Why are you so petrified of silence?

Why is it as language teachers we sometimes feel grossly uncomfortable when the class is sitting in silence. We sometimes think, these guys are learning a language why on Earth aren't they speaking it, ALL THE TIME?

Last year I had the good fortune of working with some great teachers and here I picked up a number of great activities. One of which was centred almost entirely around the notion of a silent classroom. I used this wonderful warmer and have since adapted it for my teenage PET class and will do so with my pre-advanced class later in the term.

So the big question. How can we make students speak without making a sound?

It's pretty simple really, they write to each other. The first time I did this in class, I did it with every single level I had.

I made sure they entered the class in absolute silence. There was a slide on the board (which you can find here) which told them they weren't to speak to each other but they could communicate through scraps of paper and a pencil.
The slide also contained a couple of starter questions to help them on their way.
For the kiddies it was stuff like: "What did you do at school today?"
For the adults something similar but a little more complex like: What did you get up to at work today?


It worked really well.

For that very reason I decided to do it again, this time with my PET students. I told them to make sure they brought their mobile phones to class.

When they entered the room in silence they could see the activity outline up on the board . I sat them in a circle facing away from each other and gave each of them a piece of paper to write their number on.

I then gave the numbers out to different students.  I then let them chat to each other, freely. In English, in silence. I put a few ideas up on the board to help them out. I gestured questioningly towards my students to see if anyone wanted to make a suggestion at a conversation starter. If so they had the chance to write it up on the board (without using words of course)

The next step was to see if they could deal with multitasking.  I ushered them to change numbers and add the new person to their group. There were then three people in each group and everyone was speaking to in two groups each.

At first this caused a bit of an issue, but soon enough their amazing teenage brains adapted to it and their multiwhatsapping brain came to the fore. After a good ten minutes I stopped everyone and asked them to read aloud what had come up in their conversations.

Some of it was surprisingly deep, two of the students had got themselves into a discussion as to how the Spanish education system was in desperate need for reform. Other students were talking about how good Cristiano's goal was the night before. Best of all though they had been writing in English and correcting each other's work and having fun at the same time. Never in my life have I seen a group of 12 teenagers so happy to sit in silence and speak English to each other. It was utterly glorious.

Give it a go. If your students don't have phones, just give them some scraps of paper and get them to pass them around.

'til the next time