Saturday 8 September 2007

Killing silence

Do you allow enough time for people to come up with answers to your questions before you rephrase them? Don't be afraid of silence!
People who know me well have already learnt that I can't be in silence tooooo long: it kills me and it is one of the worst drawbacks I face when teaching. Sometimes I am so anxious that I answer my students' questions instead of letting them think and figure out what they need to know for themselves.
This is another weak point on my lessons and I will try to improve so as to be a better teacher... and if possible, a better listener.
Let me know if I am the only one that feels this pressure for talking or if I have others like me. Let's see if we can help each other.
Kisses,
Lore

4 comments:

Gladys Baya said...

Just to show you you're not alone at all: I remember some research conducted by Brown, over 20 years ago in the US. He concluded the average teacher pause (before rephrasing, for instance, when asking questions of the class) was ... 3 seconds! ;-) He argued that prevented students from processing information in order to answer anything but the silliest questions... In short, we would be preventing learning like that!

Food for thought...

Love,
Gladys

Maria Lorena Recio said...

I have eaten...
I will try, as usual, to keep myself monitoring and let my students think for themselves and answer what they think.
Kisses,
Lore

Anonymous said...

Hi Lole, it´s me Flopy your "little sister" as you say everyone hehe. I think that you aren´t the only one who has to face that kind of "speaking too much" problem, so don´t worry. You were my teacher (few years ago), and so, I know you are a great teacher, helpful and communicative.
To sum up this comment, I would like to ask you that I need your help cause I´m loosing my grammar and speaking English knowledge, because of my "horrible university technical English" in which I lost almost everything I´ve learned for years.
Hoping hearing from you soon,
Sincerely,
Flopy.

Gladys Baya said...

Hey, now we know "being self-demanding" runs in the family!
:-P (no offence!)
Regards to these two great sisters,
Gladys