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This paper attempts to define the concept of
large classes with particular reference to the teaching of English for Specific Purposes
(ESP) at the University of Agriculture, Abeokuta in Nigeria. It also examines the problems
of large classes faced by language teachers in this university and their adoption of the
team teaching approach as one of the means of overcoming some of their problems. It
describes the team teaching approach and mentions briefly the Communication Skills Project
for the Universities of Agriculture and Technology (COMSKIPTECH) under which the ESP
methodology was introduced. From the observation gathered, this paper points out the need
for improvement and also provides positive and practical recommendations towards improving
the Abeokuta experiment.
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The large-class phenomenon is difficult to
explain because of the tendency to attribute much importance to class size. In terms of
class size, what is defined as a large class varies from one teacher to another and one
country to another. In spite of this, large classes are a widespread phenomenon. In the
teaching of EAP (English for Academic Purposes) in tertiary institutions in Nigeria, large
classes are the norm rather than the exception. In addition to the large number of
students, teachers have also had to cope with problems such as lack of basic facilities,
including books and teaching equipment, poorly motivated students, and inadequate
classroom environments.
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At the University of Agriculture, Abeokuta,
Nigeria (UNAAB) in 1989, there were over 300 students in the Use of English course, a
two-unit service course taught to all first year students of the University. Initially,
all the students were taught in a large auditorium by the only language teacher. When two
others were employed, however, the students were divided between the three teachers, so
each group was made up of about 125 students.
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In addition to the EAP teaching hours, each of
the teachers had two hours of teaching Literature in English to second year undergraduates
and four hours in remedial English for the pre-degree students. The resources available,
particularly books, were very limited and none of the teachers had any previous training
in ESP methodology, until the inception of the Communication Skills Project for the
Universities of Agriculture and Technology (COMSKIPTECH) in December 1989.
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The COMSKIPTECH project was funded by the
British government's Overseas Development Administration and jointly executed by the
Nigerian National Universities Commission and the British Council. The project aims to
improve teaching the communication skills of Nigerian undergraduates through heightened
teacher awareness of current ELT methodologies. At the end of the pre-proj-ect workshop
led by a British consultant, in December 1989, it was obvious that large classes are not
an aberration, but are a fact of our teaching experience and they require practical
solutions. Each participating university was encouraged to respond positively to its
situation by evolving practical solutions to cope with its particular situation, bearing
in mind the need to involve the learners in the teaching and learning processes.
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In order to achieve this goal at UNAAB, a needs
analysis was conducted to ascertain what the students perceived as their most important
needs in terms of language requirements to carry out their work effectively, and the
subject teachers' perception of students' needs for effective learning in the University.
The responses obtained changed our focus in course design and classroom methodology. It
was realised that there is the need to evolve a strategy that will work to meet our
expectations as teachers to improve our students, and the expectations of our students as
learners. We were conscious, however, of the need to exercise some caution in order to
avoid drastic and over- ambitious changes that could negatively affect our students. Our
decision, therefore, at UNAAB was to begin to team teach using our old teaching materials
which were focused on prescriptive grammar and were highly instructional, until a time
when we could develop new materials that would fit our new orientation. In the meantime,
we introduced into these old materials some interactive activities and tasks. During one
of the workshops organised under the auspices of the proj-ect, a new set of materials on
writing was produced. It was far from being perfect; however, we decided to revise, and
trial it in our classes. The new set of materials is made up of nine units: awareness
raising, note-taking, listening comprehension, and examinations questions. The other five
units were aimed at process writing. Each student had to pay for his own copy, so it
actually became a workbook both for the teachers and the students. In this paper our aim
is to present our experiment in team teaching, our observations, and our efforts to
improve on this methodology.
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Team teaching may be explained as any form of
collaboration between two or more teachers in order to improve classroom
teaching/management to enhance learning. Noli (1980) suggests team teaching as one of the
strategies for managing large classes. This might involve two teachers "pooling
classes and talents to organize different teaching activities." Gee et. al. (1984)
report on their experiment in collaborative teaching with subject specialists to improve
the language proficiency of overseas engineering undergraduates. In one of their results,
it was reported that overseas students obtained average marks almost 5% higher than the
remainder of the class. Dudley-Evans (1984) discusses a similar study in ESP. The list of
the writing tasks to be covered in this instance was drawn up by the subject teachers
involved, in consultation with the language teachers. He concluded that the need for team
teaching is stronger in the pre-experience ESP course. De Escorcia (l984) reports that
students' demand for more relevance in English courses led to the idea of a team teaching
approach. This, he says, is in spite of the fact that the immediate relevance of the use
of English is not manifested. Strong demands to read references in English are not always
made by students.
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In EAP team teaching has become a familiar
approach, though used in a variety of forms. Our modification of the team teaching
approach in UNAAB is summarised as follows: All three language teachers attend classes
together. While one person teaches and initiates group discussions, the other two assist
to ensure that students carry out tasks assigned to them, and that each group, where group
work is involved, participates fully. The other teachers, who for this purpose may be
referred to as teaching assistants, also observe the response of the students to the
session being taught. It is important to note that all three language teachers make
conscious efforts to be conversant with each unit of the teaching materials. So, it is
difficult for the students to predict whose turn it is to teach at any point in time. This
is particularly useful in our situation where the status of the teacher affects the psyche
of the students. Teachers who have stayed longer on the job are accorded more respect.
Such teachers also appear more predisposed to manage the students effectively and exercise
more control in class. In UNAAB two of the teachers were new and the third was one of the
pioneering staff of the university. While one person teaches the others are able to
observe students' responses in class to know what aspects of the unit the students find
interesting or difficult and and how long it took to explain the different aspects of the
lesson.
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From such observations we realised that Unit One
of our teaching material, "Awareness Raising," had too many tasks which none of
us could effectively cover in the two hours allotted to the Unit. In Unit Two, "Note
Taking," each of the two observers noted individually that the students were very
inactive in class. We came to the conclusion that the Unit needed to be reviewed since the
sessions were more of the "teacher talk" type. While observing the teaching
sessions, we also came to an agreement in terms of some rubrics that needed to be
reworded, and some tasks that had to be modified since what was required of the students
was not explicitly stated in the instructions. In Unit Six, "Writing a First
Draft" for example, one task required students to describe information presented in a
tabular form. From the students' responses, we found that the rubric was not only too
general, but that the table itself was rather confusing. Sitting in class, therefore,
afforded us the opportunity of looking at our teaching materials as students and not as
teachers. We were able to overcome the observed problems in the teaching material by
removing some tasks, merging some tasks, rewriting instructions, and removing a unit.
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At the beginning of our experiment, it was not
unusual for whoever taught a particular session to ask from the two observers, "How
did I perform in class," or "How did the class go?" All these observations
were collated using an evaluation sheet adapted from the Centre for Applied Language
Studies, University of Reading, and used as input for the revision of the teaching
materials. At the informal meetings of the three teachers held at the end of each unit,
observations relating to each teacher's performance were discussed to improve subsequent
teaching sessions.
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From an oral interview with twenty students, 60%
confirmed that they enjoyed and preferred the new teaching methodology to the old one.
Five others, representing 25%, admitted initial reluctance to participate in group work,
but gradually accepted this approach as it afforded them the opportunity to express
themselves freely. These confirmed our own observations, as we noticed that students who
failed in previous academic sessions, repeating the course, participated more in class
discussions during the first few weeks than the new students. In our opinion this is one
of the learning strategies that our students have adopted for coping with large classes.
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We have made modest changes in classroom
methodology and teaching materials and these changes have yielded some positive results in
the classroom performance (of our students). Our test materials need to be redesigned to
suit our new orientation as reflected from the examination results in 1990 and 1991. In
1989, prior to the inception of the project, out of the 367 candidates who sat for the
examinations in Use of English, only 6% failed the course, while in 1990 out of the 382
candidates who sat for the examinations, 14% failed the course. In 1991, for the first
semester, out of 93 who wrote the examinations, 31% failed and in the second semester out
of 273, 19% failed the course. This, we think, might be attributed to the variance between
teaching materials and test items. Hence, we have accepted the challenge of redesigning
test and examination items.
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We realise that our goal is not just the
acquisition and recall of materials learned, but the application of acquired knowledge to
problem solving. This we have witnessed on two occasions when some of the students we
taught in their first year had requested us to read their Industrial Training Report. Some
subject teachers had testified to the fact that a handful of the students in their final
year had written very good reports and dissertations. This we consider must be a result of
transfer of learning.
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One other implication of our team teaching
approach is that each of us normally carries more than the official teaching hours. This
was initially burdensome. We have, however, been encouraged by our students' responses and
motivation. Some of our colleagues in the subject areas are surprised and challenged by
our resolve in spite of the extra hours involved and wish they could introduce team
teaching in their classes.
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We have also received from the subject teachers
some positive reports on the students, particularly in their second year regarding their
performance on examinations. One lecturer from the Department of Biological Sciences
confirmed that the students' writing has improved appreciably over the years. This
improvement he says is attributed to the COMSKIPTECH project.
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Some subject teachers in two departments,
namely, Food Science and Technology, and Agricultural Extension and Rural Development, are
also willing to involve language teachers in collaborative supervision of students'
projects and industrial training reports. This we consider a good research potential which
we hope to exploit in the near future.
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One of the strategies that language teachers at
UNAAB have adopted in dealing with large classes is team teaching. In this paper we have
discussed some of the benefits of the methodology with respect to our students. As
teachers, we have also benefited tremendously from our team teaching experiment; team
teaching and teacher training/development form the basis of a future report.
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Acknowledgement: The authors are grateful to
Maggie Jo St. John and Andy Hopkins, consultants to the COMSKIPTECH Project, for their
contributions to this paper.
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- De Escorcia, B. 1984. Team teaching for students of economics: A Colombian experience.
In Common ground: Shared interest in ESP and communication studies. ed. Williams, R., J.
Swales, and J. Kirkmein. British Council ELT Documents No. 135.
- Dudley-Evans, T. 1984. The team teaching of writing skills. In Common Ground: Shared
Interest in ESP and Communication Studies. ed. ed. Williams, R., J.
- Swales, and J. Kirkmein. British Council ELT Documents No. 127.
- Gee, S., M. Huxley, and D. Johnson. 1984. Teaching communication skills and English for
academic purposes: A case study of a problem shared. In Common Ground: Shared Interest in
ESP and Communication Studies. ed. Williams, R., J.
- Swales, and J. Kirkmein. British Council ELT Documents, pp. 117-115.
- Noli, P. 1980. Implications of class size research. ERIC Document Reproduction Service
No. pp. 184-237.
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Bola
Kassal is a lecturer in the Department of General Studies, University of
Agriculture, Abeokuta, Nigeria. |
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