4 key challenges in secondary education

Anna Roslaniec
Anna Roslaniec
A teacher standing over a desk where a student is sat, helping them. Students are also sat at desks in the background

Let’s examine four of the most common challenges secondary teachers have and look into some strategies to help solve them.

1. My students are afraid of making mistakes

You’re not alone! Many teachers say their teenage students are quiet and unwilling to answer questions in class. Sometimes, this might simply be because they don’t know the answers, but more often than not, they are nervous about making mistakes.

When children grow into teenagers, they tend to become more self-conscious and worried about what their peers think of them – and making mistakes in public is a big no-no for them. However, there are several ways to facilitate a safe learning environment where your students are happy and willing to talk. Sometimes, though, it takes a little experimentation. Here are some things you can try:

Celebrate mistakes

When students make mistakes, ensure that you praise them for taking a risk or making an effort. Correct their errors and be clear with the rest of the class that the only way to learn is to try new things.

Be firm

Don’t tolerate any bullying or laughing when someone gets an answer wrong. If your students fear that others will mock them for their efforts, they’ll stay quiet. So make sure you have clear rules and that your students understand that mistakes are normal and to be expected.

Have students discuss their answers in pairs or groups

If your students are painfully shy and afraid of making mistakes, avoid picking on individuals to answer questions in front of the class. Instead, when asking a question, tell your students to discuss it in pairs or small groups first. This will allow them to formulate their ideas and feel more confident. Afterwards, you can ask the pairs to share what they discussed – leading to a natural open-class discussion.

Listen to your students

Another, powerful way of engaging your students in discussion is to listen to a conversation they are having with their partners and then express how impressed you are with their ideas during a feedback session. E.g. “You said X, which I thought was very interesting. Could you explain this to the class? It was a great idea.” This gives them the confidence to share their thoughts.

2. My students are not engaged with the activities I choose

This is another very common problem for teachers of teenagers. You spend a lot of time thinking of fun, interesting activities – then, when you present them to the class, your students look away and say they’re bored. Soon enough, you’ll get frustrated and not know how to re-engage them. Here are some ideas to help:

Get to know your students

Without fail, the best way to engage your students is by getting to know them as individuals over the year. Find out about their hobbies and interests outside of school, and learn what makes them laugh and what worries them. Use your knowledge of your students to find interesting books to read, videos to watch, or relevant subjects to discuss. This way, you’ll deliver tailored lessons your students find truly interesting and useful.

Allow a degree of autonomy

Sometimes quietness is also a sign of disengagement with the learning materials. To get past this obstacle, you can get your students to brainstorm things that interest them in groups, list them on the board and have a class vote on the topic of their next class project. As a teacher, you always have the power to veto inappropriate ideas, but giving students a voice is a powerful way of making them feel valued and involved in their own education.

Make things (a little) competitive

Even teenagers love games! And play is an integral part of learning, as it allows our students to be themselves, have fun, and communicate freely at the same time. By allowing them to play language-focused games in class, they’ll soon forget their inhibitions and start talking.

3. My students just want to do grammar exercises

Language is all about communication, speaking, listening, reading and writing – yet all your students want to do is grammar exercises. Frustrating as this is, it’s probably a sign that our students are not confident in their speaking or listening abilities. Here’s what you can do:

Encourage free language practice

Grammar activities are very structured and there is often a clear answer. Day-to-day communications, however, are much freer, which can intimidate less confident students. This activity will help you combine the two aspects of language learning:

  • Put students in small groups and give them a set of cards with exciting topics printed on them—for example; music, sports, environment, school, vacations, friends, food.
  • Tell students that they should each choose a card and speak freely about their topic for 30 seconds – the short time will help them overcome their fear of speaking and can be gradually increased as they get used to this type of activity.
  • Have students record themselves when they are speaking and then, when they listen back, have them identify the grammatical structures they used.

They should write down and correct any mistakes under your guidance. Not only will this get students used to talking and encourage a lot of emergent language, but it will also help them feel they are practicing grammar.

If your students really enjoy learning grammar, you can ‘flip’ your grammar activities and make them more communicative. First, provide them with a series of sentences or listening clips which have a common grammatical structure (second conditional sentences, for example).

Then have students work together (in English) to identify how the language is structured, so they can discover the grammar point for themselves. This not only gets them talking, but they are doing something they feel confident at.

4. My students are bored of all the repetition

Repetition is an important part of language learning. By practicing things over and over again, your students will come to understand it better and will be able to produce the language more easily. However, repetition is often quite dull, especially for fast learners. Here’s how you can make things more interesting for your teenage students:

Use a greater variety of activities to engage your learners

If you’ve been teaching your students a particular set of vocabulary, a grammatical structure, or some pronunciation rules, think about how else they can practice them.

For example, instead of drilling pronunciation over and over again, ask students to think of all the words they can think of that have the same sound in them (e.g. book, look, cook, shook, etc.). This will help them ‘hear’ the sounds in their heads and improve their understanding of other words.

If you have been learning vocabulary through reading, have students write or tell stories that incorporate the words.

The idea is not to stop repeating the target language or skill, but to practice it in different ways. Apply this principle to other areas of language learning so your students won’t feel like they are repeating things.

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    Tips for effective online classroom management

    Por app Languages

    Online language learning and teaching brings with it a lot of things to think about. The following tips are designed to help you plan your primary-level online classes effectively and manage students in a digital environment.

    1. Keep energy levels high

    The school environment is an active and incredibly social space. It’s hard to replicate this online, potentially leading to boredom and frustration among your students. For this reason, you should take regular 'movement breaks' during the day to energize them. You can do the following quick sequence sitting or standing:

    • Stretch your arms above your head and reach for the sky.
    • Count to ten.
    • Drop your left arm to your side and bend to your left while stretching your right arm over your head.
    • Count to fifteen.
    • Come back to an upright position and stretch both arms above your head.
    • Count to ten.
    • Drop your right arm to your side and bend to your right while stretching your left arm over your head.
    • Count to fifteen.
    • Come back to an upright position and stretch both arms above your head.
    • Count to ten.
    • Lean forward until your fingertips touch the floor (only go as far as is comfortable for your body), then cross your arms and release your head so it hangs gently between your legs.
    • Count to fifteen.
    • Come back upright, shake your arms and legs, and get back to work!

    This excellent energy booster allows your students to revise parts of the body, commands and even make the link with other subjects.

    2. Encourage casual socialisation

    Small talk and gossip are fundamental parts of the regular school day. It’s essential to give students a few minutes to chat freely. It will help them feel relaxed and make your classes more comfortable.

    Let your students do this in whatever language they want and don’t get involved, just like at school. Alternatively, ask someone to share a YouTube video, song, Instagram, or TikTok post in a digital show and tell.

    3. Encourage the use of functional language

    After students have been chatting freely in their own language, take the opportunity to bring in functional language depending on the subject they were talking about in English. This will help get them ready for the lesson. Here are some ways to do this:

    • Singing - Play a song and get them to sing along.
    • Role-play - When students talk about food, you could role-play in a restaurant or talk about likes and dislikes.
    • Guessing games - Students must read the animals' descriptions and guess what they are. You can make up your own descriptions.

    4. Consider task and student density

    To optimize learning time, consider dividing your class into smaller groups and teaching each one individually for part of the timetabled class time. You may find that you get more done in 15 minutes with eight students than you would be able to get done in 60 minutes with 32 students.

    At the same time, you will be able to focus more easily on individual needs (you’ll be able to see all their video thumbnails on the same preview page). If it is not acceptable in your school to do this, divide the class so you’re not trying to teach everyone the same thing simultaneously.

    Having the whole class do a reading or writing activity is a lost opportunity to use this quiet time to give more focused support to smaller groups of learners, so think about setting a reading task for half the class, while you supervise a speaking activity with the other half, and then swap them over.

    Alternatively, set a writing activity for 1/3 of the students, a reading for 1/3 and a speaking activity for the remaining 1/3, and rotate the groups during the class.

    5. Manage your expectations

    Don’t expect to get the same amount of work done in an online class as in the classroom. Once you have waited for everyone to connect, get them to turn on their cameras, etc., you have less time to teach than you would usually have. Add this to the fact that it’s much more complex and time-consuming to give focused support to individual learners in a way that doesn’t interrupt everyone else.

    So, don’t plan the same task density in online classes as you would for face-to-face teaching. Explore flipping some of your activities, so your students arrive better prepared to get to work.

    It’s also much harder to engage students, measure their engagement and verify that they are staying on task online than in the physical classroom. In an online class, measuring engagement and reading reactions is harder. Always clearly explain the objectives and why you have decided on them. Regularly check to see if everyone understands and is able to work productively.

    When you’re all online, you can’t use visual clues to quickly judge whether anyone is having difficulties, like you can in the classroom. Ask direct questions to specific students rather than asking if everyone understands, or is OK. During and at the end of class, check and reinforce the achieved objectives.

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    Tips for setting up an optimized online classroom

    Por app Languages

    Technology and the learning space

    How a physical classroom is organized, decorated and laid out impacts how your students feel, interact and learn. It’s just as important to think about how your virtual teaching space functions and what it looks like, as it will greatly affect your students’ learning experience.

    Classrooms are usually full of posters, examples of students’ work and other decorations. Just because you’re teaching online doesn’t mean your environment needs to look dull.

    Take some time to think about your virtual teaching space. Picture it in your head. What’s behind you? What’s on either side? Is there an echo? Is it light or dark? How far away are you from the camera?

    Online classroom setup dos and don’ts

    While teaching online isn’t always that different from teaching face-to-face, there are quite a few things you might not have considered before. Here are some of my top dos and don’ts to help:

    Lighting

    • Don’t sit in front of a window or other source of light; otherwise, your face will be in shadow and hard to see. If you have no option, close the curtains and use an artificial light source to illuminate your face.
    • Do reflect lighting off a wall or ceiling, so it hits your face indirectly. This creates a much more pleasing image. If possible, sit in front of any windows or to the side of them so that the light hits your face directly or from the side. If the room is naturally dark, reflect a couple of lamps off the wall in front of you or the ceiling.

    Audio

    • Do invest in a set of headphones with an inline microphone. Even cheap ones will make you easier to understand, and reduce environmental noise interference (traffic, your neighbor’s stereo, etc.).
    • Don’t teach in an empty classroom (if you can avoid it). They are a terrible place to teach online classes from because they suffer from echo, environmental noise, lighting and bandwidth problems.
    • If your teaching space has an echo, try placing pillows or cushions on either side of your screen. They help absorb echoes and make it easier for your students to hear you.

    Video

    • Sit far enough away from the camera so your students can see most of your upper body and arms. If you use a laptop, raise it up on an old shoebox or a couple of books, so that the camera isn’t pointing up your nose!
    • Do invest in the fastest internet connection you can afford (school administrators may want to consider offering subsidies so teachers can upgrade their connection speed). It is vital that you have enough internet bandwidth to stream good-quality audio and video and share materials with your students. Learn how to use your mobile phone data plan to create a wifi hotspot for your computer as a backup.

    Using technology with your students

    Here are some ways to get the most out of technology, build your student’s digital literacy skills and increase motivation:

    Space

    Students should connect from a private space where they are not interrupted by siblings, pets, housekeepers, or parents. The space should be well-lit and have a good Wi-Fi signal.

    Communication

    Just like you, they should use earphones with an inline microphone. Their webcams should be on, not just so you can see them, but so they can see each other. Encourage learners to have fun and personalize their space by changing their backgrounds or using filters.

    Distractions

    Parents and caregivers should be aware of the negative effect of noise and distractions on their children’s learning. It’s important that where possible, they avoid having business meetings in the same room their children are learning in. They should also ask other people in the house to respect the children’s right to enjoy a quiet, private, productive learning environment.

    Resources

    If you and your students are online using some form of computer, tablet, or mobile device to connect to class, make sure to use the resources available to you. Reinforce how to correctly use spell check when writing a document; for example, have your students use their cameras to take photos of their work to share or even their favorite toys.

    Flexibility

    Instead of trying (and often failing!) to get all your students to speak during the class, have them make videos or audio recordings for homework that they send to you or each other for feedback. Alternatively, experiment with breakout rooms, if using a platform that allows this.

    Preparation

    If you want to show a YouTube video during class, send the link to your students to watch for homework before class, or have them watch it during class on their own devices.

    Besides saving your internet bandwidth, they may even be inspired to click on one of the other recommended (usually related) videos alongside the one you want them to watch. It’ll be on their recently watched list if they want to go back and watch it again.

    Collaboration

    If you set group work that involves writing a text or designing a presentation, ask your students to collaborate with a shared Google Doc. You’ll be able to see what they’re doing in real-time and give them feedback. It works like you are walking around the classroom and looking over their shoulders.

    Feedback

    Explore the focused feedback tools your web conferencing platform offers, such as breakout rooms or an individual chat. But also, don’t forget to share relevant information and learning with the whole class. This helps them all benefit from your expertise, just like if they listen to you answering a classmate’s question in the classroom.

    If your students are at home, they can access materials and props they would never have at school. Think about how you could incorporate this into your teaching.

    Materials

    Finally, ensure that the materials you use are suitable for online learning. If you use a book, it should have a fully digital option and a platform available to your students with practice activities, videos, and audio recordings. You should avoid using static pages in favor of dynamic activities, or online documents that allow real-time collaboration.

    Involving parents and caregivers in your online teaching environment

    Create an online learning document for parents explaining how they can create a positive and productive learning environment for their children. Some families may experience significant difficulties and may be unable to implement everything. But it’s still important to explain to them how to optimize the experience if they can.

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    Explaining computerized English testing in plain English

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    was created in response to the demand for a more accurate, objective, secure and relevant test of English. Our automated scoring system is a central feature of the test, and vital to ensuring the delivery of accurate, objective and relevant results – no matter who the test-taker is or where the test is taken.

    Development and validation of the scoring system to ensure accuracy

    PTE Academic’s automated scoring system was developed after extensive research and field testing. A prototype test was developed and administered to a sample of more than 10,000 test takers from 158 different countries, speaking 126 different native languages. This data was collected and used to train the automated scoring engines for both the written and spoken PTE Academic items.

    To do this, multiple trained human markers assess each answer. Those results are used as the training material for machine learning algorithms, similar to those used by systems like Google Search or Apple’s Siri. The model makes initial guesses as to the scores each response should get, then consults the actual scores to see well how it did, adjusts itself in a few directions, then goes through the training set over and over again, adjusting and improving until it arrives at a maximally correct solution – a solution that ideally gets very close to predicting the set of human ratings.

    Once trained up and performing at a high level, this model is used as a marking algorithm, able to score new responses just like human markers would. Correlations between scores given by this system and trained human markers are quite high. The standard error of measurement between app’s system and a human rater is less than that between one human rater and another – in other words, the machine scores are more accurate than those given by a pair of human raters, because much of the bias and unreliability has been squeezed out of them. In general, you can think of a machine scoring system as one that takes the best stuff out of human ratings, then acts like an idealized human marker.

    app conducts scoring validation studies to ensure that the machine scores are consistently comparable to ratings given by skilled human raters. Here, a new set of test-taker responses (never seen by the machine) are scored by both human raters and by the automated scoring system. Research has demonstrated that the automated scoring technology underlying PTE Academic produces scores comparable to those obtained from careful human experts. This means that the automated system “acts” like a human rater when assessing test takers’ language skills, but does so with a machine's precision, consistency and objectivity.

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    What aspects of English does PTE Academic assess?