Classroom Management

I have ever worked in a big maritime university. There, the size of English language classes is very big, usually 50 to 75 students per class and sometimes even 100 students. As Rhoades suggested in his article, the larger the class is, the more important it is to use group work so that all students can get the equal opportunity to practice English during class time. So, I always try to teach students by using using work to be able to give students that chance. However, as the class size is very big, I always encounter many difficulties in doing so.

If a class size is 55, I ask students to form 8 groups containing 7 members in each. Then I assign each group a task on language lesson. The difficulty is that, for 8 groups, I am the only instructor. So, even if I circulate in the classroom and when I am assisting a group with their task, some other groups are in chaos and some other groups become very passive. If there is one or more persistent talker in a group, other members do not participate in the group discussion.