Teaching large classes

The new semester has just started. All lecturers in our institution including me are busy preparing the lesson, designing teaching aids, writing handouts and quizzes. Before doing these, they usually look at the attendance list. How many students are they in my class ? When they see more than 25 students in the class, they start to complain "How can I teach Public Speaking with 27 students ?" "How am I supposed to correct students' essays if I have more than 25 students ?"

Well, I do really understand those complaints. Indeed, teaching large classes is not easy but it doesn't mean that it is impossible. As a lecturer who happens to help the head of the department, I can understand the difficulty of accommodating lecturers' need to have classes with 'an ideal size'. The first reason is that there aren't enough rooms. Being less than ten years old, the institution doesn't have enough budget to build a new classroom let alone a new building. The second is the number of lecturers available to teach in particular hours decreases. The last one is to cut the operational expenses, which is usually determined by the management.

What should the lecturers do then ? Drop the class ? Of course not. They have to find some techniques which are suitable for teaching large class. Below is an example of a lesson plan proposed by Andi Hoodith from Saitama University in Japan :

Promoting Oral Fluency via Group & Pair Work

Andy Hoodith
Saitama University

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TIME: 60-90 Minutes AIM: To provide speaking practice for a class of 40 students

WARM-UP	Ask the class: "What will happen on December 31st 1999?" Elicit or teach the phrase "Turn of the century". Now ask, "Who is or was the most important person of the 20th century?" (alive or dead, any nationality: they needn't have been born this century, but must have been alive during some part of it). Then take 4 or 5 examples at random and write them on the blackboard, asking if other students have the same opinion.
ACTIVITY 1	Introduce your own example (unless one the students has named him), Albert Einstein. Write his name and then ask the following questions as you write them on the board: Who was Albert Einstein? Where was he from? What was his field? What did he do? Is he alive now? Was he important or just famous? Explain "field" if necessary (or use another word), and elicit answers. Make sure students understand the difference between questions with factual answers and those which require that they give an opinion.
ACTIVITY 2	Give students 10 minutes to write down the names of the 10 most important people to have lived this century. Stress that there is no moral judgment here, so that personalities seen in general as "bad", e.g. Hitler, can be included. Also make it clear that students must be able to provide some basic information about each of the people they choose, as you did with Einstein.
ACTIVITY 3	Now divide the class in to small groups. If possible, these should be of a minimum of 3 and a maximum of 5. Tell students to take it in turns to introduce the people they have selected, with the other students asking fact and opinion questions about them. Ask students to be open-minded: they should change their lists if other students in their group suggest more appropriate people, although they can stick to their original lists if they want to.
ACTIVITY 4	Depending on how the time is going, Activity 3 can be repeated by forming a set of different groups. Alternatively, you can ask students to find one new partner to discuss the choices with as a pair. This option might give the more shy students an opportunity to give his/her opinion. As the students do activities 3 and 4, go round and make a note of the names which seem to be coming up most often. You'll need these later to make the final activity more "doable".
ACTIVITY 5	To finish the class, conduct a rough survey to arrive at the whole class decision on the 10 most important people of this century. You may want to make the voting more strict, but this may take considerable more time. You could tell the class that there will be a formal vote at the beginning of the next lesson, and that they can change their opinions in the intervening period.
ALTERNATIVES Of course, there are several variations on this theme, both in terms of the initial question (you may choose the last millenium, for example), and the way the discussion is structured. You should always tailor the activity types and the items you wish to focus on on your students: you know them best!