The That Never Speaks

The Class That Never Speaks
Case Study of M5/5
Chatcharunchindra School Bangkok
Mr. David Wilson
Thongsook College
B.A. TESOL
Code: 120205
Professor Jay Wisecarver
March 2014

Abstract During my studies for classroom management I was tasked with writing this paper. Whilst I came to my subject matter fairly easily I am still unable to find a conclusive answer as to why the class in question never spoke. This being the case I would consider this as an ongoing case study rather than a finished exercise. After reading this essay I hope you will understand why.
Introduction
“The class that never speaks” sounds like title for a movie or book but in reality this class exists and studies in my school. The overall feeling I got from teaching this class was not one of anger but more one of being perplexed. The one thing I never did was show my frustrations to the class. I did however make a couple of mistakes as you will see from the essay. As a result I would consider this class as a work in progress so this paper will cover more about the problem rather than a complete solution.
The Class Background The class background is quite good in terms of academic level. They are in the science and math program and achieve well above average results year on year. They also as a group they had won many math and science awards either as inter school competitions or around Thailand. They totaled forty six in number but because of their behavior in the classroom it never felt like a big class. As a result I was excited about the prospect of teaching them as they had a reputation of being hard working and intelligent. As stated below, I knew quite a few of the students and often had conversations outside of the classroom about various topics such as football and general chit chat. I had taught this class before in M4 and although they numbered around 30 at that time I thought this would be a fun class to teach and even with a change of subject I thought at the very least it would be a productive class. The previous year I taught them reading and as I have stated they were a fun class and never caused me any problems. They achieved good results in tests and never seem to have any behavioral issues within the class that stood out from any other class.
The Challenges The challenges I faced with this class was in my experience a quite unique one. For the most part any group of students always has a group who won’t involve themselves for any number of reasons. However I have never come across a class that on mass refused to speak. I should clarify by what I mean as not speaking. Well in most cases you would say that the ability of the students means that they could not communicate even the most basic exchange in English. As I knew this class had students that were above elementary level I found this most perplexing and I had to find out what was going wrong with this class. One thing that was slightly different with this class compared to my other eighteen classes in the school was that I was their fifth teacher in a school year. Now whilst this is a little unusual even in Thailand I would not say this was the main reason as in general their classroom behavior was very good. One of the reasons I was asked to teach them was because I had been at the school a long time and the students knew who I was. The school was aware how many teachers had been teaching this class and their thinking was very simple. They knew I would not leave midway through the semester as I have been with the school for 3 years. They also knew that the students had at some point been taught by me or knew of me during those three years. The other change that may have upset the students was that the topic being taught had changed. I will touch on this later in the paper.
Learning Attitude For the most part the attitude within the class was fine. They would do any written work and sit and listen when I was introducing the subject matter that we would be studying that lesson. They always completed their homework onetime, they hardly ever had any absentees within the class and they seemed to work really well with each other when placed into teams. The fact that they did their written work and pair work without any real problems left me somewhat perplexed because any work that involved speaking activities fell flat and little work was completed. This was even more frustrating when students came to me after class asking to do their speaking activities in their own time. They were quite happy to see me after school or in break time rather than complete these tasks in class time. I tried changing my style and use games to stimulate conversation but they did not respond at all and gave me the opinion games were a waste of time.
I looked again and given their superb results in math and science a more statistical approach to their lessons. I included more facts and figures on their sheets and asked them to find information using their computers in class. Even though nobody abused this use of technology within the classroom they still had no desire to speak conversational English. At this point I had to ask for advice and the response I got was staggering to say the least.
Thai Teachers Response As I had hit a brick wall in terms of ideas with the class I had to find out just what was going wrong. I had to do what most foreign teachers should only do as a last resort in Thailand. I went and sought help firstly from my fellow English teachers, after all no teacher is the finished package. The other teacher whom I will not name was new to ESL teaching and felt that the class just lacked motivation. When I asked him what if anything he had done to change this he just shrugged his shoulders and said “I gave up on them weeks ago”. So given that situation I had to do what I dreaded the most, I went to seek help from the Thai teachers. The response was just staggering. I went firstly to their homeroom teacher whom I have a good relationship with and was amazed by the answer to the following question. Can you ask the students if there is a problem in either the class or my teaching style? I was given a simple answer which was this “do not worry teacher, they are very bad students”. I knew this wasn’t the case and put it down to the Thai teacher in question being unhelpful and too dismissive of the problem. I went and asked all their teachers and was left amazed by their dismissive attitude towards this class. I had the following excuses given to me.
1) They are lazy
2) They are a bad class
3) They do not work for us either, relax
4) Speak slowly
5) Play games, Farang should play games
6) Do not be serious, it is only an English lesson
The last two colleagues who should have been able to inspire me were the math and science teachers. They both came back with the same answer which was “forget about it because they are stupid”. To say that about students who on a regular basis win competitions was staggering to say the least. As you can imagine I dismissed their so called professional opinion and was left feeling more perplexed than ever.
My Reaction
I was as you can imagine left feeling a little angry by the Thai teacher’s response. I also felt that given I had asked them for advice I had put myself in a position of weakness. The only thing I got from the advice was that maybe I was being a little too serious with the class and took this into account. The students needed to speak as part of the curriculum set down by the school and as they refused they were losing points and their grades were being affected by their lack of doing so.
Responsive Students
As stated above, this class had students who could engage in conversation without any fear or embarrassment of being grammatically wrong. As ESL teachers are all too aware being grammatically incorrect when speaking is what holds many ESL students back when it comes to conversation practice. This can be attributed to the style in which Thai teachers teach grammar. In many classes mistakes are often punished in front of the class and as a result fear becomes the biggest issue when speaking the language. As I knew many of these students had never had this problem before I was confused as to how this could happen in less than six months. During M4 these students were great to teach and although they differed in levels they never showed any signs of reluctance or shyness in or out of class.
As stated I had taught this class in the previous academic year and was aware of who could and who could not speak. The girls for the most part were ok with varying levels and the other group was the gay students. Now anyone who has taught in Thailand will know that showing your sexuality even at a young age is not frowned upon. In fact the opposite applies and it is almost encouraged by the Thai teachers. The boys in the class were standard boys. Some did not mind at least trying and if they could not do the work set out they would try and talk about football or another subject. My feeling about the students who were at a lower level was simple. If they were comfortable speaking English about a topic they knew then I should not stop them doing so.
Class Ambience
When I first started at the school I was what I call a traveling teacher. By this I mean that every lesson was in a different classroom with either the students coming to me or the other way around. None of these classrooms had any facilities other than a whiteboard. The seating was set out in such a way that it was almost impossible to change and make it less Victorian. After a few weeks I noticed a room which was never used by any teacher. I asked the head of department if I could use it as the room was big and had perfect space to make the seating to my liking and student friendly. The bonus came in the form of a projector. With a projector I could make the lessons more fun but also more importantly understandable to the students. After a few weeks the head of the department told me that they were happy with the feedback from the students and they would be upgrading the room. They put new flooring and UPVC windows and doors and a new sound system in the room. I had the best room in the language department and I think for the most part the students liked this room above their normal classrooms. I set out the seating in a “horseshoe shape” as per picture (a) and felt that this worked well. Every student could see the projector and there was plenty of room for students to practice role play activities. So given that they had the best room I could not blame the classroom setting and layout on their reluctance to speak. I almost wish it was this simple but the truth is that would have been too easy.
Going Forward
In the next academic year I will teach this class again in M6. The subject relates to getting into college, university and how to gain employment with multinational employers. The subject tends to be more practical with tours of prospective universities, colleges and potential employers. The students have historically enjoyed this subject because it is based on their individual needs and participation is usually quite high. I hope that given the subject matter this class will relax enough to at least try and communicate in English more. I hope that they will see that by at least trying to speak they can see the rewards they could gain in the future during their work lives and studies.
Conclusion
Although I never got the answers from this class about their reluctance to try and speak English I did learn from the experience. I can understand that maybe they did not enjoy the topic and also understand that so many teachers in one year upset their routine. These reasons alone can affect a student’s confidence in the school system and their confidence in teachers fulfilling at the very least one semester with them. I can also admit that I maybe expected the wrong things from the class in terms of their speaking abilities. That said I still consider this as an unfinished case study because until I start teaching them again in the next academic year I will not be able to ascertain the reasons behind their reluctance to speak.

Class Ambience picture A:

Classroom Layout