Disruptive Classes

Ariel_Noël

Hello,

I was just looking for a bit of advice really from those who attend or have attended class courses and how to deal with others in class who have a tendency to take over. Has anyone else experienced this? I'm currently studying Level 3 AAT and the class started off with only 4 of us but for the remainder of the course it will be myself and one other learner. I'm quite a quiet person in general and like to keep myself to myself and I'm enjoying the actual learning of the course however the other learner is very loud and actually a bit abrupt sometimes with the tutor. They also have a tendency to start talking about their personal life and social plans in the middle of class when the tutor is teaching. I found it a bit easier to ignore when there were more of us in the class but now it is only the two of us it feels quite overbearing and I feel that I'm leaving the class knowing less than I should. I don't really feel like I can talk to tutor about it as it's obvious who I'm talking about and I don't want to look like some sort of troublemaker! I've paid for Level 3 classes but I don't know whether to try to finish the rest of the qualification on my own.

Zeroine

I think it would be reasonable to talk to the Tutor. You're not the troublemaker here.

It might help to have some phrases prepared to make your request more neutral and less about the other learner as a person. For example, something like "I'm the sort of person who can only focus on one thing at a time so when we're working in class I need to focus on the class content. I find it too distracting if there are other discussions going on." If it was me, I'd probably say that directly to the person concerned actually, but I realise that might be outside your comfort zone! The Tutor should definitely deal with it though.

Perhaps another thing you could do is cut across the other person when they're talking about their personal/social life and ask the Tutor a question relating to the content. You could start by saying something like, "Oh hold on, I've just realised I need to ask about this while we're in class." Even if you don't have anything in particular to ask, you could recap what's been covered and ask if you've understood it correctly, or something.

If you combine both those things it would hopefully help the Tutor to keep things on track better. Nearly all Tutors will be assessed by attendance, reviews and results so the Tutor should be as keen as you are to help you learn and not have class time wasted.