How To Get More Students Talking

Sometimes in class, students do not feel comfortable enough to reply the teacher’s questions or speak up – even if they have fascinating ideas to share. Fear of judgement or shyness often keeps learned students from engaging themselves in the classroom.

However, growing their capacity to communicate and take risks academically is vital to a student’s success. And the key to it lies in the teacher. So how can you create a supportive classroom environment where they feel safe to do so?

Have Them Talking before You Instruct

This is one of the simplest ways you can get your students to talk more in class. Ask them to. Here is an idea that before presenting a lesson to your students, begin with a class or small group discussion. Bring up the subject that you intent to address in the lesson. Great teachers understand that if you are teaching content, this should be pretty easy. Supply yours students three or four discussion questions related to the topic. Giving students an example of a business man, if you were going to read an article about a successful business person, you might ask your students to talk about jobs they have had (even if it was just setting up a lemonade stand). If you were preparing to teach about sports, permit students to part their experiences going to a sports game or playing on a team. But even if you are planning on teaching grammar isolated from content, you can still have before lesson discussion. Help your students to talk about a situation in which they will need to use the target structure for their answer. For example, ask students to talk about their program for next year when you are preparing a lesson on the future tense. If you will be teaching conditional structures, ask students to share their dreams and what they will do when they are successful. By having this word beforehand, your students will realize the need for the structure that you will teach and will be able to use it immediately. They will be primed for the new information, and they will have time to use their language skills through discussion before you start your talking time.

Ask Students to Give Their Opinion

Your students are bound to ask your opinion on everything from American food to body language. One great way is instead of answering them right away, ask them to share what they think. A second way is you can promote other members of the class to field opinion and even information questions before you answer them, or turn the questions back on the speaker to get their opinion first. For example, if you were talking about sports and a student asked, “Why do Americans like football even though it is violent?” rather than answer you might say the following. “What do the rest of you think? Why do Americans like football?” or to the speaker “Why do you think they like football?” Give your students a chance to express their own ideas, and then feel free to share your own. You may not decrease the amount of time you would have talked if you just answered, but you would increase student talk time, and at the end of class they will have talked more and you will have talked less.

Give Students Time to Collect their Thoughts

When you ask a question, don't expect an answer immediately. Give your students some time to collect their thoughts and think about their answers. Likely students can even write down their idea on a graphic organizer or they can use the think-pair-share cooperative learning method to discuss their thoughts and find out about the views of their peers. Sometimes, all you need to do to get students talking more is just let it be silent for a few extra minutes so they can just think.

Consider Your Questions

As educator take some time to form the questions that you inquire students. If you are always asking rhetorical, or yes or no questions then how can you expect your students to talk more? Try having students debate an issue. Formulate a question so that students will have to take a side. No matter how divide students into two teams and have them debate and discuss their views.?

Rather then telling a student to look over their answer because it may be incorrect, attempt to ask them how they came to get their answers. This will not only give them a chance to self-correct and figure out what they did wrong, but it will also give them the opportunity to talk with you.

Doughnut Sharing Method

When the goal is for the fast sharing of ideas, with multiple people, the doughnut sharing method is right. The thing is that this method involves a large group of students, such as the whole class, forming two circles – an inner circle and an outer circle. Students in the inner and outer circle find partners and face each other.

It happens that the teacher poses a question or gives a statement for discussion and students have a minute to discuss. A signal is granted and the students in the outer circle take one step to the right, consequently resulting in new partner formations. Either the same or a new question/statement is given. This process is repeated.

The doughnut technique is helpful for the generation of ideas, possibly before an individual brainstorm. It is also useful for recalling information, sharing anecdotes or offering opinions.

Talking piece Strategy: It is said that for some small group discussions, the teacher uses a ball as a talking piece that students pass around—only the person keeping the ball can speak. Every student gets the ball once before anyone gets it a second time. This is especially effective when discussing very emotionally charged subjects, like issues of race or gender, when we want to be certain that everyone has the opportunity to share their experiences.

Musical give one, get one Strategy: Mostly when you want students to hear a lot of ideas,you have them write down their thoughts and then stand up, walk around to as many people as they can, and write down one idea of each person they talk to. You usually do this to music—students need to get to as many people as they can before the song ends.

Musical shares Strategy: The teacher put on a song, and students walk or dance around the room. When the music stops, students converse with the person closest to them about their ideas. The teacher use a timer to ensure equity of sharing here—each person speaks for one minute.