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It is important to know what is to be done when half of your class speaks a different language. And being a teacher of English, it is almost impossible to communicate with your students in more than one language at the same time especially when trying to communicate different ideas. This can be very confusing for the students and create disorder in the classroom. By teaching a lignguistically diverse classroom the teacher may face some challenges along the way such as reading and writing as well as speaking and listening. However, there do exist some methods that can help the teacher make the learning process much more beneficial to the students. The first aspect to be considered is the use of group work strategically in the classroom. The advantage of this is that by pairing students that are from different communities it allows them to practice their communication on different cultures, ideas and their respective languages. On the other hand, groups can be formed from those of the same community to focus on learning objectives and the individual needs of the students. If designed properly by the teacher, these groups could also help with developing structured and unstructured opportunities for the students to use their language such as the planning of a new project or getting information from other students through interview practices. By applying a content based instruction language, the teacher is able to provide a teaching approach that not only incorporates language but also content area objectives that are fused into each lesson. It is important that the students know what the language and objectives are for each lesson so that they are focused on achieving that particular goal. It is also important that the teacher maintains a positive relationship with the students. This may seem menial to some, however research has shown that those of diverse backgrounds that have positive relationships with their teacher are most likely to be academically successful. The teacher must recognise that student behavior and their achievements are based on this aspect and that some bias on the teachers part may exist where students are from a different background than their own, either linguistic or cultural. It is also important that the teacher does not give children labels (special kids) based on their performance as this may be a hinderance to their development. Instead encouragement must be used to show students that the teacher is devoted to their education. When in a dual language class, it is essential that the teacher provides clear instruction as to when they can use their native language. There will exist times that a student will not be able to communicate an idea in English and therefore, will make use of their native language. The drawback with this is that students will only want to communicate with those of similar backgrounds. In trying to overcome this obstacle, the teacher can allow for certain parts of the day or lesson where students are able to use the second language. This allows the students to solve problems that may be linguistically difficult and also provides student to student interaction where communication is being carried out with native speakers of the second language. Study has shown that teaching in one language is more effective than mixing languages when teaching. By providing delivery and instructions in one language without the help of translation aids, the student is more exposed to the second language through academic work and helps develop their listening skills. The final aspect to be looked at in teaching bilingual classes is for the teacher to allow the students to translanguage. This is basically an act where students use words or sentences from two different languages to try and put across the point they are trying to make. Allowing this in the classroom provides room for students to navigate difficult academic work and express themselves more deeply by drawing their ideas from these two different languages. The good thing about this is that the students are more confident in expressing both languages and are able to communicate properly. But most importantly, the students will not have missed out on important information in lessons and can even participate in class debates when developing their second language.
