Tips to Help Introverted Students in Your Class

The best way to learn a new language is to speak and keep practicing. Extroverted students tend to have a special advantage in ESL class since these students often participate in classroom activities and are more willing to communicate with teachers and classmates. But the point is how can teachers help those introverted Chinese students to speak or talk more to master English faster and better?

Pressure Students To Speak

We have always known that extroverted students are more able to think quickly to give a solution, but we have also neglected that introverted students may take more time to process information and give a more reasonable answer or more sophisticated grammatical structure.

As teachers, we need to apply various of methods to educate students with different personalities. For those students who are “not very active” in the class, we also need to create some classroom activities in line with their nature to help them improve.

Vary Classroom Activities

As mentioned above, introverted students often need more time to think about problems. Therefore, give students a little time to think before letting students have a group discussion, and share their opinions with group members. Second, avoid putting those introverted students into the same group, otherwise the dull atmosphere will be enveloped in that "quiet" team. Third, don't let extrovert students answer your questions all the time, and leave some opportunities for those introvert students to share their opinions.

In addition, you can also arrange some quiet classroom activities, such as writing a story or drawing a cartoon, so that introverted children will feel that they also have favorite classroom activities rather than being ignored.

(A small tip: Learn to always encourage those introverted students to speak English more often, and don't let them think they are your teaching trouble.)

Encourage Risk Taking

Although ESL teachers will design some special learning activities for those introverted students, so that they can learn English happily in their comfort zone. However, the school curriculum is not for some people, but for all students. Therefore, introverted students sometimes have to step out of their comfort zone to take part in some "active" activities, such as a speech contest, or participate in course evaluations, like a presentation of subject works. At this time, you should give them some reminders in case they exceed the deadline and provide more suggestions and encouragement.

(Tip: Something like "You can do it", "You are doing well", "You have improved a lot than last time," will make those extroverted students try to do something "extroverted" gradually.)

Collaborate with students' parents

Chinese parents always feel anxious if their children are not engaged in classroom since they feel that will leave their children far behind others. Therefore, it is a wise decision to ask parents to help for they will also understand your anxious mood.

Tell the parents to practice English with their children in their free time if they can also speak it; while for those parents who know nothing about English, tell them watch the instructional videos with their children. Moreover, parents should also encourage their children to express themselves bravely in English in daily life, and tell them that you are proud of them to help them build self-confidence.

In summary, every ESL teacher has the responsibility to learn some skills to help introverted students more participate in classroom activities and express themselves more often. Design some special activities for introverted children so that they feel that they are also capable of making some contributions to the class, instead of constantly competing with those extroverted one.