roger’s above-mentioned teaching philosophy, though seemingly not directly related to stratified teaching, has a profound influence in education, as it reminds teachers to let students be the leading role in learning activities and gain all-rounded humanistic development through learning, which is important is exercising stratified teaching .

Although stratified teaching takes many forms, including differentiating compulsory and optional courses or in another situation, dispersing one class of students into different classes according to their learning levels, traditional stratified teaching shares the inclination to first divide or even separate students of different levels.

Guided by previous ideas and practice of stratified teaching, I explore here an approach of more intimately connecting students of different learning progress.

First of all, the teacher should invariably have a comprehensive knowledge of all the students concerning both their personality and learning situation, to record and categorize students’ types, while bearing in mind that such categorization is dynamic instead of static, because students are full of potential and remain variable. To be more manageable in this approach, students could be classified into three types, type A with limited vocabulary and language knowledge, type B with more accumulation of lexical chunks and could comprehend or even produce a certain amount of language content, type C with higher ability to be creative in language output.

In class activity, the teacher then mixes students of type A, B and C in to a group and has several groups of such mixture containing relatively equal numbers of three types of students in each group, a new approach in comparison to traditional and explicit method of simply dividing students of varied levels.

Secondly, it bears noting that tactfully designing teaching content is critical is carrying out implicit stratified teaching as a way to protect students’ self-esteem and boost the learning incentive. Requirements like choosing between true or false, defining what, when, who and where, recording, labeling, listing and etc, could be more aimed more at students of type A. Students of type B could be tasked with finding out how and why, classifying, predicting, summarizing, simulating and etc. Students of type C will find themselves faced with tasks with the intent of such as reorganizing, elaborating, evaluating, reasoning, hypothesizing, innovating etc.

Considering the differentiated learning requirements in combination with cooperative group learning, we may have below example as a possible way of carrying out teaching practice. In an English reading class as an example here, teacher could consider designing such six roles for students including Background Collector, Summarizer, Character Analyzer, Language Master, Feeling Sharer and Connector. Background Collector is for seeking out background information of the target text. Summarizer is responsible for summing up main plots in the text to make a clear mind map or outline. Character Analyzer focuses on details and try to find out details in text as indication for features or dispositions of the characters. Language Master guides group members to pay attention to details in the text important for understanding the meaning and topic of the text and characters. Feeling Sharer has the responsibility for discussing with group members the deeper meaning or the text and what illumination it may have. Connector explores with other group members the connection between the text and any other texts they have learned.

Type A students, according to their level and when a little bit challenged, could shoulder roles like Background Collector and Connector. Type B students in the same group can act as Summarizer and Language Master. Type C students, with higher ability to do critical thinking in target language, can take part as Character Analyzer and Feeling Sharer. Such mixture in a group is more likely to make sure that students of different levels find their own niche in the cooperation and are equally offered the learning materials and chance to show their talent. Less competent students in language remain their chance to do higher order thinking instead of just being trusted to fulfil tasks of lower thinking order. Through cooperation, different types of students are very much possible to provide each other with inspiration and learn from each other despite their different roles.

Thirdly, to give topics, tasks or questions innovative yet relevant to students’ life experience or their previous store of knowledge can inspire and maximize students’ efforts to tap into their learning potential. Germany educator Johann Friedrich Herbart once said, if teacher can design questions that incites students’ curiosity, students then will naturally and continually demonstrate willingness to take active participation for exploring at each stage of learning .

Finally, reward and competition as an effective way of inspiring cooperative spirit and encouraging personal contribution will be introduced in all kinds of class activities.Soviet Educator Suchomlinsky once said with his theory of Achievement Motivation that happiness from success is an immense emotional force that stimulates the motive to learn more. In practice of giving reward, it is not necessary to let winning of just one time or one class activity decide an individual student or a group of students’ success. Teacher could allow students the chance to accumulate their rewards and exchange for periodic prize.

Finally, every week, every half a month and every month, tests of listening, speaking, reading and writing all be organized to arouse students’ awareness of learning progress and enable teachers to know students’ dynamic learning status.