Yes, We Are All Individual

The following reflection outlines my experience of encouraging low-level students to participate more equally in extended English-only discussions.The students concerned were a group of relatively low-level students, whose motivation to participate was quite mixed.Throughout the semester a number of interventions were trialed with the aim of raising the students' awareness of how much they were each contributing to the discussions.These interventions met with varying degrees of success.While they did raise the students' awareness of how much each was contributing to the discussions, the also tended to act as a distraction to the discussion tasks proper.However, in the latter stages of the semester, the students' participation improved noticeably.The most apparent reason for this increased level of participation seemed to stem from improvements in the students' social relationships with each other.As such, the current reflection suggests that in-class activities that encourage social interaction may be useful in the facilitation of better lesson participation for some groups of students.