Classroom Language

Classroom Language

When teaching a second language, the goal of a teacher is to use as much of the target language as possible. When reviewing a day in the classroom, one of the most frequent ways that language is used is in the daily routines; these are referred to as classroom language. Teachers can take the opportunity of these daily routines to maximize their target language use and promote its use by students. This section will describe how classroom language can be used and what some tips are for teachers when employing classroom language.

Classroom language is the routine language that is used on a regular basis in classroom like giving instructions of praise, for example “Take out your books” or “Please sit down”. This is language that teachers are used to using and students are used to hearing, but when teaching a language it takes a while to learn this part of the language. Knowing these language basics reduces the amount that students are forced to use their mother tongue and increases the amount of the target language they are using; it makes the language classroom environment more authentic.

Teachers often experience difficulties when trying to integrate classroom language into a lesson. The difficulty often lies in that many second language teachers learned the language themselves after childhood, so are not exposed to authentic classroom language. Those teachers must make a particular effort to seek out what the correct language is in order to create the most authentic experience for the students. Students often encounter difficulties when the form in the target language does not make sense in their mother tongue; students must learn to accept that different languages work in different ways.

When teaching classroom language, there are several strategies a teacher can employ to facilitate the learning:

• Teach the students the classroom language in a scaffolded way. Start with short commands, maybe just one word such as “Sit”. Then the teacher can progress to a longer command, such as “Sit down please” and eventually students can learn alternate phrases that mean the same think, for example “Take a seat”.
• Make sure the students know what this language is for. Don’t leave them out of the learning process; they should know that the more they use the language, the more they will develop and that these forms are meant to help use the language in the most natural way possible.
• Once you introduce the concepts, use them! Employ them as much as possible so the students become accustomed to them and eventually are able to use them as well.
• Use prompts such as language ladders or visuals to help students learn and remember the classroom language. The web site Encouraging Classroom Language Use discusses several different types of prompts that can be used.

Here are some examples of Classroom Language:

1. Good morning

• Good morning, everybody.
• Good afternoon, everybody.
• Hello, everyone.
• Hello there, James.

2. How are you?

• How are you today?
• How are you getting on?
• How's life?
• How are things with you?
• Are you feeling better today, Bill?

4. Time to begin

• Let's begin our lesson now.
• Is everybody ready to start?
• I hope you are all ready for your English lesson.
• I think we can start now.
• Now we can get down to work.

5. Waiting to start

• I'm waiting for you to be quiet.
• We won't start until everyone is quiet.
• Stop talking and be quiet.
• Settle down now so we can start.

6. Put your things away

• Close your books.
• Put your books away.
• Pack your things away.

7. Register

• Who is absent today?
• Who isn't here today?
• What's the matter with Jim today?
• What's wrong with Jim today?
• Why were you absent last Friday, “”?

8. Late

• Where have you been?
• We started ten minutes ago. What have you been doing?
• Did you miss your bus?
• Did you oversleep?
• Don't let it happen again.