How to teach students with different language proficiency in the same class

Shengjie Lu

Seton Hall Univeristy

Language teachers often find it very hard to conduct drills in a class which is composed of students with a wide range of proficiency. The challenge is how to engage them to practice efficiently at the same time. Using task-based learning is one way to solve this problem. This paper will address the issue alone the lines of Task-based learning theory using my class as an example where students’ proficiencies vary from novice high to intermediate high. In order to make each of them learn and progress, I designed a variety of tasks to accompany the topics from the textbook All Things Considered. The tasks are two major types: (i) simple tasks, such as describing one Coke Cola commercial poster, and (ii) comprehensive tasks, such as finding out the thief, or electing a president. Each task contains some subtypes like information gap, information exchange, opinion exchange, and simulation. In this presentation, I will demonstrate how to implement these different tasks. I will also show some work from students, which indicates the effects of the Task-based learning method.