Top Tips for Decreasing Teacher Speaking Time
Imagine a classroom where the teacher is lecturing the entire class time. Student's attention span starts to flee, they begin looking for any source of entertainment. They are now distracted and unable to apply the lesson the teacher is demonstrating in the real world. Teacher lecture time should be supplemented with other methods of teaching. Students need mental breaks and activities to engage them in the lesson.
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This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate Abigail A. Please note that this blog post might not necessarily represent the beliefs or opinions of ITTT.
Reasons to Decrease TTT
Learning a new language is an engaging activity, it needs to be practiced and repeated for communication to become second nature. The more the students interact with one another and with native speakers, the more likely they advance and speak more fluently. The students may be shy and try to avoid active participation. That is why it is so important to decrease teacher speaking time. Although students are learning techniques and rules about the language while the teacher is demonstrating, the students need to be challenged and motivated to actually learn to communicate with a new language. While students are practicing it is the teacher's responsibility to point out common errors and make corrections when needed. So, they could learn and advance from their mistakes and move on to other topics.
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Also Read: Can I learn a foreign language while teaching English abroad?
Ways to Work on the Problem
Decreasing teacher speaking time requires practice and planning. Monitoring your lecture time is a great way to maintain an appropriate balance between teaching time and student participation. It is not the time spent on teaching that makes the difference between a good and great ESL lecture, it is the quality of the lesson that makes the difference. The rigor and type of lecture will also determine how much the teacher should restrict their lecture time. Cutting the time for lecture allows for more time to be used for student participation or an activity sheet.Benefits and Strategies
Videos allow students a break from the usual lecture and provide visual aids. YouTube has become a popular tool in the classroom, as it can provide informational videos that further simplify intricate ideas. This may make connections in the student's mind that the lecture, alone, may not provide. This helps in providing many different methods of informational delivery, combining visual and audible teaching strategies to keep the lessor fresh and engaging. It's important to target all of the students learning senses.
Also Read: How do I get a job teaching English in Japan?
Another strategy is to ask your students questions with sufficient information to direct them towards an answer. If you were to ask a straightforward question, students may not know the answer and become intimidated to even attempt to answer it. But by giving hints in the question, teachers can elicit a specific response, and this could boost student's confidence in speaking in front of a class.
Placing students in groups allows them to learn from one another and figure out problem-solving skills together. This is another way for the teacher to correct a students' mistakes and for them to learn from other peers who may know more, as well as teach those who know less. This is where students can engage and repeat lessons from the lecture, drilling that concept into their mind through action. Group work may involve creative skits, reading together and answering questions, creating a book, and testing each other.
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Reducing teacher speaking time will prevent students from becoming distracted and bored. It allows students to concentrate on short and easy to follow instructions that they could immediately apply and learn from firsthand. Repetition through firsthand experience improves the development of foreign language speaking. Getting feedback on tasks can help narrow down what students enjoy the most. By comparing the activity to a set of measurable skills, teachers could analyze how the effective activity was for students and compare that to the student responses. No student is the same in their learning style so tailoring the student activities to fit their needs will promote stronger development of the foreign language.
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