All classes consist of individual students with different personalities and interests. In that respect, all classes are ?mixed ability? classes. All students themselves have mixed abilities, as some may find one particular task or approach more appealing then other tasks or approaches. With this in mind, some teachers may have some difficulty dealing with the different learning levels of their pupils. What they should always keep in mind is that they need to adopt a flexible methodology that allows for a variety of learning styles and abilities.

In fact, teachers have had to face this dilemma since the days of the one-room schoolhouse, which mixed 6 to 16 year-old pupils in the same area. But since then, mixed ability classes have become quite frightening for parents, as many are convinced that children can?t reach their highest potential in such classes.

In fact, differentiation may be the key word for teachers to deal with such classes. First, teachers need to realise that all learners vary in their readiness, interests and learning profiles. Pupils indeed display a number of differences in their learning abilities, motivation, previous exposure to learning, learning style, personality or attitude ? only to mention a few possible features. Hence, teachers can set up classrooms where everybody works towards essential understandings and skills but uses different content, processes and products to get there.

Here are some tips to help you deal with heterogeneous classes:

● Try to make sure that all students understand what is happening in the lesson

● Use group work, pair work and individual work. Such activities are useful not only for the teacher to observe students but also for the students to cooperate and to learn from each other.

● Follow your course book, which may contain a variety of tasks, but also try and find supplementary materials. Since most textbooks are designed for an ideal homogeneous classroom environment, teachers always have to deal with the problem that students react to the textbook differently due to their individual differences.

● Ask open-ended questions and encourage creativity without limiting the students to single no or yes answer. These tasks allow each learner to perform at his/her own level. Some of the students may be good at understanding but might be weak in expressing themselves orally or in written work; thus, open-ended tasks give them the chance to express themselves without trying to find the one and the only correct answer

● Use visuals. They are always useful for all age and proficiency levels, so even using coloured chalk or board markers attracts learners? attention to the teaching point. Hence, teachers can make use of visuals to grab students' attention and to motivate them.

● Students love games, competitions and dramatisation, so these are ways of ensuring their interest in the lesson. Regardless of the differences among the students in terms of language level and learning styles, they are motivated to use the target language while they are playing a game or participating in a completion or a role-play for instance.

● It is advisable to have special plans for the early finishers in case they finish the tasks earlier. This contingency plan might be an extra exercise, a handout or a reading passage.

● And most of all, forget this heterogeneous stuff and concentrate on variety of interesting tasks.