STUDENTS MUST SPEAK FOR 95% OF THE LESSON

STUDENTS MUST SPEAK FOR AT LEAST 95% OF THE LESSON

As I said in a recent post, the only sound I tend to hear coming out of classrooms is the sound of teacher’s voices. This is a profession that truly loves the sound of its own voice and loves explaining things to people. An EFL teacher is most in her element when in explication mode. It’s quite the power-trip to be with people who are forced to listen to you. However, this love of explication results in a profession that does tend to go on a bit as my eavesdropping suggests.

If you asked me to say what the balance sounds like in most EFL teaching, I would say the teachers sound like they are talking perhaps 60-90% of the time and the students get a word in 40-10% of the time. I have heard of more extreme cases – a recent learner told me that he had attended a lesson at our school in which the teacher talked non-stop about phrasal verbs for three hours. In this case, we get a perfect 100-0 score. So it can be worse than I suggested. However, I think we can say with some certainty that EFL teachers tend to talk more than learners which is odd considering they are not the ones who need to practice.

I’ve come to the conclusion recently that the optimal speaking time balance in the EFL classroom should be 95% for the student and 5% for the teacher. Of course, this is a radical idea because it suggests a classroom in which learners have ownership of their lessons. Crazy, right? I asked my students recently what they thought the balance was like in our lessons and they said they spoke 80-90% of time. This was very gratifying to hear. But it told me I should push more to get closer to 95.

What do you think? Is a 95-5 speaking balance achievable in the classroom? Would you like some pointers on how to get close to this target?