19 Learner differences (2): teaching heterogeneous

(mixed) classes

Overview
The sections in this unit are:

19.1 Differences between individual students in the heterogeneous class. The

different ways, besides ability, in which students vary within a heterogeneous
class.
19.2 Problems and advantages. Some common teaching difficulties which arise in
heterogeneous classes, and possible advantages
19.3 Practical principles. General guidelines for the teaching of heterogeneous
classes, illustrated by ideas for classroom procedures.
19.4 Teaching high and low achievers. Catering for more advanced students and
(particularly) those who are lagging behind.

19.1 Differences between individual students in the

heterogeneous class
The heterogeneous class is often called ‘mixed level’, but its population is
inevitably mixed in more than just level of knowledge of English. The opposite is
homogeneous: classes where the students are all similar. There is, of course, no such
thing as a completely homogeneous class; all students are different, even if they
have been put into groups according to ability or level.

Task
In how many ways are students different from each other? Make a list of all the
ways that they are different which would have an effect on teaching. (For example,
eye colour or height would not be important, but personality would be.) Then
compare your list with the one below.

Gender and age

• Gender. In some mixed-gender classes you may find differences between
students that are gender-linked. This to a large extent depends on the
surrounding culture, and how differently boys and girls are educated.
• Age or maturity. Adult classes may be composed of students of widely varying
ages. Even in school classes where students are usually all the same age, they
may have different levels of maturity, particularly in adolescent classes. This
will make a large difference to the way they prefer to learn, how motivated
they are and so on (see Unit 18: Learner differences (1): age).

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Knowledge
• English. Students vary a lot in their knowledge of English. This may be because
of their success or failure in previous learning, or because they have had more,
or less, exposure to English outside the classroom.
• Other languages. Students may know only the dominant language of their
own country, or they may also know other languages spoken by a local
community, or in the home, or learnt in school.
• General. Students also vary as to the amount of general world knowledge they
have, based on their own life experience and the information they have learnt
either in school or through extra-curricular activity.

Ability
• Intelligences. According to Gardner’s (1983) theory of multiple intelligences,
each student has a different combination of various types of intelligence
(mathematical, spatial, linguistic, etc.). This is a useful way to look at and value
the various talents and abilities of different students.
• Cognitive ability. Some students are simply better at learning things than
others. They get higher grades in a variety of subjects, understand explanations
more quickly and so on. Cognitive ability is thought to be age-linked up to
late adolescence. A 16-year old, for example, normally learns better than an
11-year-old.

Personal characteristics
• Personality. Students vary a lot in their personality: shy or confident, friendly
or withdrawn, dominant or submissive, talkative or quiet, and so on. This will
influence not only the way they learn but also the way they relate to you and
to other students.
• Learning style. Individual students are very different in the way they prefer to
learn. For example, some prefer to learn on their own, others like to work with
classmates; some are more visual, some more aural; some learn through doing,
others are more reflective and receptive (see Kolb, 1984).
• Attitude and motivation. Some students come to the classroom with a
positive attitude to language and studying, others do not, and for many
different reasons. For example, they may (not) feel it is important to
know English; they may (not) have had bad experiences with learning it in
the past.
• Interests. Students enjoy different kinds of television programmes, movies
or books. They have different leisure-time activities. They are interested in
different school, or extra-curricular, subjects.

Background and experience

• Cultural and linguistic background. In many places you may find
yourself teaching students who come from different countries, or different
cultural groups within the country where the school is located. In some
cases individuals may have different L1s.

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• Learning experience and culture of learning. The way students behave in the
classroom will depend on their previous experiences learning English, which
may vary widely. They may be used to rather different cultures of learning (see
Unit 15: Teaching content, p. 217).

When teaching a heterogeneous class, catering for different abilities and levels is
the main problem, and so this is inevitably the focus of much of the material in
this unit. But it is important to remain aware of the other differences between the
individual students in our class, as listed above, and take them into account in
teaching.

19.2 Problems and advantages

Problems
Below are five teacher statements describing the problems they have with their
heterogeneous class.

Task
Which of the problems below do you think are the most important? With which
teacher do you personally most sympathize?

Mark: ‘I can’t make sure they’re all learning effectively; the tasks I provide
are either too difficult or too easy for many of them.’
Sara: ‘The material is unsuitable: the texts and tasks in my coursebook
are targeted at students at a particular level, and some of my
students need easier or more difficult material.
Tania: ‘I can’t activate them all: only a few students – the more proficient
and confident ones – seem to respond actively to my questions.’
Peter: ‘They get bored: I can’t find topics and activities that keep them all
interested.’
Ella: ‘I have discipline problems in these classes; I find them difficult to
control.’

Perhaps the most crucial problem is Mark’s. Our main job is to make sure the
students are learning: if some of them are not, then we have a major professional
challenge, which we need to address immediately. In principle, the solution to
the problem is what is called ‘differentiated instruction’: providing individualized
teaching appropriate to different students. This is often interpreted as preparing
different tasks appropriate to the varying abilities of the members of the class,
which is fine in theory, but not very practical for teachers who are already
working hard to prepare all their lessons! It simply is not reasonable to expect us
to prepare separate tasks for a number of individuals. See Section 19.3 below for
some alternatives.

Sara’s problem of materials is a very real one. Many of the exercises in coursebooks
are clearly aimed at a particular level (see Open-ending in Section 19.3 below), and
the texts are also often presented with very few options or ideas for making them
more, or less, challenging (see Unit 14: Materials, pp. 202–8). This means adapting
the materials ourselves, or looking for new ones.

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Active participation is also a challenge in heterogeneous classes, as Tania says.

Inevitably, the moment we ask a question, it will be the more advanced and
confident students who volunteer answers, and it is sometimes difficult to involve
the others as well. We need to think of ways to provide opportunities for the
less able or confident students to participate without competing with their more
assertive classmates.

Peter raises the issue of students getting bored. There are two main reasons for
student boredom in these types of classes. One is the varied interests of different
students and their different learning styles: a topic and task that are fascinating
for some members of the class may be totally uninteresting for others. The
second problem is associated with the different levels. In order to help the less
able students, a teacher must occasionally provide easier tasks, or take time to
explain things that the rest of the class already know. In either case, the students
who need more challenge or already know the material may get bored and will
consequently learn little.

The discipline problems which worry Ella arise as a direct result of the boredom
discussed above. When students are waiting for slower workers to finish a task, or
to understand what the teacher is explaining, they are very likely to start talking or
otherwise disturbing the class. The lower-level students may also start disturbing
the class because they don’t understand what is going on or are unable to
participate in a class activity because they do not know the necessary language.

The advantages
Heterogeneous classes are seen mostly as problematical; however, they have their
advantages as well, and some of these can be used to help solve the problems.

Task
What positive aspects of heterogeneous classes can you think of that might help
teaching? Make a quick list (if you are working with others, share ideas with them).
Then look at my suggestions below and compare: can you add more?

Human resources. Heterogeneous classes provide a richer pool of human

resources than more homogeneous ones. Between them the individuals have far
more life experience and knowledge, more varied opinions, more interests and
ideas – all of which can be used in classroom interaction.
Educational value. There is educational value in the close contact between
very different kinds of people: classmates get to know each other’s cultures,
experiences, opinions and so increase their own knowledge and awareness of
others as individuals. If there are people from very different cultures in the
group, then this contact may go some way towards challenging stereotypes and
helping students to understand and respect each other’s cultures.
Cooperation. The fact that the teacher is less able to pay attention to every
individual in the class means that for the class to function well, the students
must help by teaching each other and working together. Peer-teaching and

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collaboration are likely to be common, contributing to a warm and supportive

classroom climate.
Teacher development. These classes can be seen as very much more challenging
and interesting to teach, and provide greater opportunity for creativity,
innovation and general professional development on the part of the teacher.

19.3 Practical principles

The practical principles described in this section may not be able completely
to solve the problems described earlier. But they can go some way towards
addressing them. They do not necessarily involve a large amount of preparation
or the creation of new materials. Rather, they are based on a slight ‘tweak’ in
the way tasks are designed or presented, or simple adaptation of coursebook
materials.

Variation
In a heterogeneous class – particularly a large one – you cannot possibly be
actively teaching all the students all the time. There will be times when you are
neglecting the students who like to work in groups in order to provide activities
that allow for individual work. There will be others when you are neglecting more
advanced students in order to concentrate on helping the others to catch up. As
discussed earlier, such situations may lead to boredom, lack of learning for some
of the class, and sometimes discipline problems. But you cannot avoid them
completely. What you can do is make sure that you give time and attention to the
different groups of students in a balanced way, so that the inevitable occasional
neglect of individuals is fairly distributed. You can achieve balance by ensuring
that you vary your lessons in the following ways:
Level and pace. You can sometimes use more demanding texts and tasks, at other
times easier ones; and similarly work sometimes at a faster pace, sometimes more
slowly.
Type of classroom organization. Some students really like working with their
classmates; some like working alone; others prefer to interact directly with the
teacher. Try not to get into a routine of doing a lot of teacher-led work and
very little individual work; or a lot of individual but very little group- or pair-
work. Make sure that there are opportunities for all three types of interactional
organization.
Skill. Vary the focus on listening, speaking, reading and writing. Some students
are more visually oriented and prefer written material. Some are more oral/aural
and prefer spoken. Some function better when being active and productive and
prefer speaking and writing; others are more reflective and receptive, and prefer
listening and reading. Again, it is a question of maintaining a balance.
Topic. Usually the topics will be determined by the coursebook, but if you notice
that the coursebook tends to use just one kind of topic, and some of the class are
getting bored, try to find out what they are interested in and bring in new topics
to supplement the book.

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Task. Vary the tasks, not only in the skill used, but also in the kind of mental
activity they demand: applying rules, analysis, creativity, puzzle-solving, game-like
challenge and so on.

Interest
Inevitably, as mentioned above, we will be sometimes working at a speed or level
which is inappropriate for some of the students. These students may then become
bored and stop participating, or even start misbehaving. The trick is to try to
keep them all engaged, so that even if the task is inappropriate for their level,
preferences or interaction style, they will continue to participate because they find
the task interesting.

An interesting topic does not help very much, because there are not many topics
that all the class will find interesting. It is also, unfortunately, very easy to ‘kill’
an interesting topic by using a boring task. However, the opposite is also true:
the most boring topic can be made interesting by using it in a stimulating task.
Bottom line: it is the task rather than the topic which usually provides for interest
in the classroom.

To take a brief example: the topic of cardinal numbers (one, two, three …) is
fairly boring. However, suppose we do the following: ask students each to choose
a number which is significant for them (for example, the year of an important
event in their lives, the number of brothers and sisters they have or their phone
number), and then to tell their classmates what the number is and invite them
to guess its significance (revealing the right answer later if it isn’t guessed). This
activity is likely to be interesting for everyone, including students who already
know the numbers and do not need to practise them.

In this case the interest is based on personalization (which I will discuss in

more detail later); but there are other task-design features which also help to
maintain interest. See Unit 4: The task, pp. 51–5 for a more detailed discussion
of this topic.

Individualization
Individualization is not the same as personalization. It does not involve things
like personal experiences, opinions, etc. It relates to students’ learning level and
includes strategies which enable students to learn at an appropriate pace and level,
even when they are doing a routine teacher-led or coursebook exercise. Here are
two simple ideas:
• Start wherever you like. In a conventional exercise with numbered items, give
students a minute or two to skim through the exercise, and then invite them
to raise their hands and answer any one of the items they like: they don’t have
to start at the first one. This gives weaker students the chance to try first for the
easier items, and in general allows more choice and flexibility.
• Set time, not quantity. Instead of saying ‘Do exercise six’, tell students: ‘Do
as much of exercise six as you can in five minutes.’ The same can be done for
homework: ‘Work on this task for twenty minutes’ rather than ‘Finish this

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task.’ The slower-working students will do less, faster-working ones will do

more, but all are working according to their own pace and ability.

For more on individualization, see Unit 16: Classroom interaction, pp. 234–8.

Personalization
Personalization is not only a way to arouse interest; it is also a very basic aspect
of task design in heterogeneous classes. Students have a vast range of different
backgrounds, experiences, personalities, tastes and so on, and we should
design activities that allow them to express these. For example, we might, at
a very simple level, provide a list of foods, ask students which are their three
favourites, and invite them to try to find classmates with the same tastes. At
a more advanced level, we might, as suggested on p. 14, give them a selection
of metaphors for the English lesson (is it like a football match? a symphony
concert? shopping? a conversation? a medical consultation? a variety show?
climbing a mountain?), ask students to choose the one they feel is most
appropriate and to explain why.

Collaboration
Allowing students to work together on completing a task encourages peer-
teaching. Students learn from one another and are enabled to perform the task
better as a result. The problem is that if you put a stronger student with a weaker
one, the stronger student may wonder ‘what’s in it for me?’ The answer is to use
collaboration mainly for tasks where a larger number of students will always get
better results, regardless of their level. Brainstorming or memorizing activities are
ideal for this: two or more students are likely to be able to think of or remember
more items than a single individual. See, for example, Recall and share as described
in Unit 11: Teaching writing, p. 163.

Open-ending
Closed-ended cues have one right answer: for example, in order to practise the
present perfect, you might give the sentence-completion cue:

Sue is really worried! (She … lose … purse)

The students are required to write the response:

‘She has lost her purse.’ Students who are at
a lower level and have not yet mastered the
relevant verb forms will either not respond
at all, or are likely to get the answer wrong.
Correcting them may help them get it right
next time, but they will have got no useful
practice from the present item. The more
advanced students are also neglected, because
the item is easy and boring, and provides them
with no opportunity to show what they can do
or to engage with language of an appropriate
level.

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Open-ended cues, on the other hand, provide opportunities for responses at

various levels. In this case, we might rephrase the cue as follows:
Sue is really worried. What do you think has happened?

The more advanced students can make up more sophisticated and longer answers.
The less advanced can listen to other learners’ responses and use them as models
before volunteering simple ideas of their own. Moreover, even a basic exercise
like this allows for expression of personal experience and opinion. Finally, the
increase in the number of learner responses to one teacher cue means an increase
in the amount of learner talk. This means there will be a significant rise in the
proportion of students who can make active contributions.

Closed-ended textbook exercises can often easily be adapted to make them

open-ended. For example, you can delete the cues in a gapfill or sentence-
completion exercise so that students can fill the gaps with whatever they like (as
long as it makes sense and is grammatically acceptable!). Or you can delete one
of the columns in a ‘matching’ exercise and ask students to invent the ‘matches’
themselves (see some examples of such adaptation in Unit 14: Materials, p. 206).

Compulsory plus optional

The idea here is to have a compulsory ‘core’ task which is easy enough to be
successfully completed by all members of the class, and also an extra component
which is longer and more challenging, but clearly defined as optional. In this way,
all members of the class can succeed at the basic task, while there is enough extra
content to keep the more advanced or faster-working students busy, challenged
and learning at an appropriate level.

Almost any classroom task to be done by individuals can be presented in this

way. The key phrase in the instructions is at least: ‘Do at least five of the following
questions (more if you can)’; ‘Find at least five vocabulary items to put in each
column (more if you can)’; ‘Write a story of at least 100 words: if you can, then
longer.’ Sometimes an extra task can be added explicitly, with the instruction if
you have time: ‘Finish this exercise for homework; if you have time, do the next
one as well.’

This can easily be done with listening comprehension, for example. Instead of
giving the class comprehension questions on a spoken text, ask them to listen to
a description or report containing quite a lot of factual material (you could, for
example, describe members of your own family!) and tell them that their task is to
write down at least four facts they have learnt from their listening. At the end, ask
them if they have at least four facts. In my experience they almost all have more,
and are eager to tell you what they are.

The main problem that teachers usually bring up at this point is ‘How do I get
students to work according to their full potential? Given the choice, surely they
will opt for the easier “compulsory” work?’

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In my experience they don’t. On the contrary: if I have a problem, it is that the

less advanced students try to do too much. I am not sure why this is. Perhaps
they prefer challenge and interest to easiness and boredom. It may also be partly
from considerations of self-image (‘I wish to see myself as the kind of student who
does more advanced work’). In any case, usually these motives seem to be more
powerful than the wish to take easy options.

The ‘compulsory plus optional’ principle also applies to tests. One of the
problems with classroom tests is that not only are they too easy for some and
too difficult for others, but also that some students finish early and are left with
nothing to do. They can, of course, be asked to read or get on with some other
learning task. However, it is simpler to add an extra optional item, which is more
challenging and flexible in the amount of time it may take. They could be asked
to compose more questions on a reading text and answer them, to write a story,
to express their opinion on a text and so on. The problem is then how do you
grade this extra item? It is only fair to allow 100% of marks on the ‘compulsory’
components. The optional ones would then receive a ‘bonus’ of 10 or 20 marks.
This sometimes produces grades of, for example, 110%, but I don’t think this
matters. The main point is to give the students who invest extra work some kind
of acknowledgement of their effort and achievement.

Summary
To recap, teaching large heterogeneous classes is a challenge, and there are no
perfect solutions. However, there are some simple techniques that can help:
• Vary activities, so that different learning-styles and levels are addressed
• Make them interesting, so that more advanced students won’t be bored by
lower-level activities
• Individualize choice, in order to allow flexibility in level and pace
• ‘Personalize’ activities to allow room for self-expression of different individual
students
• Encourage collaboration, to take advantage of possibilities of peer-teaching
and - learning
• ‘Open-end’ activities to create opportunities to respond at different levels
• Design activities whose basic task is fairly easily done successfully, plus further
optional extensions for faster or more advanced students.

Task
Choose a task from a coursebook you know, and plan how to adapt it for a
heterogeneous class using any of the principles listed above.

Action task
Implement at least one of the ideas suggested in this section in a class you are
teaching, and note the results.

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19.4 Teaching high and low achievers

High achievers
Some students are ‘high-fliers’: they complete tasks easily and to a high level, and
are in danger of feeling bored and frustrated when working on material which
is below their level or with other students who are less proficient. These may be
native speakers of English, or simply talented students with plenty of exposure to
English outside the class. Often the two last strategies suggested in Section 19.3
above (open-ending and compulsory plus optional) can help to keep such students
on-task and learning. However, you might find that you need occasionally to give
them extra, or alternative, work to do, such as projects or extensive reading of
books of their choice.

The high achievers, however, are normally very much less problematic than the
low achievers, to whom most of this section will be devoted.

Low achievers
If students are not doing very well in your class, this could be for a number of
reasons.
• They have learnt badly before joining your class and are unable to catch up in
spite of their best efforts.
• They are unmotivated: see no point in learning English and refuse to invest
effort in it.
• They have done badly in most subjects up to now and are convinced that they
cannot do well in English: a problem of self-image.
• They are below the rest of the group in cognitive ability and simply find it
difficult to learn as fast as the others.
• They suffer from a clinical condition that limits their functioning in some way:
they are sight- or hearing-impaired, or find it difficult to control and coordinate
physical movement.
• They have a specific learning disability, such as reading disabilities of various
kinds, or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).
• They have personal emotional problems based on their home background or
social conflicts.

Most of us are not qualified to diagnose specific disabilities. Nevertheless, if you

see that a member of the class is not doing very well, is disturbing the lesson a lot
or otherwise behaving abnormally, you need to try to find out why. If a child is
hearing-impaired, for example, you need to know that he or she needs to sit near
the front, and you need to speak very clearly, facing him or her. You may need
expert advice on how exactly to relate to students with specific psychological or
physical problems. Consult the classroom teacher if you are in a school, or the
parents, or any previous teachers of the individual student, or the school counsellor.

Under-achieving students who are likely to hold back other students if working
in the same class are sometimes taught in separate groups. Teaching such groups
is very challenging: not only are the individual students having difficulties, but

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also the group itself is very heterogeneous. The tips below can help, and you may
be able to apply some of them to under-achieving students who are studying in a
general class.

Practical tips
1. Find time to relate to students individually. This includes checking and
commenting on their written work regularly, and having occasional chats
outside the lesson. These are important for any class, but particularly for one
of this kind. Moreover, here they are more feasible, because these classes tend
to be quite small in size. Students need to know you are aware of them as
individuals, care about them and are monitoring their progress.
2. Make sure the tasks are success-oriented. Adapt coursebook tasks and texts,
or add your own, that are clearly doable by the students. This may mean
providing differentiated tasks and tests (see Compulsory plus optional in Section
19.3 above), but the principle is to make sure that the students can, with a bit
of effort, succeed. Having done that, you will be justified in making demands,
as described in the next tip.
3. Make demands. Keep your expectations high. One of the main problems with
under-achieving students is that they have often simply accepted that they
are failures and don’t expect anything else. So an important teaching goal
is to convince them that they can succeed. You will quickly learn what they
are capable of. Demand that they perform according to the highest level they
can. Don’t just say ‘oh, it doesn’t matter, don’t worry about it’ when they fail
to do a task. When designing tasks and tests, set a standard for success that is
appropriate for the students, as described in the previous tip, and then insist
that they achieve it.
4. Give praise where it is deserved. It is of course important to boost the
students’ confidence by praising them often, but make sure this is not
indiscriminate. Over-frequent, unearned compliments soon lose their value
and are ignored by students. Only give a compliment when the students have
actually succeeded as a result of effort, and when both they and you know that
the praise is deserved.
5. Use a coursebook. You may think that it is better to write or select specific
materials for such groups rather than using a coursebook. However, the
students may interpret this as discrimination: ‘Other classes get coursebooks,
why don’t we? The teacher obviously doesn’t think we’re up to it.’ The use
of a coursebook conveys the message that you expect the students to complete
a programme and syllabus and make systematic progress. You can always
supplement the coursebook with extra materials or skip bits of it as
necessary.

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Review
Answer as many as you can of the following questions, and then check answers by
referring back to the relevant passages in this unit.
If you are working in a group, note down your own answers first alone, and then
share with the other members of the group. Finally, check the answers together.

Differences between individual students in the heterogeneous class

1. Why is ‘heterogeneous’ a better way to describe these classes than ‘mixed-
level’?
2. Recall at least seven ways in which individual students differ from one
another in a heterogeneous class.

Problems and advantages

3. Suggest at least three problems in teaching heterogeneous classes.
4. What is ‘differentiated instruction’?
5. List some advantages of heterogeneous classes.

Practical principles
6. What kinds of variations can the teacher make in the way he or she teaches
the lesson in order to cater for students’ different learning styles, interests
and so on?
7. What kinds of tasks are suitable for collaborative work?
8. What does ‘open-ending’ mean? How can you transform a closed-ended
classroom exercise into an open-ended task?
9. What does ‘compulsory plus optional’ mean? Can you give an example?

Teaching high and low achievers

10. How might you address the needs of high achievers in your class?
11. Suggest at least three reasons why some students might be performing below
the expected class level.
12. List four practical things you can do to help low achievers make progress.

Further reading
Hadfield, J. (1992) Classroom Dynamics, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
(Ideas for mixed-skills activities to foster good relationships, awareness of
others, group solidarity)
Hess, N. (2001) Teaching Large Multilevel Classes, Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
(A practically oriented handbook providing ideas for teaching large
heterogeneous classes)
Prodromou, L. (1992a) Mixed Ability Classes, London: Macmillan.
(Thought-provoking and readable, with suggestions for activities and tasks
to stimulate learning and teacher thinking)

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