Team Teaching Tips for Foreign Language Teachers

s the benefits of team teaching's increased teacher-student proximity. It should not be the main classroom position you adopt in your teaching.

During student-centred activities, it is best for both teachers to circulate at a 180-degree angle to one another. For example, if teacher A is at the front, teacher B is at the back; if teacher A is on the left side of the class, teacher B is on the right side. This minimizes the amount of time it takes for a teacher to address a student concern and maximizes the supervision provided by the teachers. It is important to watch where the other teacher is in the classroom and to try to complement their presence.

Individual Roles

In some team teaching pairs, roles in the class can be quite unbalanced. Some NNSLT provide only L1 translation, while the NSA is largely responsible for most of the target language 'talking' in the class. In other situations, these NSAs perform as 'live tape-recorders', undermining student perception of their usefulness in the class (Horwich par. 15).

The NNSLT should be encouraged, as often as possible, to make a concerted effort to use the target language in the classroom that in turn provides students with a role model who has successfully learned the target language.

It is best to avoid having one teacher addressing the class, while the other stands idly by. In the table below we've provided examples of how both teachers can be intensively involved in team teaching. Both teachers should interchange the roles of 'leader/supporter' throughout the lesson to ensure equality and responsibility.

Teacher A (leader)

Teacher B (supporter)

Explaining an activity 

(make eye contact with Teacher B, ask Teacher B if they have anything to add to the instructions)

Circulates amongst students keeping them 'on-task', answers student queries. 

(Maintain eye contact with Teacher A while evaluating their instructions and thinking of something they may have unclear or omitted that can be restated or added).

Giving students instructions.

Writes the instructions given by Teacher A on board for visual reinforcement, or, circulates amongst students to evaluate understanding of instructions.

Leading choral pronunciation while circulating in the class.

Echoes Teacher A while circulating which gives students in all areas of the class a chance to 'hear' the teacher well.

Evaluating student presentations 

(While making note of grades, signalling Teacher B when you've completed your evaluation so they can cue the next students).

Administers the activity (calling students, ensuring that students are listening attentively.

Calls on a student to answer a question.

Notes which student responded for evaluation/participating grading.

Echoing

There are two ways to employ 'echoing': L1 to L2, or L2 repetition. Echoing is useful during choral pronunciation to provide students with an alternative form of pronunciation, in addition to making it easier for students in another part of the class to hear more easily (as the supporting teacher is located at another part of the classroom). Echoing is also useful where some translation from L1 to L2 is required for student comprehension. Echoing can be done at varying speeds (natural speed or slow speed). The 'supporting' teacher is often in a good position to determine what speed/amount of echoing students may require.

Transitions, Timing and Pacing

To keep the pace of the class going smoothly, teachers should always keep an eye on each other, and the clock. Having two teachers in the class can be a real advantage with time keeping. While Teacher A leads an activity or gives instructions, Teacher B watches the clock and makes sure that the lesson proceeds in a timely fashion.

It is useful to develop a subtle system of signalling each other (hand-signals, eye contact, and verbal cues) to make transitions between activities smooth. Explicit discussion of what is to be done next in the classroom is extremely disruptive to the flow of the lesson and gives off the impression that you are ill prepared to teach the class.

Ideally, both teachers will share in giving directions, taking the initiative to move on to the next activity, and in adapting or curtailing an activity that is not working. Remember to have mutually agreed upon back-up activities, so that you will be able to work together in guiding the class from an unsuccessful activity to the back-up plan.

Classroom Management

Each teacher has a different threshold of tolerance for student misbehaviour. Before your students become disruptive, you'll both need to establish a set of guidelines and agree on what type of behaviour is not acceptable in your class, and consequences for students who disrupt the class. Without a common consensus as team teachers on what is permissible and what is unacceptable, you'll invariably find yourselves in disagreement and have potentially inconsistent reactions by teachers to student misbehaviour in the class.

To prevent this before it occurs, sit down together and make a list of what constitutes unacceptable classroom behaviour by students (a list of class rules). Next, you'll need to determine what consequences you can implement should these rules be broken. Lastly, you'll have to develop a 'warning' procedure that teachers will give to students (for example, three 'warnings' lead to one 'consequence'). You will have to check what types of consequences are acceptable with other department members

《Team Teaching Tips for Foreign Language Teachers》