Teachers’ Expectations

Have you clarified to your students your classroom routines and procedures? Have you spent time modelling and supporting students to practise them at the beginning of the year? Do your students understand when they have to be quiet and when they need to talk?

One reason behind students’ excessive talking is that they don’t know or understand what their teacher’s expectations are, so they talk whenever they want.

To this end, explain to your students when they can talk to each other (collaborative tasks) and why. When they have to be quiet listening to you and why (during instructions). When they need to ask questions and interact with each other in the classroom and why.

Clarify your boundaries with students. Be firm! Show clearly that you don’t tolerate any kind of disturbances in your classroom because you’re all here for one purpose: LEARNING.

If you have clarified your expectations at the beginning of the year and spent those first weeks modelling and practising them, but your students are disturbing you with their talking you need to explore this issue to find out about the reasons.

Explore the issue

There are various reasons for students’ excessive talking in the classroom. Sometimes, it’s we, teachers who contribute to that talking when our instructions are not clear, content is not interesting and challenging for students, or when we’re stuck in power struggles.

However, there are cases where we are not THE REASON. The student’s personality, motivation to learn and his/her social environment may lead to such kind of behaviours. Still, finding out about those reasons is necessary in order to act properly to sort out this issue.

To do so, think about :

1. The number of students who are more talkative in your classroom. How many are there? A group of students, the majority, or the whole classroom? When we have two students talking is not like having the majority or the whole class. In case you notice that more students are talking, get to know their opinions regarding your content, tasks, and materials by giving them a questionnaire to fill in.  Also, are these students good at learning? Do they show any interest? Are they talking all the time?
2. When this excessive talking is occurring. Is it during silent independent practice or while you’re providing instructions?
3. Talkative students’ attitudes. Are they behaving in the same way with all teachers? Or just with you? Ask other teachers (or their previous teachers) about their behaviours.

Finding answers to the above questions is going to help you determine how much control you need to exert over excessive talking in the classroom and the kind of support required here (from the administration, students’ parents, the school’s psychologist, or counsellor).

Once you’ve explored the issue, it’s now time to act.

Act to control excessive talking

First, if you’ve found that most students perceive your content as not engaging or interesting think about personalizing it, bringing up interesting topics and tasks into your classroom.

But, if you’ve learned that these students are quiet with other teachers you need to rethink not only your content but also your attitudes toward them. You may need to be more serious and firm regarding your classroom procedures.

Still, we need to accept that there are some students who talk because they like to do so even if our content is interesting, instructions are clear and we’re firm. So, how to act to put an end to this ‘too much talking’?

Here are some strategies you can use to control excessive talking while you’re providing instructions (part 1) and during independent work times (part 2 the next post).

1. While Providing Instructions

How frustrating it is when you’re making efforts to explain the lesson while there are students who are talking! Yet, don’t lose your temper, deal with it wisely. Here are the strategies to use for these two different cases.

#Case 1

If you see one or two students talking:

• Use Signs

Stare at them while explaining your lesson. Look at them in a way that shows your anger. You can pause (for one minute) or raise the pitch of your voice. Your eyes and voice need to convey that message of ‘Stop it’.

Another alternative would be moving in the direction of these students and standing there for a few minutes.

Using those signs will help you remind your students of the need to keep quiet without interrupting the flow of your lesson.

• Create THE MOMENT of embarrassment

If using those signs has not worked and students keep on talking, create that moment. Ask them to share what they’re talking about with the rest of the class or you can ask them to explain the point you’re focusing on.

You need to do it in a way that shows your interest in getting them involved and not your intent to mock at them in front of their classmates.

You can say: “OK! Let’s listen to John and Michael. They’ve been talking for a while. They’ve got something interesting to tell us. So, we’re listening to you”. Or: “That point may not be clear. So, let’s listen to John. Could you please explain the difference between………?”. “Yes, Micheal! How would you explain it?”

After listening to them, you can respond: “John and Micheal please stop talking, you’re disturbing us. Pay attention if you want to learn and succeed”.

• Talk individually

Most of the time, when two students are talking, there is one of them who is more talkative, and initiating that talk. After observing and identifying this student, take her/him to one site after the class is over and ask why s/he is behaving in this way.

When I was in high school, my teacher of English used to talk to talkative students individually but not after class. Once he identified who was disturbing, he assigned a task or addressed a question to the whole class to make us busy and asked that student using signs to follow him  (we could not even realize it).

That teacher spent a few minutes talking to that student in the corridor. I was wondering about the ‘why’ and after a while, I realized that this was the teacher’s strategy to deal with those disturbances.

It worked well because I remember that we were enjoying his lessons and we learned a lot from him. He could manage to create the necessary learning environment for that.

But, besides asking about the reason, what do you need to tell that talkative student?

You need to clarify that this is not acceptable. If he has any problem you’re here to help, but he must stop disturbing you and his classmates.

If the student tells you that he hates learning, you can respond:  “If you hate learning, there are others who are here for it because they care a lot about it. When you keep quiet you are supporting them to learn and also facilitating things for me. I know you’re a good person, I can rely on you”.

#Case 2

If more students are talking, their noise dominates the whole classroom. In this case, you need to :

• Change the activity

Though I don’t like dictating and prefer to involve my students in discussions, dictation has helped me bring back that quietness I need when my students’ talking gets excessive in the classroom.

So, if you are explaining using the board or other materials and your students start talking change the way you’re doing things. Dictate and explain at the same time or ask them to do the job of explaining, so make them BUSY. You‘ll regain their attention.

Similarly, a speaking activity or discussion can make students talk and shift away from the objective of the task they’re involved in.  Noticing this, change this activity into a written one.

Working in pairs or groups may lead to students’ noise that does not relate to learning. In this case, ask them to work individually instead. This will bring you the quietness you desire.

• Get their attention

Because my students care a lot about exams and grades (while I don’t) I try to get their attention during those chatty moments by talking about the exam’s question or the content they need to learn.

So, when I see them talking while I’m explaining the lesson  I say loudly:  “I’m thinking about asking a question in the exam about this. So what do you think?” And I always get this “Ah! Could you please repeat?”

Also, writing on the board a question or drawing something in relation to your lesson, and asking students to find the answer or guess what it means to get rewarded can really support you to make them attentive.

So, focus on your students’ concerns (grades, learning a given skill, creativity, etc.) and redirect your students’ attention to it during those disturbing moments.

• Make them engaged

When students are busy thinking, there is no or less talking. So, to get your students engaged plan for thought-provoking or challenging tasks in every lesson or simply some questions which you can introduce when students start talking and annoying you.

These should spark their curiosity and make them interested in finding out answers or solving problems. Time your activities carefully and think always of what is relevant and of interest to your students since boredom can make students talkative.

To create the appropriate challenge, consider students’ level and previous knowledge and adjust the task’s difficulty accordingly.

Also, to sustain that engagement in the presence of excessive talking,  break down the ordinary. For example, think about: what images to show before the lesson to make your students curious about its content and stop talking? what songs or type of music to create the right mood? what to put into your mystery box or bag that relates to your lesson? BE CREATIVE.