Foundations and Frameworks for Second Language MixedAbility Classes

ABSTRACT: Having taught a broad range of language skills, content-based, and teacher training courses over the past three decades in South Korea, Japan, Indonesia, and the United States, to include students from all over the world, often in the same class recently for the Division of International Studies department at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies (HUFS) in Seoul, South Korea, I have had more than my fair share of mixedabilityclasses. Moreover, one of the questions I’ve gotten asked most often over the years in my HUFS graduate school and TESOL certificate classes is about the best way to successfully handle them. Mypat answer has typically been about teaching to the core middle students and playing around with groupings and mentoring. Not content with these quick, incomplete responses, I decided to dive in and take a closer look at what the research is and what other teachers have experienced and do in similar situations. The paper will begin by exploring the reasons for mixed ability classes and then move into strategies for successfully dealing with them. From there, it will focus on three language teaching approaches (Community Language Learning, Communicative Language Teaching, and Cooperative Language Teaching) that can be supportive foundations. Finally, it will focus on the four languages skills (listening, speaking, reading, and writing) and lesson planning frameworks (PDP, EIF, TBLT, and ARM), as well as example lessons (to included needed modifications) for each one, as a way to illustrate practical classroom approaches and considerations.
KEYWORDS: language teaching approaches, lesson planning, mixed ability classes, reflective practice,
strategies