I often have colleagues complain that their students don’t talk in class—the good kind of talking. When I hear these complaints, I always feel a bit sad. I feel sad for the teacher because I know how frustrating that is, but I also feel bad for the students who don’t feel comfortable answering the questions when the teacher asks them.
I’ve been in classes where the students don’t want to talk, and all they care about is sleeping or playing games on their phones. But that usually happens with students who have no reason to study English, and there are separate skills for those students. But right now, my colleagues and I are teaching English majors who are generally motivated to study and learn. So why are they not talking? Even for non-English majors, many of them are motivated to learn English because they are planning on going abroad or because they want to use English in their jobs. If I can find a reason for them to learn, then perhaps their unwillingness to speak comes from another reason.
What do you see most often on your students’ faces when you ask them a question?
Why don’t students talk in class?
Usually students don’t talk in class because they are bored, confused, or afraid. All of these are things I can help them with to some extent. Now I recognize that teachers can do everything right, but if students don’t take responsibility for their own learning, then we will never be able to help them.
But let’s think about what we can do first. If students are bored, maybe the content is too simple. I’ve made that mistake many times in class. I used to have this problem especially when I taught IELTS speaking classes. I would find a topic that I thought was really interesting—like food or movies, and I was always surprised when students weren’t willing to talk about these things.
I think part of the reason was that students were tired of these topics. Since most of my Chinese students have been studying English for about a decade by the time they get to university, they have probably been talking about these topics for years. Perhaps rather than asking the students to describe their favorite movie or talk about their favorite movie genre, I could ask students what they think about the influence of Western movies in China. For higher-level students, this type of question gives the students the chance to think about the topic in a more meaningful way, and it helps them to practice forming opinions which is a great skill for the IELTS speaking exam.
Now that I teach more content-based subjects like Cross-cultural Communication and European Culture (among others), I find it much easier to come up with discussion topics that are interesting to students.
One note here, I sometimes try to use AI to come up with discussion questions, and I almost always find that the students are not as interested in these questions as they are in the ones that I come up with myself. I think one of the differences is that I understand more about the struggles and interests of my students and AI is focused more on questions that “should” be interesting or important.
Two other reasons that students may be unwilling to talk is that they are confused or afraid. I’ve been attending a Chinese class for foreigners at my school about Chinese Literature. I’m very interested in the class, and I enjoy learning about ancient Chinese poetry (I don’t understand it, but when the teacher explains it, and I get it, I love it!). Yesterday, the class was a bit difficult because the teacher was talking a lot. At first, I could follow most of what she was saying as she talked about the history of the Chu Nation when Qu Yuan wrote his poetry and then the rebel leader who conquered the Qin Dynasty and established the Han Dynasty. This leader, Liu Bang collected Qu Yuan’s poems, and that’s probably the main reason that we still have his poetry today.
I loved learning about all of this history. But then the teacher started talking about the different parts of Qu Yuan’s poetry, and I got a bit lost. All of a sudden, the teacher made a comment about how something is a certain way in the West. She looked at my roommate and me, and I realized she was asking us a question. In a class of mostly Russian’s, Eastern Asians, and a couple guys from Tajikistan, we were the only ones from America, so I think she wanted us to answer for “the West.”
I glanced at my roommate, hoping that she had understood the question and could enlighten me. She was hesitant to answer the question and looked at me. I mumbled, “some people might,” and the teacher accepted that and moved on. We didn’t get another chance to talk in class.
My roommate, Kendra, and I later talked about the incident, and my roommate said that the way she understood the question, the teacher was asking if in “the West” we believed that kings were appointed by God. Kendra was hesitant to get into a theological discussion in class, and I hadn’t understood that at all.
I realized that the teacher might have just wanted confirmation about her statement rather than a deep discussion, but I was still disappointed that I wasn’t able to answer her question properly. I was also disappointed that we didn’t have more time to talk about the content in class—perhaps that could have given me the mental break that I needed to continue focusing on what the teacher was saying.
Seeing students freeze in confusion is always discouraging as a teacher. But perhaps we don’t recognize that they are confused. Maybe, like my roommate, they just don’t know how to give the teacher a concise answer about a very difficult question.
What can we do to help students speak?
If students are bored, we can give better questions, but if students are just confused, there are several steps we can take in class to help the students answer. These steps might seem obvious to some, but I have found (see example above) that not all teachers follow these steps.
First, the best way I have found to help students answer questions is to first give them time to talk to their partner. This method is also excellent because it allows everyone in the class to share their opinions with someone else. I won’t have time to listen to everyone, but I can still use this time to give them all the chance to talk.
Sometimes, students still won’t talk. If I can tell that the students are thinking about the question, I’ll let them think quietly for a minute or so and then tell them that it’s time to share their ideas. If they don’t start immediately, usually they start sharing at this point. During this time, students have the chance to ask their partner what something means if they are confused. They also have time to hash out some difficult thoughts with another safe person before they have to share in front of the whole class.
When I call on students, I sometimes let them choose which question they want to answer from a list. I like this method because students often have more thoughts about one of the questions. However, if everyone wants to talk about the same question, I tell them that it’s time to choose a different question.
If I call on someone, and after a few moments of awkward silence, they say that they don’t know or they haven’t thought about it, I tell them that I’m going to ask someone else a question, and then I will come back to them. Since they know I will come back, the student asks their partner what something means or thinks through it, and when I come back to them, they usually have something to share. When necessary, I also remind the student to make sure they are using the pair work time well so that they are ready to answer when I call on them.
This simple method of giving students the chance to talk before I put them on the spot will solve a lot of problems. This method also takes a bit of time, but I have seen much deeper learning happen when students are able to talk about things rather than just listen to me talk about things.
If you have other methods to encourage students to talk, I’d love to hear them! Please share in the comments!