Hi all, I'm Aroma from Palestine

Of course that communicative approach is difficult, but it is interesting method to follow and use it inside the classroom. It helps the student to be more active and it is based on real life situations. It has elements that the teacher must use for the students:

*Meaning

*Information-gap

*Choise

*Purpose

*Negotiation

*Real life situations

finally, communicative approach depends on culture,and it helps us to use language outside the classroom.

Best wishes,

Aroma

Hi Soher,

Yes, naughty students are a big problem for people teaching English to teenagers or children (and sometimes young adults, too).  But, advice for what to do is very difficult to give.  Every personality is different, and that means kids misbehave for different reasons... so it depends so much on your particular students and your particular situation.

That said, two approaches I've seen that seem to work better than others, include:

(1) Establishing and drawing on a clear and meaningful context.

That is, it's surprising how much of a difference it makes to how motivated and engaged the students are if you really build the context into a story. 

• Draw the scene/situation on the board (you don't need to be good at drawing - the silly pictures are often the most interesting and the Ss own imaginations will fill in the gaps). 
• Draw up the characters in the 'story'. 
• Get the Ss involved in this, by asking them for extra details (eg. What's the boy's name?  How old is he, 13, 14, or 15?  Does he like sports?  Does he like computer games? Does he have spiky hair or short hair? etc.)
• Constantly refer to the situation and characters when focusing on the language point.
• Use the same situation and characters in controlled practice activities, gap fills, and other tasks.
• Get Ss to do role-plays as the characters, or to develop other stories/situations based on the same characters or situation.

If you do this, the Ss don't want to misbehave because they don't want to miss anything.  

Two cautions:

• If Ss aren't interested, think about how much you involve them - the more questions you ask and the more details you add to the context based on the Ss input, the more engaged they'll be.
• If Ss don't understand the context or the language, it will be difficult to keep them engaged no matter how interesting the situation is.  Make sure you consider the Ss whose English isn't as strong as the others when setting up your lessons, or they will misbehave.

(2) Trouble-making = little attention.  Participation in class = lots of attention.

Teenagers want to impress their classmates.  Children want the teachers attention.  An easy way to do this is to cause trouble or make jokes. 

If a kid often interrupts the class with silly questions or comments, for example,  ignore him/her.  You don't have to pretend they don't exist, but do tell them, "later", or "sorry, we have to do this first".  Do it quickly and with little emotion, and it will tell the S that that kind of behaviour doesn't get attention.

Then, when children participate in games, tasks, or activities, acknowledge their participation.  Don't focus only on the language, but focus on the participation.  Most importantly, give them attention when they are participating.  That will tell the S that good behaviour gets attention.

For teenagers, give them more opportunities to be creative.  If they can write a funny, sillly, or shocking story, or if they can act silly in a drama or role-play, then they get to impress their classmates without needing to cause trouble.

They won't work all the time, and some kids are just permanently naughty.  But I hope it helps at least a bit.

Make sure you share your suggestions too!  I'd love to have a few more techniques myself.