Managing Mixed

Ability
 Introduction
Many teachers are extremely worried about
the fact that they have students in their
classes who have different levels of
proficiency. Even when they are able to
assemble a class of complete beginners, it
would soon be clear that some were
learning faster than others or learning
different things.
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There are a variety of learning options designed
around students’ different abilities and interests.
We may for example give different students
different learning tasks. We could respond to
them differently and and group them according
to their different abilities. There are also times
when we don’t want to differentiate between
individuals. For example, if we give students
instrucstion of presenting new language, there
are very good reason for teaching the group as a
whole. However, it is clearly desirable to
respond to the needs of the individual even
though they are part of a group.
 1. Working with different content.
Teachers must provide students with different materials, adjusting what is given to
the students with their needs. In this way, all students are working at their own
individual levels.

Teachers can allow students to work on what material they like. For example,
students can be offered a range of possible grammar or vocabulary exercises and
they can choose which one they want to do. If we wish them to read outside the
class, we can encourage them to read whivh books they want to read (in terms not
only of topic but also of level). When students can make their own choices of what
they want to learn, they are far likelier to be enthusiastic about the learning process.

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 2.
Different students action

If we cannot (or don't want to) give students different materials, we can, instead,
get them to do different things in response to the content they are all looking for
or listening to.
 ■ Give students different tasks

We might ask students to look at the same reading task, but we can
give different tasks for them to work on. For example, group A might
have to interpret the information by reproducing it in graphic form
(charts or tables). Group B, on the other hand, might have a series of
open-ended questions and so on.

■ Give students different roles

If students are doing a role play, for example, in which a police officer
is questioning a witness, we might give the student playing the role of
police officer the questions they should ask, whereas the students
playing the witness has to come up with their own way of expressing
what they want to say. This because the student playing the police
officer clearly need more guidance than the others. If students are
preparing for debate, we might give group A a list of suggested
arguments to prepare from whereas group B (whom we think need less
support) are told to come up with their own arguments.

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 ● Reward early finishers

If all students are given the same tasks with the same content, some may well finish earlier than others.
We need to be able to offer such students extension tasks to reward their efforts and challenge them
further. However, we need to be careful with the tasks we give the students because it can be a burden
for them as well.

● Encourage different student responses

We can give students the same exact materials and tasks, but expect (and accept) different responses to
them. In response to a reading task, for example, we can give students a number of tasks but know that
not all of the students will complete all of them.

Furthermore, students' completion will also depend to some extent on how language proficient they
are. In poetry activity, we might ask them to write to someone as if they were a kind of weather. Some
students might just write you are sunshine, whereas other might go one step further and might write
something like you are sunshine after the rain, amd others whose language level are considerably
higher might come up with you are the gentle breeze of dreamy summer afternoon, which might not be
great poetry bu suggest a degree of linguistic sophistication.

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 ■ Identify students' strength (linguistics or non-linguistics)

One of many ways we can male a virtue of students' abilities is to include tasks which do not
necessarily demand linguistic brilliance but instead allow students to show off other talents they
have. This is a way of giving individual students a chance to be best at something, even when they
might be weaker, linguistically, than some of their colleagues.

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 2.
What the teacher does

For Business Plans, Marketing Plans, Project Proposals, Lessons,

etc
■ Responding to students

During lessons we frequently have to respond to students, giving

them feedback about how they are doing, or acting as a resource
or tutor. We must try to tailor our response to the particular
individual we are dealing with. Some students are more sensitive
than others, and so we will correct them with more care than their
robust colleagues. Some students need to see things in order to be
able to respond to them, whereas other respond better by having
things explained to them orally.

When students are working in pair or groups, and we are

monitoring their progress, we will react to them depending on
how well their getting on. However, we need to make sure that in
spending time with particular groups we do not ignore or exclude
others.

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 ● Being inclusive

A big danger for students in mixed ability classes is that some of them may get left behind and
may become disengaged with what is happening. If we spend a lot of time with higher level
students in the class, the students who are linguistically able may feel that they are being
ignored and become demotivated as a result. If, on the other hand, who spend all our time with
students we think need help more than others, the higher level students may feel neglected and
unchallenged. Such students can quickly lose interest in the class and develop an attitude
which makes them difficult to work with.

Teacher must be able to draw all of the students in the lesson.

● Flexible groupings

We might group students into different groups so that they can read different texts, depending
on the difficulty of the texts. At other times, however, we put students at different levels in the
same group because we believe that the weaker students will benefit from working with
students at higher linguistic level, and because, at the same time, we believe tge higher level
students will gain insights about the language, for example, by having to explain it to their
colleagues.

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 4. Realistic mixed ability teaching

The degree to which we are able to differentiate between individuals depends on the physical
situation in which their learning takes place. If we teach in overcrowded classrooms, it will be
difficult to set up different corners in the room where different students can go to perform
different tasks. On the other hand, if the students are equipped with a well-stocked self-access
center where students can work individually on a range of material which are available there, then
it will be much easier to build individual learning programmes into the curriculum. If different
students can have different access to different computers in a lesson, they can be doing different
internet based-tasks, but with only one computer this will be more difficult .

While we recognize the need for differentiation, we need to be realistic about how we can achieve
and how much differentiation we can achieve. There fore we need to work on what is possible and
what is not.

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 Thank you!

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