Grading teacher’s language according to students’ level

When we teach lower-level students, we are often tempted to use L1 because it’s too hard for the learners to understand natural stretches of connected speech. The solution is simple: graded language. By using graded language, teachers adapt what they say to the level of the learners. In this article, you will find some principles of exploiting graded language in the classroom.

Don’t oversimplify

First and foremost, ‘graded’ doesn’t stand for ‘primitive’. Your students are teenagers, not kindergarteners. They will definitely feel it if you start oversimplifying the structures or speaking unnaturally slowly. What’s more, we should bear in mind the input hypothesis made by Stephen Krashen, a linguist and an educational researcher. What he says is that learners acquire language best if they get input which is slightly beyond their current level. So, don’t be afraid to use the language which is new for students, but leave your proficiency synonyms and collocations for later.

Teacher’s language can be graded in two ways: in terms of speed and in terms of difficulty.

Speed

Just slow down. It’s hard to save the features of connected speech and at the same time slow the tempo. However, it’s the only way not to embarrass lower-level teens by a stream of words. Break utterances into meaningful chunks, pause after each chunk. Of course, if students don’t understand a word, slowing down will not be enough. But if you combine that with simplification techniques, you will definitely benefit.

Difficulty

Sometimes your students don’t get what you are saying from the first time. Monitor their body language and facial expression. If there is an awkward pause and they keep staring at you, all puzzled, you don’t have to be a Sherlock. It’s time to simplify!

Make sure your instructions are short and succinct. Break them into pieces and remove all the unnecessary words.

‘Ok, now we are going to listen to the first part of the text, then I’ll stop the track for a while so that you could answer the questions in exercise 1’ – just imagine the eyes of a student who’s just started his A2 level. You can cut it to ‘Listen and answer the questions in exercise 1’ which will work much better. Also, try to avoid all kinds of extra wording like

If you don’t mind…

Right, now we are going to…

Actually, it’s not the only thing we will do…

Add gestures and miming to your speech. They will provide teens with extra support and will help visual learners a lot. Gestures are a great tool for supporting instructions, while miming can provide the meaning of a word or even a situation. 

Opt for simpler grammar and vocabulary. Instead of asking a beginner student ‘Have you ever been to Europe?’ transform that into something they already know like ‘Do you sometimes go to Europe?. 

Remember that academic vocabulary is no better than slang. We sometimes try to teach our students smarter words with their further education or future career goals in mind. However, if you are teaching a general course for Elementary students, it might be a better idea to leave academic vocabulary for the moment when students come to you with a clearer aim like taking IELTS or preparing for an academic interview. 

Mind your language in terms of fillers. Pause fillers like ‘um, uh, kind of, like, right, you know’ and so on can sound very natural. If you tend to overuse them, though, they will just hinder the learners and work as distractors. 

Give students some thinking time to process what you’ve just said. If it is a question, don’t call a learner to answer just after you’ve finished. If it’s an instruction, check understanding with the help of ICQs – instruction checking questions. They depend on the task and might sound like the following:

How much time do you have?

How many true sentences do you write?

Who do you work with?

Try to avoid questions like ‘Do you understand?’ as teenagers usually say ‘Yes’ or keep silence even if they don’t. You can read more about ICQs and CCQs in this article. 

Bearing all these principles in mind, don’t limit yourself to a dozen of over-rehearsed phrases. Your students’ English will get better only if they are exposed to new words and structures. And we, teachers, are a great source of such input – definitely not worse than any coursebook.