How to Deal with Difficult Students | ESL classroom tips

Are your students misbehaving? Well, look no further because in this video I go over the best tips on how to deal with difficult students.
Continue watching for all the tips and tricks to get your classroom under control.
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Transcript:
Here's how to deal with difficult students in an ESL or EFL classroom.
The first idea I have is just to talk to the student. So you can either do this kind of just maybe after class or kind of take them outside of class for a minute and just say, "What's going on? How come you're not listening?" or, you seem really unhappy in my class. What's up?
The second thing you can do is to give problem students some extra tasks. I don't mean like in a burdensome way, but if someone has to hand out worksheets, hand back worksheets, do attendance or clean the whiteboard off.
The third thing is to really consider whether you have boring lessons, I mean some students are going to misbehave no matter what kind of lesson you have, but if you have a lot of students misbehaving, it might be because your lessons are kind of boring.
The fourth thing you can do to um deal with difficult students is to enlist some help. So if you're really, really struggling and you've kind of tried all the other strategies that I'll mention in this video, but it's not really working and some student just keeps misbehaving and misbehaving, you can enlist some help.
And just one thing to keep in mind is that it often has nothing to do with you. Maybe if you have a teenager and their parents are getting divorced, or they just broke up with their girlfriend, or they're being bullied at their other school, something like that and they're misbehaving in your class, that really has nothing to do with you.
The next tip is to think about seating locations. If you have one student who's misbehaving in your class, I often will just put them right in front of me, in the front row and I will make them sit there the entire class, the entire semester.
The next tip for dealing with difficult students is just to move on. So I mean it's not always helpful to pick a battle about every single thing. So if a student is misbehaving, you can ignore some things and just kind of move on and not worry about it too much.
The next thing you can do is literally stand next to the difficult student if they're misbehaving. Standing next to that student and kind of I always put my hand not on them. I don't like to touch my students but I like to put my hand kind of on their desk or just kind of on their paper and I just kind of stand there while everyone's doing some quiet work.
The next thing you can do is to call on that student who's causing a problem. If students are doing some like kind of pair or group work and then you're kind of just rounding off the activity and you want to elicit some answers, choose the problem students in your class.
The next thing is to have low expectations. I mean you're in an ESL class, maybe in another country. Maybe you only see the students once a week, or once every two weeks. Maybe you have 40 students in your class. Whatever the case might be, expecting miracles in terms of like everyone behaving perfectly and listening to you, it might be a bit of a stretch.
Okay, so those are my tips for how to deal with difficult students.
Timestamp for mixed-level video:
0:00 Intro
0:08 Talk to the difficult student
0:56 Give extra tasks
1:17 Consider your lessons
1:41 Enlist help
2:29 Seating location
3:16 Move on
4:01 Stand next to the difficult student
4:32 Call on that student
4:59 Have low expectations
5:41 Don't take things personally
6:08 Outro
Tags: how to deal with difficult students, how to teach difficult students, classroom management strategies, high school teacher, middle school teacher, difficult students, teaching English, how to teach, teaching tips, tips for bad students, bad students, dealing with a hard class, dealing with difficult students,

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Check out these tips and tricks for dealing with difficult students in an ESL or EFL classroom. What's your #1 tip? Leave a comment and let me know! I'd love to hear from you. Also be sure to check out this book, ESL/EFL Teaching Practice and Methodology: amzn.to/3xqVN26.