Identify the Most Common Challenges and Coping Strategies that Teachers Encounter in Managing Large Class Teaching

Abstract

Background: It is very difficult to talk about all the problems regarding large size classes. However, there are certain problems which may look small from general point of view but can affect teaching - learning process strictly. Definitely, there are certain problems which are related to all large English classes and cannot be ignored at any time. Dealing with large number of students constitutes a real challenge to every teacher. variety of students with multi - level IQ and learning style, class environment organization, difficulty of setting and crowd control, less attention to students, limited students’ learning monitoring and difficulty in engaging all students in activities. It is a very important issue for every instructor to be involved in teaching large number of students especially, in EFL contexts. Objectives: To find out the most common challenges teachers may encounter in managing of teaching large classes and to help instructors to be aware of those problems they may face with large number of students in order to take action to overcome at least of the challenges. Method and Material: This is qualitative research; the research design is descriptive and the data was analyzed descriptively. In this research, first we searched for the keywords which related to the research topic through the online academic and up to date sources such as (ADRI, Research Gate, and Google Scholars). Out of 32 articles, we reviewed twenty - one of them that mostly explained the challenges of large classes. The articles were published between (1970 - 2010) years. Results: Dealing with large classes constitutes a real challenge to every teacher: The major hypothesis is that effective teaching and producing learning is critically constrained by the large size of classes and the students’ perception about large classes being negative. The findings indicated that small - group learning are more effective in promoting greater academic achievement, and enhances favorable attitudes toward learning. Conclusion: Most researches showed that benefit usually occur when class size is reduced to less than 20 students otherwise problem of acquisition and classroom management arise and learning process will be not occur effectively. There are other variables such as the quality of teachers, students’ degree of motivation, and role of the parents may interface and come into play in leaning process.