By Jennifer Tong
“We like lively classes, we want to see the students participate, speak up, take the floor, contribute actively to class discussion. Communicative language teaching puts a premium on talk and thus often rewards students who ‘do’ conversation and self-expression rather than those who reflect and understand in silence.” (Kramsch, 2009; quoted in Scott Thornbury, “S is for Silence”) This quote captures the bias in our Western cultures towards “talk”; and the bias in language teaching that we are primarily teaching students how to talk. Have you encountered the ‘quiet student’? Do you naturally feel you would love to see them speak up?
There might be a myriad of reasons why students are quiet or remain silent. First, as I hinted, there are cultural reasons. Many students from non-Western cultures have a different communicative style, and may not use words extravagantly even in their first language. Some think that silence signifies compliance, and/or ‘humility’, both of which are to be expected in the classroom. In Asian cultures, for example, the professor is to be honoured, and some think that this is achieved by giving ‘the right answer’. They therefore are reluctant to say just anything that comes into their mind without careful consideration. As well, ‘academic’, or school-like, settings often produce inhibitions in them, even fear. They may also be affected by issues of shame: they don’t want to risk making mistakes and appearing foolish and so might take extra long to pre-process the information before speaking up. As well, they may be afraid of comparisons with their peers. Some might have little educational experience in their home country and are not used to the interactions in a classroom. Then, there are personality factors and issues to do with one’s identity. They may be shy and introverted; they may be anxious or working towards social maturity; they may even be suffering from an identity ‘crisis’ and feeling that their sense of self is threatened in their painful process of dealing with culture shock. The emotional and psychological issues involved may be exceedingly complex. Others may have hidden mental health issues.
Is there, though, a role for silence in the language classroom? Some teachers I know have shared that sometimes they find they have to facilitate special ‘listening’ sessions where the students are allowed to listen and digest what they are learning first. If they don’t listen accurately, they don’t produce accurately. Some approaches to teaching facilitate silence, for example, Total Physical Response, a widely accepted technique which asks students to respond to commands to do the actions, without speaking. Other teachers like to at times ask students to whisper to themselves or vocalize privately before speaking things out.
Silence gives space. The strategic and creative use of silence by the teacher may foster learning, ease pressure and let the students be free of distractions. For example, after a ‘busy’ communicative exercise where all are encouraged to speak, students can be allowed to sit in silence for some time, to reflect on the experience and to process the information. There may also be the use of silence during writing, appreciation of poetry and music, or activities where students are asked to reflect on their experience there and then. Words are surrounded by silences, and get their meanings from them.
There is a case for what some, in fact, call the “silent period” that pertains to beginning students and is internal to the language learning process. It originates from and is related to Stephen Krashen’s “input hypothesis” which claims that an important condition for ‘acquisition’ of language is that students are continually fed with “comprehensible input”. If they listen and understand what they’ve been taught, production of speech will naturally emerge after an initial period of ‘silence’ that may last from a few months to a year or two. Just like babies who understand a lot more than they can articulate, the students are also learning a lot although they cannot produce the language yet.
This theory has generated heated debates. Some find the use of silence unacceptable because of the natural role for the teacher to encourage students to speak. Others are afraid of the negative aspects of silence like its use to hide incomprehension or laziness.
To be fair, however, we must ask what we can take from such a hypothesis. I think that the assumption that listening and comprehension precede production is accurate, and is true at every stage of learning. We do well to encourage intensive listening, and engagement with meaningful and interesting, if not compelling, material. Rather than saying ‘you are not allowed to talk’, we should encourage students to listen to the ‘new and strange sounds’ as closely as possible, with understanding, and that may be hard work. When they hear enough in a variety of situations to the point that they can recall the word during a life situation where the word is called for, then speaking it is of course the right thing to do. Before they reach that point, we should also allow them to experiment and make mistakes. I also think that allowing students to be as relaxed as possible is a high and valuable aim. This may mean not forcing them to speak. We should also lead with empathy so that their ‘intensive listening’ is enriched with empathy as well. The trust established between you and the student and among the students may eventually dissolve the ‘problem’ of excessive silence. The use of humour and the ‘encouragement’ of ‘mistakes’ also help with engaging the quiet students.
For many of us, ‘the quiet student’ is a live, and perhaps urgent, issue. You must have thoughts about it, before and after reading this article. Why not share your thoughts with us by emailing us at eslministries@gmail.com?
Author’s note: See these links for more information regarding the “silent period”:
http://www.eslbase.com/teaching/silent-period-second-language-acquisition
http://www.analomba.com/anas-blog/the-silent-period-in-language-acquisition-truth-or-myth/For more on engaging quiet students, see:
How to deal with quiet students?
Author of ‘Quiet’ Talks About How to Engage Introverts in the Classroom
Editor’s Note:
This article was first published in The ESL Link Volume 7.5 in 2016.