The Beat November 2002

This month we turn to the issues of attention spans and classroom management. The latter issue in particular appears to be a major concern for the majority of teachers in Korea who are responsible for teaching children in private institutes, and the area to which most people seek advice. Classroom management is a somewhat deceptive and widely misunderstood term among (especially inexperienced) teachers, and while I do not have space here to deal with it in its entirety, I hope I can pass along some helpful information and tips on how to deal with it in the Korean young learner classroom.

Attention Spans

Children‘s limited attention spans seem to be an often-cited cause of difficulty in teaching language to young learners. Just how short or limited a child‘s attention span actually is tends to vary according to which teacher or expert you ask – I have seen quoted figures varying from 8 seconds to 30 minutes! These apparent “limitations” made little sense to me when I watched a group of 5 year old Korean students watch a Disney video in English for a full 80 minutes, their eyes glued to the screen except for brief interludes in which they laughed and turned to see what their friends thought of a particular event or sequence in the film.

While I have no scientific evidence to support the claim, I actually believe that young learners‘ attention spans are close if not equal to those of adults. The principal difference between children and adults lies in the fact that when they perceive the task to be irrelevant, useless or boring, children do indeed “switch off” much quicker than adults do. I find that children will need a lot of variety in approaching language tasks, and ample opportunities to use all of the five senses in combination with psychomotor activity and tactile/kinesthetic learning.

Classroom Management

Classroom Management is often thought of as “disciplining” or “controlling” your students, when it is in fact a broad issue that includes lesson planning, classroom set-up (physical layout), organization and sequencing of teaching materials, etc. All of these factors actually have a real influence on the way students act in the classroom and the ways teachers deal with a variety of particular situations.

A teacher shouldn‘t focus exclusively on whether Bob is sitting next to Tom today (because Bob and Tom together spell trouble!). Teachers should also be looking at their teaching activities and asking themselves questions. If I follow up Activity A with Activity B, might that not be a little too repetitive and boring? Do I need to insert something else into the lesson to liven it up a bit and provide more variety?

In terms of dealing with problematic students, it is worth bearing in mind that usually your worst behaved students are either the cleverest or least-able students in the class. One student is not cooperating because they are bored to the back of their teeth, whereas the other is playing up because he/she has no clue what is going on and has given up trying.

Young learners are very easily influenced by their peers, so one or two troublesome students can rapidly create a class of troublesome students.

Students‘ behavior can also be directly linked to their proximity to the teacher – the further away they are the more diminished the teacher‘s “sphere of control” becomes.

A teacher should also think about the basic principle known as “the anticipation of reward”. Is there a positive reinforcement system in place in the classroom?
So what classroom implications can we draw from all this?

(1) In dealing with items of language, try to incorporate a variety of activities that allow the students to combine visual learning, physical activity, all five senses and tactile learning. Try to limit each activity to 10 minutes (what I believe to be the “safe range” in terms of young learner attention spans).

(2) Realize that the atmosphere in your class (in terms of student behavior) is usually dictated by the influence of 1-3 key students. Identify those students and keep a close eye on them. Manipulate your classroom set-up in a way that splits up problematic students and keeps the most troublesome seated as close to the teacher as possible.

(3) Ensure that you provide a suitable range of open-ended tasks for the students, so that the cleverest of them will have something else to go on to once they have finished the core material to be learned.

(4) Try to identify classroom roles for the students. Consider giving problematic students some sort of responsibility, such as assisting with handouts or lining up the students or listening for students who break the “English only” rule. Keep them busy and get them used to the idea that they can get attention by helping the teacher out, not defying the classroom rules.

(5) Try to get the students into good habits or routines. They need to get used to responding to commands from the teacher instinctively. TPR activities and games like “Simon Says…” are good ways to reinforce this in your instruction, but there are also practical issues such as getting the students to line up before they enter or leave the classroom, raising hands when asking questions, etc.

(6) Insert a positive reinforcement system into your classroom teaching. It needn‘t be grand – something as simple as signing the students‘ work or drawing stars on a chart tends to work well for me. Kids need something to look forward to, and it is important to direct their natural energy into positive channels.