Teacher Pitfalls: Making the Most of Teacher Talking Time

The most important part of EFL, to me, in any country is fulfilling my duties as a teacher.

Thus, in every capability, I am working on improving myself as a teacher. So currently I am doing an EFL course online and tutoring as temporary work. I will publish my essays here. The word limit is 700 words and it feels constrictive at times, maybe I will edit them in my free time.

(c) Malia Autio 2011, please cite if the information is used anywhere


New Teacher Pitfalls: Making the Most of Teacher Talking Time

On Teacher Talk Time: Why and How to Avoid It

Teacher Talk Time is so important in the training of educators, especially in the field of EFL, that it has received its own abbreviation of TTT. It is important for teachers and teachers-in-training to consider TTT because of the inverse relationship between TTT and STT, STT standing for Student Talking Time. Student talking time in the EFL or foreign language classroom is the time in which students are able to express their ideas and to receive quality feedback from the instructor. They pay for their time in class, thus when it is cut short by teacher-talking-time it becomes a failure of the teacher. Teacher Talk Time is covered early on not only due the importance of increasing student talking time, but also because that excess TTT is the most common error made by inexperienced teachers while experienced teachers continue to consider it. Efforts to reduce TTT should always be made in conjunction with efforts to improve the quality of the teacher’s classroom communication.

The first step to conquering excess TTT is an awareness of the problem and studied patterns of ineffective teacher-talk. The first, and most cited, is echoing. Echoing is the teacher’s repetition of a student’s response, which is detrimental to the students in two ways. One, they are less likely to listen to one another answer questions and remain overly dependent on the teacher in all class exercises in general. Second, even when answering an open ended question a student may be discouraged from continuing to respond. A far more effective use of teacher talking time would be to provide positive response (yes, good), or provide further questioning. (Springer, 2009) Ilene Springer’s article provided the example of asking “What did you do this weekend?” If a student were to answer “I went to a movie,” the teacher would not ask, “You went to a movie?” But rather, “Where? With who? What movie?” to continue the line of questioning and provide more effective modeling to students. A student may continue to talk, and others will be more likely to be motivated to participate as well.

Other notably noxious forms of teacher talking include self-talk and filling up silence. (Springer 2009) Excess self talk (the teacher talking about him or herself) can easily be eliminated in favor of solid lesson planning and class time to cover new material. Filling up the silence occurs when the teacher completes student sentences at the slightest pause before allowing the student to complete his or her idea. The inexperienced teacher must learn to increase their patience with and faith in the students to reach a satisfactory response when given the appropriate amount of time. When students are given time to express their thoughts completely, the teacher can better assess strengths and weaknesses for future lesson and assignment planning. The video included in the TEFL online lesson included the suggestion of keeping a class journal of common student errors. Such errors will not be observed and learned from if students are not given the opportunity to make those errors in the first place.

With the most notorious of the forms of non-constructive teacher-talk eliminated, the teacher may shift the focus to developing quality communication with students. Directions and explanations should always be as clear and concise as possible. Some specific examples of constructive teacher talk include: explaining and modeling usage of new vocabulary and grammar forms, modeling the days tasks and exercises, retelling student stories (after they are completed, of course), and eliciting responses—which is essentially providing casual chatting to the student that allows them to exercise new forms while reinforcing past learning as they are given enough class time and are given time to use their recall skills. (Ammaranas2005 2010) Excessive teacher talking should always be avoided, but at the same time it does not dismiss the roles the teacher must fulfill when he or she does speak.

Sources:

Ammaranas2005, (2010, June 19). Avoid teacher talking time for a better classroom [Web log

message]. Retrieved from http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/blogs/ammaranas2005/avoid-

teacher-talking-time-a-better-classroom

Springer, Ilene. (2009, December 30). How to reduce teacher talk time in efl classes [Web log

message]. Retrieved from

http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/2521739/how_to_reduce_teacher_talk_time_in_pg

2.html?cat=4