CORE READING - Teacher Talk Time
CORE READING - Teacher Talk Time
CORE READING - Teacher Talk Time
Teachers elicit for a range of reasons: to set students thinking in a certain direction, to create a
context, to warm a class up, to generate peer interaction, to lead an activity, to attract attention, to
increase student talking time, to draw out passive knowledge and to engage students in the learning
process. However, the types of prompts used (open-ended, closed-ended, imperative or directed
questions) and the time spent for an answer (after a prompt) shape the quality and quantity of
student responses.
After analyzing hundreds of tape recordings of classroom discourse, Rowe (1986) noticed that the
average wait-time is a second or less but when this was increased to three or more seconds a variety
of significant improvements in learners’ performance came about:
Similar findings have emerged from studies of wait-time in other language learning contexts (Nunan,
1998).
A consequence of this was the belief that the teacher’s presence in the classroom
should be reduced.
Excessive TTT limits the amount of STT (student talking time). If the teacher
talks for half the time in a 60 minute lesson with 15 students, each student
gets only 2 minutes to speak.
TTT often means that the teacher is giving the students information that they
could be finding out for themselves, such as grammar rules, the meanings
of vocabulary items and corrections. Teacher explanations alone are often
tedious, full of terminology and difficult to follow. There may be no
indication of whether the students have understood.
Using elicitation rather than explanation. If students are presented with clear
examples and guiding questions, they often do not need to be “told”. This
kind of guided discovery leads to better understanding and more
successful learning. Organising activities as pair work also means that all
the students have the chance to work on the new language.
The use of body language, mime, gestures and facial expressions rather
than words. The position of the teacher in the classroom can also indicate
to the students what is expected of them at a particular stage of the
lesson.
Getting students to give feedback on tasks to each other rather than to the
teacher. This is often done in pairs, but answers can also be checked
against a key. Student nomination, whereby one student nominates
another to answer a question, is also a useful technique. Feedback
involving the teacher is therefore limited to problematic questions rather
than every question in an exercise.
Anecdotes. These can be the basis of a presentation, but can also be used
at the start of a lesson, rather than using a ‘warmer’ activity, as a natural
way of engaging the students. Anecdotes and jokes may also be used to
stimulate interest during a lesson. Anecdotes do not need to be
monologues, and students can be encouraged to interrupt and ask
questions.
Storytelling.
This can be the basis of a lesson or an ongoing theme
throughout a course and is as appropriate to adult classes as it is to
young learners. There is a whole methodology surrounding storytelling,
which is often a stimulating alternative to the use of a graded reader in the
classroom.
Conclusion
There are advantages and disadvantages to TTT. It is not easy to reduce TTT
when talking to the students is a natural thing to do and when there is inevitably a
theatrical side to language teaching. In certain cultures, there is also a tradition of
‘chalk and talk’ which influences the expectations and behaviour of both teachers
and students. However, bearing in mind the nature of the communicative
classroom, teachers should perhaps be aware of the quality of their TTT and how it
is used rather than trying to reduce it to a bare minimum.
Further reading
Dellar, H. Rethinking Teacher Talking Time, TESOL Spain Newsletter, 2004.
http://www.tesol-spain.org/newsletter/hughdellar.html Lynch, T. Communication in
the Language Classroom OUP, 1996
Scrivener, J. Learning Teaching (2nd Edition), Macmillan, 2005
Zaro, J. & Salaberri, S. Storytelling, Macmillan, 1995