My third critical incident is quite an interesting one. The Entry 1 ESOL class at the college had been together for almost five months when two new students joined them. It very quickly became apparent that both of the new students’ level was at way below the level of the other students and it was decided that they would be taken out of that class and a new ‘pre-entry’ class would be formed specifically for the two students.

Both of the students were from Arabic countries (one from Qatar and the other from Saudi Arabia), and it was decided that because of my experience with Arabic learners, I would teach the class.

Why I think this was an interesting critical incident is that despite both students understanding that they needed to be in this lower level class, they were both unhappy about being taught separately from the other students.

At the beginning, it was explained to them that they would have 1:2 teaching, which would mean they would get a lot more teacher attention, and their individual problems would be addressed. Initially, they were hard-working and had a positive attitude, but after a few weeks, they began to lose interest and frequently asked when other students would be joining their class and their motivation levels dropped.

From my perspective I felt that we covered a lot of work, and they definitely improved their speaking confidence and pronunciation and were able to use new vocabulary effectively. But as their motivation decreased, their general attitude in class changed. They began arriving late for class or even missing days and more often than not, they hadn’t done their homework.

I think that one of the main reasons for this was that their expectations of coming to the UK to study English were not solely based on learning the language.  At the beginning they  appreciated that they were learning.  However,  the feeling that they were missing out on the social element of being in a larger class with learners from other countries overtook any of the positives of the extra teacher attention they were getting. It also didn’t help that they were both Arabic speakers.

It was an interesting situation, and even I wondered if they would be better off in the higher level class. This caused me to ponder:

• Could the benefits of being in a multilingual class and the social interaction that they would get from it both in and out of the class, actually aid their learning more than being in the correct level without any other students?

I believe the answer to this question is no, as I feel the gap between their knowledge and what would be taught in the higher level class would be too big.  Instead, I think they would pick up random phrases and snippets of the language being taught but wouldn’t be able to develop any meaningful structure to their language. However, I do recognise the high value of  social interaction between learners in multilingual classes and how this can aid motivation and accelerate learners’ progress.

I spoke at length about this issue with my manager, and we thought about ways to resolve the issue. In the end, we offered the learners a choice between carrying on as they were or stopping the lessons and letting them join the Entry Level 1 class at the beginning of the next academic year. Interestingly enough they both opted to continue with the lessons in the ‘Pre-Entry’ class with the view to extending their stay here and joining the Entry Level 1 in September.

To follow up, I spoke to the teacher of the Entry Level 1 class. She agreed to let my two students join her class for the second half of her Friday morning lessons as that was the time when she played games with her learners or had social events such as the learners bringing in traditional food from their countries. I think this gave my two students the best of both worlds. They were able to develop their language in a class that suited them and still get to interact and make friends with some other students.

With regards to my teacher development, I think this was an ‘eye-opening’ moment. As a teacher, I believed that if the students are learning, then everything is ok. However, sometimes I forget that other issues can affect learner motivation and attitude, and this is something I need to be aware of in the future.