Humanising Language Teaching
Year 3; Issue 6; November 2001

The Classroom Detective

By Edward Harrison
EFL teacher, Madrid, Spain
eth26@yahoo.es

No, this has nothing to do with Sherlock Holmes, Hercule Poirot or any other of our crime solving friends. A classroom detective is simply one member of the class (or more) who is responsible for going around the class monitoring the pair-work of other learners.

Well, yes … but how many times have you found yourself in a big class engaged in a lively pair-work activity only to find you have no notion at all how half the class have achieved the task? By the time you have got round to the back of the class Yunko and Paco have apparently "finished." Worse still, you have a faint suspicion that Yunko and Paco have been having a great time discussing the merits of the banana shot in the modern world. Obviously I'm talking mainly about young learners. Nevertheless, I hope to outline in the following paragraphs how this idea could benefit adult classes too.

I can already hear you asking the question: Don't people hate the classroom detective? Well, yes, this is possible, but the point is that just about everyone gets to be classroom detective at one time or another and you can't hate everybody all the time. The way you organize it depends on you. You have to ask yourself two questions:

1. What criteria will I use to choose the detectives?
2. How long will their term of duty be?

As for the first question, obviously you don't want to end up choosing the same person all the time. If you want to go for total impartiality then you simply choose them according to your class register or some other random method. However, a much more dynamic way of doing it is linking your detective to a rewards system. Whatever way you operate your rewards system (and hopefully you will be rewarding effort, not just ability) you simply make the reward the chance to be a detective. You are probably thinking that it's not much of a reward but you would be really surprised by how into the idea kids really are.

Regarding the length of the "detectiveship" you'll probably find that a week is the ideal period. In an intensive course this could be as short as a day.

Assuming that you have one detective for every 8-10 learners, you arm each one with a notepad and pencil. An attractive magnifying glass helps to make the detectives feel self-important. Let's say you have instructed the class to speak in pairs about their weekend. The detectives go around listening to as many pairs as possible. Any interesting comments that they hear they note down. For example, maybe somebody went to the zoo or has seen the latest film. If any member of the class stubbornly refuses to speak English, the detective also notes this down. At the end of the activity the teacher consults the detectives as to any interesting information they have gathered. The teacher should make a point of pouring praise on any pair or individual selected by the detectives as this helps to make the detectives legitimate. Any pair caught by the detective not speaking English should be lightly ticked off.

Nowadays it seems that projects are the latest hot thing in the TEFL world and rightly so. Nevertheless, how often have you found yourself in a projects class where the entire class are idling away the time chatting in their own language as they colour something in? In these cases the classroom detective can really come into its own. Let's explain by way of the following example.

A class of ten year olds are engaged in a lengthy project on Australia involving putting together visual aids and an oral presentation at the end. Over the years, I had been concerned by the lack of oral communication taking place during the many hours of preparation. By introducing the classroom detective system I was able to change this. On each project day my detectives were sent to the seven different groups on a mission. On one day, for example, the detectives had to interrupt the groups' work by throwing open-ended questions at the learners on the climate of Australia. On another day the questions would be about the animals etc. Further missions included groups being quizzed over the style of their presentations. It was found that this method of doing projects had two positive outcomes:

1. On a Linguistic level, the amount of oral communication in the class increased by 200%.
2. The system was ideally suited to the whole philosophy of project work as it leads to a much greater exchange of ideas amongst the class and an atmosphere of solidarity.

Although I have no personal experience of using a classroom detective method with an adult project class, I feel sure that it would work perfectly well.