Answer

1. Learner-Centeredness Beyond the Classroom Size Constraint

    

   In many ways, language defines us. Through language, people communicate their thoughts that ultimately influence the actions that they take. In any classroom situation then, communicative competence is something that is not optional. Teachers and students alike must develop varied speaking, listening, reading, and writing skills that ultimately enable them to easily communicate amongst themselves and therefore make the learning of language possible. Language learning can often demand a very intimate communication relationship between the teacher and the learner. However, this close communication is often not possible especially when the number of learners within a classroom far exceeds that which a teacher can easily interact with one on one on a regular basis. To mitigate this challenge, some classroom contexts still rely on traditional lecture methods to deliver language content to learners. In such instances, learners are not offered sufficient platforms on which they can continually interact and develop language skills by practicing either with each other or with their teachers. Macalister & Nation (2020) identify constraints to effective language teaching. One of these constraints is the large classroom size.

   As already mentioned, the challenge of large classrooms is approached differently depending on the theoretical inclination of the teacher. Many believe that with large classrooms, the focus shifts to what the teacher can deliver rather than what the student can do. For such teachers, they go ahead and adopt more teacher-centered approaches to learning. However, it is important that before any remedy is adopted by the teacher, the nature of the constraint has to be assessed, and this includes looking into the previous research on the constraint and analysing the effectiveness of how others who were faced with similar challenges before address their challenges in the present environment (Macalister & Nation, 2020).

   The context and setting I propose within this paper will be an in-service workshop for teachers of language. This workshop will be based on the constraint of class size. The context is designed for language teachers in New Zealand and will be instrumental in helping them balance the manner in which larger than expected classes are handled so that the students can have optimal opportunities for improving their nascent language skills.

   Context and Setting

   The context and setting within the scope of this paper is a workshop organized for New Zealand teachers. Language teachers in New Zealand, like in other nations where English is studied, language workshops and conferences are usually organized to generate and share ideas on novel ways of language teaching and techniques that can be used to overcome emerging language issues. The workshop will run for half a day. Teachers of English from all over New Zealand will be present. This means that the whole spectrum of the language teaching fraternity will be represented—from rural school teachers, suburban teachers, urban teachers, teachers from privileged jurisdictions, and those from underrepresented or minority groups.

    Most of these teachers rely on the traditional teacher-centered approach to solving the problem of large class sizes. The workshop will be an opportunity to change this mindset towards a model of greater learner involvement through organized group work and more interactive activities for the larger classes. The workshop will be part of their professional teaching development towards better English language teachers. It will be part of the English conference that is held from time to time in a bid to improve the English teaching proficiency of all teachers of English in New Zealand. The workshop will introduce the teachers to learner-centred methods especially when enrolments keep rising in their classrooms.

   It is fair to say that within the chosen context, the English language teachers already know about class size as a constraint within curriculum design (Macalister & Musgrave, 2015). For teachers, especially those from areas where the teacher-learner ratio is high, the issue of class size is always alive with them. It is important then to define within this context exactly how large the classes are. The largeness of classes can be relative. There are classes of 40, and there may be classes of 70. The teachers have to be equipped with the know-how to determine when they can apply which solutions to the issue identified. For most of these teachers within New Zealand, the mode of instruction when the classes increase in size is traditionally to resort to lectures and other teacher-centred methods. It is important to note that these teachers have a lasting influence on their learners as the learners tend to emulate them much more than they are influenced by their training organizations. Ultimately, this creates a cycle of ineffective language teaching as the learners do not get enough opportunities to interact within their classes, which is a good foundation for their ultimate excellence in the acquisition of language skills (Macalister & Nation, 2020).

   The Constraint of Class Size

   As the workshop would last two hours, it would be important that the hours are utilized within the workshop maximally to make the teachers understand the need for a change in handling the increasing class sizes. The first thing to do in the preliminary minutes of the workshop is to establish what would constitute a big class, and how class size can be a constraint for language curriculum developers and implementers. There are recommended teacher-pupil ratios within the framework of the New Zealand curriculum. Looking at such recommendations brings the picture of what an ideal classroom would be and brings in the question of teacher-learner interaction within the language framework. For standard classrooms, the teacher should be able to reach the learners individually. Anything beyond what the New Zealand curriculum stipulates is well beyond the standard language teaching mechanisms and calls for greater innovation in order to solve. Teachers will use this time to learn about the standard classroom size and suggest ways in which the large classroom would be a constraint to curriculum implementation in general.

   One would wonder what justification the teachers will be given for the choice of class size as a constraint to learning language skills. It is true that English, like all languages, is an interactive subject. Learning it then requires the teacher to creatively think of ways through which the learners can use the language within and outside the classroom environment to complete simple tasks. Doing so then would mean that the teacher will have to engage the learners where possible in speaking, reading, listening, and writing activities, games and plays. With bigger classes, however, this coordination may be lost (Macalister & Nation, 2020). The teachers would be informed that this calls for them to come up with innovative ways of grouping students in bigger classes and creating smaller groups within which most learners can share their experiences without being shy or ashamed.

   As part of the workshop’s beginning, there will be a brief introductory presentation on constraints, environmental analysis, and the need to take class size as one of the most important for curriculum design in terms of language learning. The speaker will present summarized points on class size constraint after which the participants will be allowed to work in groups and develop some of the feelings, opinions, and facts they have about class size as a constraint to language teaching.

   Involving Teachers

   It has been noted above that one of the opening acts of the workshop would be to have the teachers work in groups to come up with varied thoughts on class size as a constraint. As this will only form a small part of the workshop objective, the first part will take a shorter time. In addition to merely just bringing to the fore what the teachers think, the time will also be used by the teachers to practice one of the strategies that the workshop would ultimately recommend in the change during language teaching in an actual classroom in New Zealand. Interactive teaching provides the learners with the best opportunity at practicing some of the most useful language skills that they learn from their teachers (Macalister & Musgrave, 2015). In addition, it also reduces reliance on school texts that have formed the bane of language teaching in the New Zealand school system. The teachers come from different school settings, and this will be key as they will be exchanging experiences. It is possible that some will realize huge disparities in other systems or even in theirs. With this primary knowledge, the steps towards changing their thinking will be officially begun.

   During this opening round of the workshop, the teachers will finish the group sharing of experiences and attempt to relate the class sizes within their own settings to the teaching methods that they ultimately choose for language learning. From the shared experiences, it will then be important to harmonize the findings with the research facts on class size constraint and outline the measures that can be used to overcome this constraint. It would be important to explain to the participants earlier in the workshop that the learning of language (as is indeed true in most subjects) ought to be focused on the learner (Gupta, 2019; Nation, 2007). This learner-centred approach would allow the teacher to identify innovative ways through which the learners themselves could contribute to their own learning.

   In this regard then, it would be essential for the participants to move on and discuss ways in which they attempt to overcome the class size constraint. Some in this section would be suggesting issues like splitting the classes or having more manpower, but the workshop will be guided for more emphasis on solutions that are workable within the constraints of the large class itself. This then would include them suggesting teaching methods, arrangement, and motivation within the larger classroom. The participants will fill in a pre-prepared questionnaire on teaching methods within the large class and the ones that they as participants prefer. Depending on how many groups there are, there will be presentations of the chosen methods and the backgrounds of why they feel that the methods they have chosen may be the best. At the end of this activity, the teachers ought to be able to appreciate the need to have more interactive group activities and language tasks that are learner-centred as a core teaching mechanism (Macalister & Musgrave, 2015).

   The next activity would be to outline for the participants the varied methods they can use to overcome the constraint of class size right from environmental analysis, the exploration of other solutions to the numbers, and the adoption of creative and interactive group work for the learners (Macalister & Nation, 2020; Sekhar & Chakravorty, 2017). The participants would be asked to imagine themselves as the students and evaluate whether or not they would prefer lectures to interactive language activities. It would then be essential to enumerate the games, discuss the issues surrounding the composition of language groups in terms of the learners’ ability and ask the participants to suggest some interesting activities that learners could engage in themselves when the teacher may not reach them individually.

   The final activity for the participants would be the individual determination of providing valid and reasonable solutions to the constraint of class sizes. Based on what the participants have learned and the shared experiences, they would then have small pieces of paper in which they would list some common language teaching methods in large classes that do not work well for the learner. They would then go ahead and supply suggestions for viable solutions for each poor strategy identified. Alternatively, I would have two columns under which they would categorize teaching methods provided and determine whether the methods are either fit or not for the language classroom.

    

    

   Evaluating the Success of the process

   Evaluating the success of the workshop organization would have to begin with identifying the attitude change from the language teachers based on their actual experiences in terms of language teaching in relation to their class sizes. In this regard then, the small form that they fill would have to be analysed and their opinions on the suitability of teacher-centred methods established. Once this is done, it would be essential for me to establish what they feel the best solution to this constraint is. This would include analysing their thinking at the end of the workshop with the ones they held before the session was done.

   Another evaluation mechanism would involve inquiring from the participants to gauge the effectiveness of the methods used in the workshop especially with regards to their sharing their experiences. Did the experience allow them to freely share what they thought and believed? Was it engaging enough? Did they feel that their opinions were incorporated by the presenters? Could the same method of having the learners work in groups be implemented by them within their own classrooms (Gupta, 2019)?

   The intention of this workshop was to introduce the concept of classroom size constraint and how it affects curriculum design and implementation. It is often the view of many teachers in New Zealand that the solution to bigger classes is resorting to lecture methods and other teacher-centred approaches. However, the discussion has exposed to need to shift this approach, with more emphasis on interactive discussion groups and opportunities for language learning within and outside the classrooms.

   The participants were allowed to be part of groups within the workshop and utilize the experiences they learned from others to gauge their own. By doing this to them, a comparative analysis was possible from the beginning of the workshop (Nation, 2014). The given presentations brought forward new knowledge, especially as it regards the utilization of group works. The participants simulated actual classroom discussions, providing them with perfect opportunities to observe and later implement these strategies (Macalister & Nation 2020).

   The discussion in this paper entailed the organization of a workshop to determine what constraints are in curriculum design and specifically see how the class size constraint can influence the learning of English language skills in the New Zealand classroom. As classes increase in size, there arises a need for the teachers to be more innovative. This need was well demonstrated within the organized context, with participants contributing to ensure that the learning itself was as engaging as possible. By sharing experiences, offering suggestions, and listening to others, the participants were open to attitude change in relation to teaching language skills. The workshop has been an eye-opener for the teachers, and the lessons learned can be used to greatly improve their teaching skills in the long run.