1. Does overpopulation of students affect the teaching-learning process in the classroom?
Does overpopulation of students affect the teaching-learning process in the classroom?
Diego Ulloa Iglesias
Amardeep Dhillon
CCA0461-1
March 28, 2011

2. Does overpopulation of students affect the teaching-learning process in the classroom?
Plenty of colleges have been built up along all over Chile in order to generate equal
knowledge among student’s minds by achieving those elementary goals in the classroom.
The government, which is involved in this matter, has been interested in improving
different educational aspects such as infrastructure, updated books, technology, etc., but
there are some other features that are lacking consideration. One of those aspects is that
classrooms are being overpopulated by students more and more, and this issue makes
one wonder whether it affects teachers or not, does it have an effect on the English
teaching-learning process in the classroom?
According to University of Texas in Austin, most teachers around the world often
mention the importance of comfort in the classroom when asked to create their dream
classrooms. In this case, comfort is thought of in terms of creating an atmosphere that is
free of anxiety (to the degree that it is possible) and utterly conducive to active
participation; teachers and classroom sizes are recognized as an ongoing educational
problem in terms of comfort and effective teaching-learning process.
The main aim of teaching English—for instance, is “to use the language”, i.e. the
role of the teacher is to make students communicate each other in order to get involved
with the language, and here the inconvenient matter continues. At most of the colleges in
Chile, and even in other Latin-American countries, the quantity of students allowed per

3. Does overpopulation of students affect the teaching-learning process in the classroom?
class has increased over the years, and this is reflected in the facts that Chile heads the
last Organization for Economic Cooperation & Development’s survey (OECO) with thirty
students per class among thirty one countries, and even more in some establishments.
According to Dowling (2006), one hundred and four classrooms are full on Saturdays with
students in the North American Institute, over 90% of whom are young people sent by
their parents. “It’s good business for us but we need more classrooms there’s not enough
space”.
It is understood that there are actually many people who want to study, thus
colleges find the necessity to increase the quantity of classrooms and make some changes
in establishments in order to keep as much students inside the classroom as they can.
Nevertheless, LoCastro (1989), argued that the less students there are in a classroom the
better a teacher will be able to take control of the learning process. Some surveys, as in
the case of The Intersegmental Committee of Academic Senates (ICAS) (nd), resolve the
problem of what number of students should be allowed per classroom, which states that
“given the intensive interactions demanded by second language learning, institutions
should maintain a normal foreign language class size of no more than twenty five
students.”, so the ideal class size would be 10-20 students per class. They also refer to this
issue that is not a matter of “the less students the best they learn” because on one hand
there are lessons that require just few students, but on the other, there are some other
activities that are thought to be released in teamwork in which more people are needed
to carry out tasks.

4. Does overpopulation of students affect the teaching-learning process in the classroom?
To sum up, it is very important to know that class size actually has an effect on the
learning-teaching process. People should know that both time and comfort are significant
aspects which should be positively present in the classroom; i.e. teachers and students
might feel comfortable during the whole lessons given in every single class, and time
might be properly invested as in those individual activities as in those ones in groups.
Classrooms cannot have more than twenty five students inside; otherwise, it would be
very difficult to get involved properly in the class either for students or teachers.

5. Does overpopulation of students affect the teaching-learning process in the classroom?
References
Locastro, V. (1989). Large Size Classes: The Situation in Japan. rEFLection, KMUTT
Journal of Language Education (2006). Department of Language Studies,
King Mongkut’s University of Technology Thonburi. Vol. 9 p.01-03.
Dowling, J. (2007). English Teaching in Chile: A Failing Grade. Retrieved March 13,
2011, from http://tinyurl.com/72q7txd.
OECD (2009). Class Size and Student-Teacher Ratio. Education at a Glance, Paris.
Retrieved March 12, 2011, from http://tinyurl.com/73y5wv5.
Raizen, E. (n.d.) Classroom Management: Lesson 2; the physical classroom. Foreign
Language Teaching Methods. Retrieved March 13, 2011, from
http://tinyurl.com/7lwzkoq