322 Part V: What Kind of Class Will I Have?
Diversifying with Multi-lingual Classes
Classes made up of students with different languages tend to be in English
speaking countries. There are several advantages to this situation:
✓ Motivation among students is high. Either they have paid a considerable
sum of money to attend a language course abroad or they have moved
to that country lock and stock and barrel so they need English to get on
with lives.
✓ English is the only way to communicate with everyone else. Even if
you speak the language(s) of some of the students, you’re unlikely to do
so in that setting or else the others will feel alienated.
✓ An English speaking country offers lots of opportunities for learning
outside the classroom.
✓ Students have a natural curiosity about their classmates’ lives and
have much to discover about them.
Unfortunately multi-lingual classes have their downsides too. If you had 12
students who each spoke totally unrelated languages, all things would be
equal. However, this is not often the case. Certain schools are popular with
particular nationalities because of strong word of mouth and very active
agent promotion. As a result, there tends to be large groups of students from
just a few nationalities, perhaps 4 or 5 nationalities amongst 12 students.
Some of these nationalities might speak the same language, or at least share
similar cultures. The upshot of all this is that students may form cliques to
the exclusion of others in the class.
For younger learners particularly, cliques can result in negative peer pressure.
Say, there are four students who can speak Russian in one class. One diligent
student might want to speak English throughout the class whereas the
Russian speaking friends insist on using their mother tongue most of the
time. They might make fun of the ‘goodie two shoes’ who insists on doing
what the teacher says.
Something similar happens when one friend in the language group is weaker
than the others in English. This person often feels too embarrassed to get
help from the teacher and instead relies on friends to translate. Consequently
they all end up speaking their mother tongue.
Building rapport
Students are usually quite apprehensive when they begin a new course and
this is magnified when the only thing they appear to have in common is their
poor English.
