It goes without saying that children learning English as a foreign language will benefit from as much exposure to the language as possible. As teachers, we are limited in terms of space and the amount of time that we spend with our students. We usually have to stay in the classroom, except for the occasional trip to the computer room or library. We are also restricted because we might only see our students for two or three hours a week. Therefore it is important to take full advantage of the time that we are all together in the classroom. This article will explain how to do this…

The language that we use in our classrooms when we are giving instructions, setting up routines or praising our students is language that the children listen to and respond to in a natural way, often without thinking. By using a richer and more varied repertoire of classroom language we can provide our classes with much more natural language input; language which they will eventually use themselves.

In English there is always more than one way to say something. If we want a student to listen to what we are saying, we might say “Listen!” or “Can you pay attention please?”, “Listen to me”, “Please stop what you are doing and look this way” or “Are you listening?” If we always use the same phrase, then we are not taking full advantage of the opportunity to offer our students more examples of English being used in an authentic way.

One way that we can begin to change our habits and increase the range of English that we use in the classroom, is to identify the different categories of classroom language that we use. When we have done this we should list all the possible useful words and phrases that we can say. A few examples of categories are classroom management, playing games, routines, giving instructions and praising students. If we look at the last category; praising students, we can draw up a list like this:
Good!
Well done!
Brilliant!
That’s lovely!
What a good idea!
Fantastic!
Wonderful!
Super!
Superb!
Excellent!

Seeing a long list like this makes us aware of the range of classroom language that we could be using. It reminds us of the different ways that we can say the same thing. The next step, of course, is to put things into practice; to start using as many of these variations as possible.