How to work with mixed-ability adult classes

What are the mixed-ability classes? What “abilities“ do we mean? How many students should be there so we can name a class “mixed-ability”? In the article below, I’ll cover some main features of mixed-ability classes, what problems we can face and ideas on how we can deal with them.

Any group where there is more than 1 student is already mixed-ability. But why?

What abilities can be “mixed” or different among students?

Below are some criteria to define mixed-ability groups:

• language level
• speed of learning
• culture
• L1
• education
• age
• goals
• interests
• personal qualities
• learning styles
• exposure
• status 

The language level is usually the first thing that comes to mind when we think about “mixed-ability” classes. Even if all your students are in the, let’s say, Intermediate group, that doesn’t mean that their level is the same. Some of them may know certain topics from the syllabus, some of them can be Low Intermediate, but not Pre-Intermediate already. 

Speed is another feature in which students may differ. Some students are fast finishers and some are slow learners, so when we prepare for a lesson we have to consider what we’ll do when on learner gets stuck and another has everything done in 2 minutes.

Culture and L1 is something you need to think of if you teach in multinational classes and your students have different cultural backgrounds and the native language.

Education may also affect the way student learn, what is easier and more difficult for them. How did they use to learn English before?

Age also influences the way students learn, their interests, the goals they have, etc.

Goals and interests also make you think of ways to adapt books, materials and personalise the language as much as possible.

Personal qualities is another factor that makes classes different, e.g. some learners are introverts, others are extroverts. 

Learning styles differentiate students too: visual, kinaesthetic or auditory students absorb information better in different ways.

Exposure is also essential as it makes learners different too: those have more exposure to the language (watch movies or practise English at work) are usually better in their studies.

Status is what you need to think of especially when you teach Business English. You may have a group where there are line managers and CFO study together, or while discussing work issues there can be a director and their subordinate.

So keeping all these things in mind you need to differentiate your lessons. Ufff… so many things to consider, right? 

How do we do this differentiation?

Differentiation can be done by a task or by the outcome you expect.

When you differentiate your students by task you set tasks of different difficulty or timing or give extra tasks to fast finishers or provide more scaffolding for weak students.

When you differentiate your students by the outcome you expect various things. For example, you’ll expect more complex language structures and less controlled from strong students and simple language and more controlled from weaker students at the production stage. 

How can we adapt the tasks?

• You can give extension tasks for fast finishers. But here you need to consider why they are fast finishers: do they know more, are they just careless or not attentive? Thinking about that adapt your tasks: give a more difficult one, ask to help others, ask to check the exercise again. Read this article to find out activities for fast finishers. 
• You can create graded tasks both for strong and weak students.  For example, divide students (A-B: strong-weak), prepare a gap-filling exercise, stronger students have more difficult gaps to fill in and weaker students have easier ones. Then, they check in pairs. Also, there can be questions for a reading or listening task with questions of different level of difficulty.
• You can organize collaborative tasks where you can set different pairs (two strong students to practise more difficult language and have a more challenging task, or a strong and a weak student to have the first one help the second one or grade the tasks within collaborative tasks, but they have roles of different difficulty, levels of challenge).
• You can give different tasks, e.g. some students hate writing, others love it, so you can think of activities where different things can be done.

However, there are many advantages and profits for your students and you, there are several drawbacks as well:

1. it’s time-consuming to prepare;
2. it’s quite hard to monitor as all students have various tasks;
3. it’s difficult to give feedback as final results will vary;
4. some learners may find that unfair that you ask them simple questions.

It’s quite important that all student can complete the tasks, but you challenge only those who need it.