Abstract
This study aims to investigate the concept of a large class, challenges and issues faced by the teachers while teaching writing skills courses in large classes along with the strategies they use in order to cater to the problems. Therefore, in-depth interviews with nine private and public sector university teachers were conducted. The thematic analysis of the data revealed that a large class, in the Pakistani context, consists of 30 to 35 students and teachers particularly face the problems in assessment, giving feedback, ensuring individual attention, maintaining discipline, and controlling noise factor, etc. The assessment and feedback issues can be catered to by using peer assessment and peer feedback as they are viable strategies to deal with the large writing classes. In order to reduce the noise factor, some related activities can be practised to ensure maximum involvement of learners and ultimately, it reduces the disruptive noise. Identification of students in terms of their behaviour and seriousness towards learning paves the way for choosing appropriate teaching techniques which in turn helps to manage large writing classes having mixed ability students to achieve objectives of the course.
Highlights
A large class is a phenomenon associated with the developing world and with the developed ones
The purpose of this study is to investigate the perceptions of language teachers teaching writing skills at tertiary level on a large class, the challenges they face, and what approaches, strategies and techniques they apply in their classes for ensuring the achievement objectives in the Pakistani context
Majority of the respondents believed that a class having 35 and above students is considered as a large class
Summary
A large class is a phenomenon associated with the developing world and with the developed ones. In the case of English language teaching, large-sized classes have been reported around the globe, in Asia and Africa (Shamim & Coleman, 2018). Quantitative definition of a large class might be different across contexts (Shehu & Tafida, 2016; LoCastro, 2001; Xu, 2001). A class size of 30 students would be considered large and need to be adjusted or reduced. In developing countries, such as China or Nigeria, a class with 50 to 100 students would seem common and typical (Shehu & Tafida, 2016)
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