Language Grading: Do you need to simplify what you say when teaching English?

What does 'grade your language' mean?

On a teacher training course like CELTA, new trainee teachers are often advised to grade their classroom language more appropriately for the students they're teaching. This means that as a teacher we should adjust what we say to make sure we're understood by students. This can be hard for a new teacher. If you're doing a CELTA course, you are either a native or an advanced-level speaker of English and so you're used to speaking English fluently and with ease and thinking about what you're saying and the level of your students is often a new habit that teachers need to acquire as they start out in the profession.

Should we always simplify what we say to students?

No. We don't want to speak in such a simplistic, robotic way that students don't ever hear 'naturalistic' English from their teacher. We need to pick and choose. I often grade my classroom language more carefully than my contextual or incidental language. What I mean by this is that I'm more likely to simplify classroom instructions before a task or feedback after an accuracy-based task to ensure everyone in the room knows exactly what's going on. However, if I'm having a general chat with students as part of setting the scene or while doing feedback on a fluency-based activity, I'll grade my language a little less carefully so that they get practice of hearing English spoken at a natural speed and they'll get practice of important skills like guessing meaning from context.

How do I grade my language?

This is something that will definitely come more easily with practice as you get more experience of teaching and of gauging what students can and can't understand. The most important tools in your arsenal are often checking tools. The only way to know if students are following the lesson and what you say are by (1) monitoring what they're doing and (2) checking their understanding. Don't ignore the learners while they work on a task - watch and listen to see if they have followed your instructions and if they understand what the exercise or activity in hand requires of them. This will begin to give you a picture of whether your grading is good. Checking is also essential. Elicit examples of what you're speaking about from students, build conversations around the meaning of words, do examples of activities together, ask CCQs and you'll start to gauge students' understanding better and better as time goes by.

Another tool to use is your knowledge of other languages (if you know any other languages). Think about what kind of words and phrases translate easily and directly and which ones don't. The more you teach, the quicker you'll be able to spot what's easy and what's difficult, but one of the first guidelines I learned was that my instincts were wrong and that longer words were often easier than shorter ones. Technical vocabulary is often the same in many European languages and even if students speak a non-European language, short words can be the hardest to understand. When I started teaching, I was amazed that students found it hard to understand "run up a big bill" but found it easier when I used the word "accumulate" in my explanation, because 'accumulate' was the same in many Latin-based languages, but also because knowing a simple word like 'run' doesn't help us understand the phrase 'run up a big bill'. The more we familiarise ourselves with which bits of what we're saying are idiomatic or based on fixed phrases, the easier it is to spot upcoming pitfalls.

In the end of the day, I am saying it will take experience and growing familiarity with how English and other languages work, but that's no reason for new teachers to despair! Focus on key moments in your lesson - what is the most complex activity in your lesson? Script your instructions for that in advance. You might not do a good job with grading in the rest of your lesson, but if you've graded the hardest instructions in your lesson, that's still a win! The same applies to language teaching - what's the hardest word in your lesson? Script your context and checking questions for that one word and give yourself one language grading win! And finally, it's also important to remember that it's never too early to start learning what students find easy or hard by observing them, monitoring them and checking their understanding by asking them questions!

Teaching tips

About the author:

Dr Connor O'Donoghue hails from Ireland and he started teaching English as a foreign language in Poland in 2003 and he became a CELTA trainer in 2008. He has taught and trained in Ireland, the UK, France, Italy, Slovenia, Macedonia, Poland, Russia, Kazakhstan and Vietnam. Connor also holds a Masters and a PhD in Education from Trinity College in Dublin. He has previously managed large teacher training centres in Vietnam and in London before founding DC Teacher Training.