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As we have known that it’s common that students are with different levels of ability in ESL classes. And students’ ability ranges widely due to multiple factors which make the classes of mixed ability challenging for teacher. When teaching a mixed ability class, most of the worries come from several aspects. And most of them are related to how the teacher maintains balance between the interaction of stronger students and weaker ones. Apart from that, teachers sometimes might have problem on pitching the lesson appropriately. Thus, to drive the teaching efficiency in class of mixed ability, the key is believed to be well-planning before the class. When preparing the class A good lesson plan helps teacher to manage a class better, because we need to analyze students’ needs and prepare certain solution to anticipated problems. On this step, teacher should check carefully on materials which are applied in the class based on the need analysis. If there is already a course book for the class, it’s better to prepare some other materials that can supplement the book as a course book might not always meet the need of ESL class, especially for classes of mixed ability. Along with the lesson plan, teacher can do some class arrangements before the class if it’s allowed by classroom environment so that he/she can devote more time to help with weaker students. In the class First of all, teacher should keep to school’s disciplinary code and give a minor reminder before starting the class. This will help to maintain the class discipline at most of the time although there are still problem behaviors out of our hands. Secondly, we can use some activities to enhance the interactions between stronger students and weaker students. But one thing we need to be careful on is timing for each activity. That is a major factor of class efficiency. For example, at Engage stage of ESA plan, it’s better to arrange the activities that can get weaker students involved more easily to drive their initiative. And I believe that we can use more pair and group works to pair students in different levels of ability but teacher should lead the stronger students to involve as a role of ‘Helper’. This role can last throughout the whole class so that the teacher can pay more time to monitor and analyze students’ performance during the class. What’s more, the stronger students can benefit from helping others instead of dominating the activity if they are acting as helper’s role. What needs to be noted is that the teacher should choose activities that are controllable especially if the teacher is lack of teaching experiences. This doesn’t mean we need to reduce using creative activities but again, timing for each activity is important. After the class Teacher can go further to collect students’ feedback on the class. As a participant of the class, student’s experience counts. It reflects teacher’s strengths and weaknesses from another perspective so that we can improve in future classes. But we should review it critically – it should be considered together with teacher’s self-evaluation report but not individually. Conclusion It’s never easy to cover every single part in an ESL class of mixed ability but a good plan helps the teacher succeed to a great extent.
