Fourteen teacher turns to one learner

This is not a discipline problem and it is not Marek's fault; it is your interaction pattern.

• Open-class questioning with no rehearsal step. The first person to answer is the fastest, and Marek is fastest. Every group question is effectively a Marek question.
• Nomination by volunteer. Hands up means the confident learner sets the pace and the others opt out by default.
• Silence feels like failure under observation. You fill two seconds of quiet with a nomination to whoever will rescue you, and that is almost always Marek. Each of his answers buys you twenty seconds of a lesson that looks like it is going well.

The risk, in order of seriousness: three learners got zero practice and zero feedback in an hour; the trainer cannot assess your teaching of the class if only one learner is being taught; and the pattern compounds - his confidence rises, theirs falls, so next lesson he is faster still.

Name this in the self-evaluation as a pattern you created, with the trainer's numbers as evidence. That framing is what makes the next step credible.

Change the sequence first, then the nomination.

• Think–pair–share before any open-class question. Every learner rehearses an answer with a partner, so an answer exists before Marek can fill the space.
• Nominate by name out of pair work, choosing learners you saw produce something during monitoring. Ask 'what did your partner say?' - this moves the answer away from whoever is most fluent.
• Count ten seconds of silence after a question. Trainees underestimate how long two seconds feels. Put a mark on your plan to remind you.
• Set a target for the open-class stage: eight different learners in five minutes. Tick names on your plan as they speak; the tick list is a live instrument, not a record.
• Seat Marek next to a weaker learner and away from your eyeline, and give him a role in tasks where his answer should not become the class's answer (note-taker, demonstration partner, reporter for his pair).
• Keep open class. Do not cut it to avoid the problem - you need it for feedback, and the trainer needs to see you managing a whole class.

You will know it is working when the tick list fills with names other than Marek's, and when the trainer's count moves from 14–6 towards something closer to even.

Do not tell him he is too strong. That punishes him for a problem you created, and it will make him self-conscious about contributing, which is a worse problem.

In class:

• Give his strength a job. In an information-gap task, split the information so he must ask rather than tell.
• Provide an extension so he is occupied while others answer: write the follow-up question, prepare the next prompt, note three errors for you during the mingle.
• If he answers out of turn, acknowledge briefly and redirect: 'Good - and Ana, what about you?' Same move every time, no lecture, no embarrassment.

Outside class:

• If he is genuinely under-challenged across the course, that is a course-design question for the Director of Studies (self-study, a higher-level option), not something to manage by suppressing his contributions in a B1 room.

In the self-evaluation, frame it as 'I was using his fluency to keep the lesson moving' - accurate, and it points at you, which is where the change has to happen.