Many teachers have a tough time with taking attendance in their ESL classes. The names are all foreign, difficult to pronounce and difficult to understand when students say them, and a room full of kids laughing at your attempts to say or understand their names is humiliating. (If a teacher laughed at their students every time they made a mistake, they wouldn't be a very successful teacher, but students seem to have no sensitivity at all when their teacher makes mistakes. They will laugh at you.) I even once overheard a foreign teacher complaining to the staff at my school, saying that they would quit if they had to take attendance any more.

But I actually like taking attendance. I would even say it's one of my favorite parts of class, and one of the most useful for teaching.

Think about it: you've got 20 or 25 students in your class, and even though what they need is to practice speaking with a native speaker, they rarely get a chance to have a one-to-one conversation with you. There are just too many students and too little time. BUT when you take attendance, that is the one time when you are sure to have a face-to-face conversation with each and every one of them, if only for a minute or two. Make the most of it!

I don't always use attendance-taking as teaching time, but when I do, I spend about 30 minutes of my 90-minute class taking attendance.

I know some teachers who use taking attendance as accuracy practice- especially correcting students' pronunciation- but I prefer to use it as fluency practice- not correcting mistakes but always achieving understanding. Either approach is fine, that's just my style.

Here in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, many students in English class come from out in the countryside. They come to the big city to go to college and get a job and if this is their first English class then the chances are good that they have never before had a conversation with a native English speaker. Even if it's not their first class, they probably only talk to foreigners in English classes. They may be nervous; they may even be terrified.

The first time I meet a new group of students, I ask them a few questions including their name and how to spell it, their major in college or their job, where they are from, their family, and what their parents do. For beginning students, answering those simple questions can be a major challenge. With higher level students those questions may lead to other small discussions, especially if they have an interesting job or major. If there is enough time and the students are sharp I ask more subjective questions like why they chose their major or some details about their job. Young students I ask what year they are in school and what job they want when they grow up. Older students I ask if they are married and if they have children, how old the children are and if they are learning English.

Especially the first time meeting a new class, this first 30 minutes with them can be very important for developing good classroom habits. As the first student to interview, I usually pick someone who is kind of slow. Inevitably, as soon as they stumble a little bit in understanding my question or answering me, other students will answer for them. It's very important to immediately put a stop to this! In fact if you let this group habit continue, it can kill your class. One or two students will become the leaders and they will answer every question for everyone else. Picking a weak student to begin with shows me who these leaders are so I can deal with them and tell them to stop answering. Usually they will understand and stop, sometimes you have to tell them a few times and be firm.

Another bad habit you can get the class to avoid at this point is when you ask a question and the student starts looking around to other students in the class for the answer or to translate what you said. It's kind of annoying: you look someone in the eye and ask them, "Where are you from?" And they immediately look away and start asking the students around them, "Thay noi gi?" Which means, "What did the teacher say?" I don't let them do this. I stop them and say, "Don't talk to them, talk to me." I want the students to see that if we don't understand each other, we will repeat, rephrase, act it out, or do whatever it takes until we understand each other. That is what independent communication is all about: coming to a point of understanding, by whatever means.

Stop the leaders from answering every question for others, and stop the weak ones from looking to others to answer every question for them.

While focusing on each student in turn, I also try to include the whole class so they don't get bored. I ask the class for help if somebody doesn't know the English word for their college major, for example. I write a lot of stuff on the board and try to keep it entertaining for everybody. I skip around the room rather than going down the rows asking each one in turn. When I'm talking to a student on one side of the room and a group starts chatting together on the other side of the room, one of the chatty ones is the next student I will talk to. A little chatting is acceptable, but if it gets too loud then I stop and explain to everybody that when I'm asking one student their name, the rest should be practicing their listening skill and joining in the conversation. Usually they just get it and I don't have to explain.

Normally the second time I meet a particular class, I don't do anything with it and just go down the rows quickly asking each one in turn their name and its spelling. Then they understand there are two different modes for taking attendance. I never call out their names and have the student say they are here- that would be a big mistake. Vietnamese names are really hard to pronounce. I put the burden on them; being able to state their name and spell it clearly is a valuable skill.

You can also use attendance-taking to practice a grammar point. For example if the class is learning the structure "Have you ever..." Then after I get the first student's name I will ask them, "Have you ever been to Nha Trang?" And write it on the board. ("Have you ever..." at the top and then "...been to Nha Trang?" underneath.) I ask a follow-up question to make it conversational and then I pick a student across the room and tell the first student to ask the second student a question with the same structure but with a different verb, and then a follow-up question. (Nearly always, the student will say, "Have you ever been to Hanoi?" or somewhere, and I have to explain the requirement is for a different verb, not a different object.) And then I ask student 3 their name and tell student 2 to ask student 3 another question, and so on. By the end there are 20 or so questions on the board and I leave them there for later in the class when there is some discussion time and students can ask each other all of the questions.

(With this particular "have you ever..." exercise, some other issues usually come up. A student will ask something like, "Have you ever eaten rice?" and I have to explain why this isn't a very interesting question, that "have you ever" is usually used to ask something you don't know the answer to and, being Vietnamese, we are PRETTY sure that Nguyen has indeed eaten rice before. Another normal issue is the follow-up question; I have to explain that it's a different question asking more information about the same subject.)

I also use attendance-taking to do an exercise that I read about in a book. After getting their name, I ask "What did you do yesterday?" and tell each student to say two (or one or three or five, depending on the class size) things that they did yesterday. I write each verb so at the end we have 40 or 50 different past-tense verbs on the board. To make it entertaining, while students are hesitating and thinking and trying to come up with their sentences, I'm at the front of the room acting out different possibilities in mime: brushing my teeth, riding a bicycle, sleeping, getting drunk, killing somebody, kissing somebody, flying up into the sky, etc. And I encourage the students to all help each other, so they can all stay involved. It's fun and good practice. After we're done we look at the list on the board and I give my 3-minute lecture on the importance of time in English. (Time isn't so important in Vietnamese.)

I hope you can see why taking attendance is one of my favorite parts of English class. It's also a necessity for the school, to keep track of their students. Don't let a student take attendance for you- maybe they will mark their friend "present" who is actually skipping class! Come up with your own ideas to turn taking attendance in your ESL class into a useful and enjoyable exercise rather than an administrative burden.

David Cramer is an author and English teacher living in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. For more insights, photos, and videos of life as an American expatriate in Vietnam, please visit the blog: www.livingInSaigonVietnam.Blogspot.com