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CHAPTER 6

IXED-LEVEL TEACHING: TIERED TASKS AND BIAS TASKS

No one wants to use three different course books with one class: one for strong students, one for weak students, and one for midlevel students. But when faced with mixed-level classes and an unhelpful course book, what do you do? How exactly can you adapt reading and listening activities to suit stronger and weaker students? This article aims to provide clear guidelines for teachers who, from time to time, want to make their course book reading and listening materials more flexible.

COMMUNICATIVE TEACHING PRINCIPLES Two communicative teaching principles underline the multilevel techniques we are going to outline: 1. We do not believe that it is necessary for students to understand or translate every word of a reading or a listening text. If students complete the task we set - answering a certain number of questions, marking a given number of sentences true or false we feel that they have read or listened successfully. We believe that students ability to read or listen successfully is governed by a simple equation: text level of challenge + task level of support = student success.

2.

With a long, complex text, a simple task makes the reading or listening achievable for weaker students. With a shorter, simpler text, the task can be more demanding. Bearing these principles in mind, we have isolated two ways of adapting reading or listening activities for mixed-level classes. We call them tiered tasks and bias tasks. Imagine a wedding cake, on the one hand, and a pie sliced unequally in two, on the other. The top tier of the wedding cake gives the most support (the most layers of supporting pillars) and the least freedom for error (the smallest area of cake to move around on). This is a good task for weaker students. The bottom tier gives the least support (no pillars) and the most freedom to experiment (the largest area of cake to move around on). This is a good task for stronger students. Tiered tasks produce the same or similar results for all students. The bigger slice of the pie is for those with bigger appetites (stronger students). The smaller slice is for those with smaller appetites (weaker students). Bias tasks produce complementary results.*

To take the wedding cake image further: Imagine the reflection of the wedding cake in a polished tabletop. Now the stronger students are at the top of the picture and the weaker students are at the bottom. This is perhaps a more traditional view of a mixed-level class. In this reversed image, the pillars below the "top" tier represent a high level of challenge (challenge and support being complementary factors that frame all mixed-level activities).

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TIERED TASKS Now let us look at examples of these two task types, starting with tiered tasks. The following three task sheets all accompany a reading about The Spirit of London exhibit at Madame Tussauds wax museum in London.

EXAMPLE I TOP TIER

Task A: For Weaker Students 1. How much of Londons history does The Spirit of London show? 2. How do you go around it? 3. What special effects does it have? 4. What can you see in the modern-day section? Answers a. lights, sound, music, and smells b. police, punks, and tourists c. more than 400 years d. in a taxi

MIDDLE TIER

Task B: For Midlevel Students 1. How much of Londons history does The Spirit of London show? a. 400 years b. more than 400 years c. 399 years 2. How do you go around it? a. in a taxi b. in a train c. on foot 3. What special effects does it have? a. lights b. sound and music c. smells 4. What can you see in the modern-day section? a. police b. punks c. tourists

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BOTTOM TIER

Task C: For Stronger Students 1. How much of Londons history does The Spirit of London show? 2. How do you go around it? 3. What special effects does it have? 4. What can you see in the modern-day section? Task A gives all the answers on the page for support. They are jumbled for challenge. Weaker students manipulate the given material, and can use logic to help match the task items, together with the information in the reading text. Task B gives multiple-choice answers to help the average students. This is slightly different from the conventional one answer only is correct multiple choice, since in questions 3 and 4 there is more than one correct answer. Task C gives open questions - with no extra support - to challenge the strongest students in the group

A useful feature of a tiered task activity is that, whichever level of task students get, the result is the same or similar for all. Oral feedback can therefore take place with the whole class. We ourselves can assign task sheets to individual students, based on our knowledge of students abilities. (Sometimes the teacher knows best, especially after conducting a diagnostic test, or after working with a class for a long period of time!) Alternatively, we can let students choose the lettered tasks, unseen, according to whether they want a lot of help, some help, or no help with the reading activity. Initially, students may overestimate their abilities and choose the most difficult task, or they may play safe and take the easy task. However, when we have offered students a choice of tasks in the classroom a number of times - perhaps with some advice - they will begin to select a realistic task for their level: one that is achievable, yet challenging and not boring.

EXAMPLE 2

Another very simple form of tiered task which works on two levels is a dual-choice gapfill. It is good to vary things by dividing the class into two groups from time to time instead of three. As with all level grouping, where exactly we draw the line is a subjective decision. What follows is the first part of a dual-choice gapfill that accompanies a rap. The Dead Sad Animal Rap Listen to the rap. What are the missing words? Humans ... a) the dear old dodo, It was b) It couldnt fly Humans c)all the passenger pigeons From the d)American sky

MISSING WORDS

killed/shot easy / simple hunted/shot South / North

As they listen, weaker students circle one of the words in the box to fill each gap. Stronger students get the same task sheet, but with the missing words box cut off. The task is therefore more challenging for them.

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BIAS TASKS Now let us look at bias tasks. The following two task sheets accompany a Penpal Ad Page reading text.
EXAMPLE I

Task A: For Weaker Students 1. How many of the young people are 13 years old? (Three. ..) 2. How many boys are there? 3. Who doesnt eat meat? 4. Who likes football? 5. Who lives in the country?

Task B: For Stronger Students Write questions for these answers, based on the Penpal Page. 1. How many of them are 13? Three of them are. 2. ? There are four. 3. ..? Eloise doesnt. 4. ..? James does. 5. ..? Chris does.

With Task A, weaker students answer questions about the text. With Task B, stronger students write questions for given answers related to the text. Because the answers to these two tasks are complementary, it would not be an efficient use of class time for the teacher to conduct post activity feedback with the whole class. Instead, student-student feedback would be a good idea, with the students in AB pairs. The teacher should naturally be available as an arbiter if there are any questions. These may come from stronger students - who might come up with alternative questions of their own. If these are grammatically correct, and fit the given answers, the teacher should confirm them as also correct. This type of feedback, in weak/strong pairs, is very motivating for the weaker students. They have got the difficult questions that the strong students have struggled to reconstruct. For weak students, already knowing key information is a pleasant change from traditional whole-class oral feedback, which often turns into a dialogue between the teacher and the brightest and most forthcoming students, while the weaker students feel left out.

EXAMPLE 2

Another very simple form of bias task activity is a jigsawed gapfill. To prepare a jigsawed gapfill of a song, photocopy the lyrics twice. Label one photocopy A and the other B. On photocopy A, blank out with correction fluid nine words. On photocopy B, blank out eleven words, making sure that the gaps on photocopy A are in different places from the gaps on photocopy B. In this example, photocopy B is the high-level task (with more gaps to fill), and photocopy A is the low-level task (with fewer gaps). The simplicity or complexity of the words you gap can also make the task easier or more difficult. A positive feature of this kind of bias activity is that, because the jigsawed gaps are in different places, students are not necessarily aware of who has more gaps and who has fewer.

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We could easily add a third task sheet (C) for the weakest students, with six gaps in different places from the gaps on photocopies A and B. This would mean conducting feedback in groups of three.

REDUCE YOUR PREPARATION Many course books now provide support for mixed-level teaching. This is good news. If your course book includes multilevel task sheets, for example, this means less preparation for you. Even if your course book is a more traditional one, we hope that our guidelines will help you to adapt the listenings and readings it contains for use with mixed-level classes. Cooperation with colleagues who are using the same book can naturally reduce your preparation time. Divide up the work and exchange the reading and listening task sheets you prepare individually. And if you are teaching the same course book next year, you can recycle your multilevel task sheets with a new mixed-level class. Once you have the principles of tiered tasks and bias tasks clearly in mind, you should be able to generate many of your own variations on our example task sheets.