Teacher talking time

Some years ago there were parents or students talking with one another saying that in their class they did not have enough time to speak, as their teacher was always talking and their lesson become boring. In the end the whole students could lose their interest and attention as well. I was one of those students that made this criticism towards the way how the whole lesson was organized. There were times that my professor of biology talked during the whole time and in the end I had no opportunity to ask a question, or to put the theory that we were taught into practice. Since that time I have always thought on how I would have acted if I was a teacher.

 Nowadays, the method that a teacher should teach his/her students has changed a lot. One of the elements that have changed is related to teacher talking time versus student talking time. As an EFL teacher, the time that you talk in a class should be reduced as much as possible, and in the center should be the students and their talking time. But there are some questions that we as future teacher might have on the way how we are going to achieve this.

To start with, there are various ways for us as teachers to be, that we can reduce our talking time and to give more space to our students. In fact I would like to talk about my first experience as a teacher about the way how I managed to minimize my time, and how I made students speak more. My topic was related to grammar and in fact when you have to explain grammar to your students you have to talk to some extent, but you can reduce it as much as possible. What I thought that would be the best to be done while teaching the rules on how adjectives formed their degrees was involving my students, and putting them in center. At the moment that I was taking examples to from degrees I was asking students to repeat the examples. Before explaining the rules, students were being asked on what they thought that was difference from positive degree to the comparative degree up to superlative one. As they noticed the differences for each case then the rule was explained in a few words. I remember that all the students enjoyed it and they felt involved.

Moreover, another element that is closely related to the reduced talking time of a teacher has to do with activities. In fact this new method asks for individual, pair and group work as much as possible because this way you give students the opportunity to absorb the lesson. The way how I tried to achieve this was by dividing students in groups to create sentences. Three students came in front of the class and the others had to write down sentences using the adjective degrees comparing their friends, and this made them feel part of the lesson and it was like a game. Another activity in which students had to work individually was done by giving them some papers. In the end each of them had to talk about what they had written and if there was something wrong on their answers they were correcting one another. Furthermore, what I also used was a video to make them more attentive and after seeing it students had to answer some questions that were related to that video.

To conclude, what I would have changed at my presentation to reduce my teacher talking time even more would be the moment that I was giving examples of the adjectives. What could have been better, maybe would be asking the students to say who was tall, taller and the tallest in the class rather than me saying them. I know that there are many other methods to be used in future, but I think that I managed successfully the first attempt. Let me know through your comments what other methods do you suggest.

 Thank you for reading!