HANDLING MULTI-LEVEL CLASSES IN THE CITY OF BATUMI

Abstract

If we take into account the common teacher-centered or the one-book-fits-all approach, where the teacher is forced to focus on the middle level, many students at the top or bottom end of the language scale are left dissatisfied or demotivated. Once students are placed into a certain class they are regarded as being at much the same linguistic level in their foreign language, and a one-book-fits-all approach is often adopted in the classroom, where all students are required to work at the same pace and complete the tasks of the same difficulty. There are various scholarly approaches to the problem. This study aims to determine whether teachers are aware of possible techniques like differentiated work, dividing a class, letting students choose the task, other techniques, and what the frequency of their use is.

The survey was carried out among the teachers working at both higher education institutions and secondary schools to find out how often teachers refer to different techniques.

The results suggest that differentiated work requires much and thorough preparation on the part of a teacher, which becomes quite time-consuming at times. Therefore, teachers try to deal with mixed-level classes using mostly class division into groups or pairs. Moreover, teachers sometimes or almost rarely let their students choose what to do. A few teachers apply other techniques in their mixed-level classes. This discussion results in the following outcome – there is still the need to raise teachers’ awareness of the techniques to deal with students of different needs in class.