Balancing Teacher Talking Time (TTT) and Student Talking Time (STT) is key for student-centred lessons. However, it is an ongoing challenge that seems to be even more profound in remote teaching contexts. We talked about the importance of the subject and strategies to increase STT with Iskra Stamenkoska, teacher trainer, CELTA trainer and Master Teacher for the large-scale remote teaching programme English without Borders in Colombia.
The importance of balancing STT and TTT
In the ELT classroom, it’s important to find the right balance between TTT and STT because this is immediately related to effective language learning. Teacher talk refers to the amount of time the teacher spends speaking during a lesson. This is inevitably part of a teacher's job: setting up tasks, giving instructions, clarifying language (often by explaining), and they also serve as a model of correct language.
However, excessive TTT means there will be less practice time for students. When the teacher does most of the talking, it hinders students’ participation and their language development. It’s our ultimate goal to strike a balance between how much we talk and how much our students talk in the classroom, which will result in creating an engaging environment conducive to learning.
Excessive TTT has a negative impact on the development of skills. It limits students’ opportunities for language practice and interaction and it inhibits the development of listening skills. Studies show it affects students’ confidence in using English (Sistyawan et al, 2022), which is not surprising considering that in many teaching contexts in the world, the classroom is the only time that a student can practise the language .
When the lesson is dominated by the teacher, students disengage and switch off. This is why it is advisable that teachers take note of their teacher talk and take active measures to reduce it.
That optimum time of teacher talk and extended student talking time is how language is learned. We need to encourage students to actively engage in the lessons through pair work, through sharing opinions either in small groups or in open class, asking questions, completing collaborative tasks, etc. During these tasks, the teacher is a helper, a facilitator, a prompter. The teacher listens and guides, or listens and collects examples of good language and errors which are later addressed during delayed feedback.
Challenges in remote teaching
Online lessons are specific in many ways, and this certainly includes teacher talk.
To start with, setting up tasks can take longer in an online setting. If either party experiences connection issues, instructions have to be repeated. That alone increases teacher talk.
Teachers have a tendency to echo students’ answers, and this is more pronounced in online classes for some reason, probably to make sure the teacher has understood correctly the student’s contribution as audio problems are also frequent.
Additionally, it can be hard to get students to turn on their cameras during lessons, which means the teacher will have fewer clues to evaluate whether students have understood. Teachers often assume students don’t understand when they can’t rely on facial expressions or body language in an online context, so this is another reason why they repeat, explain again. It is also harder to keep students’ attention and engagement. This means slower feedback stages and more prompting so as to include all students. So, to avoid this, we should trust students and check their understanding rather than repeat and explain over and over again.
Strategies to reduce TTT and increase STT
- Keep it simple – use simple sentences when setting up tasks. Instructions should be clear and concise. It is beneficial to have the instructions written on a slide when teaching online as the visual support is very helpful. It is also important to demonstrate the task with an example. If there is a gap fill task or a sentence transformation task, the first item can be completed in open class and instructions can be subsequently checked with short and simple questions.
- Include student-centred activities: incorporate student-centred activities which include pair work, group discussions, role-plays. Do you need to explain how and when we use the second conditional or get the students to figure out the rules? Using a set of guiding questions which students can answer in pairs will help them notice the salient aspects of the grammar or functions, or vocabulary, and this automatically cuts teacher talk in half. The teacher’s role after the noticing stage is to confirm their hypothesis or answer questions. This prompts critical thinking and learner autonomy. Guided discovery works well with all age groups and can be applied even to lower levels. Learners love doing puzzles and it’s an empowering experience. But for this to work the guided discovery has to be scaffolded with simple questions and plenty of examples of the target language.
- Give your students wait time. In other words, don’t fear the silence: allow students for sufficient wait time after asking questions or giving prompts. This helps them formulate their responses and prompts active participation. But it’s important to resist the urge to fill silence with excessive teacher talk.
- Monitor students’ work. Actively monitor students’ work and intervene when necessary. This means visiting breakout rooms when students are engaged in tasks. Use prompts, reformulate questions and encourage student-led discussions to increase STT.
- Respond to emerging language. Rather than automatically correcting students’ mistakes, which is what happens in teacher-centred classrooms, involve them in the process. Give them the opportunity to self-correct or include peer-correction.
- Elicit instructions from students. With more able students or more advanced levels, it is possible to elicit instructions too. If it’s a gap fill task, or a matching task, which they’ve completed so many times before, you can just show the activity and tell them to guess what they need to do, and then confirm their answers and show instructions on the slide. So even these little tweaks help to reduce teacher talk.
- Give students a choice. For example, if you are working on the topic of festivities, you can ask the students to describe if they celebrate any and with whom. They can choose how they want to respond to the task: they can make a poster presentation with lots of pictures and text. Or they can write a blog post, or record a video of themselves describing the event, something like a vlog. When students have a choice, they are more likely to participate.
- Invite students to present. Students’ presentations are yet another way to engage learners. They work on the presentations at home and deliver them in class. For example, when teaching vocabulary related to food, you can ask them to take photos of various fruits and vegetables sold on the market and present their collection in class. After their presentation, which serves like a text, you can select items to teach where you address and check the meaning, highlight the form and teach pronunciation. As a process it’s authentic and meaningful because it includes personalisation and it helps reduce teacher talk because the language comes from them.
Lastly, when discussing TTT, it is important to consider the level of the students. When we take into account the nature of the communicative classroom with beginner and elementary levels, the teachers should be aware of the quality of their teacher talk and how it is used, rather than trying to reduce it to a bare minimum. With beginner level students we need to be realistic about what we can achieve and how much we can expect from them in terms of language production. With these lower levels, teacher talk is a very important factor in the language classroom because the language used by the teacher is not only how they learn the language but it is also the goal of language learning.