Must You Go On?

For a while, cutting down on teacher talk was the ‘in thing’, but it’s not always bad to be the sage on the stage, says Julie Price Grimshaw...

“In some lessons there is too much teacher talk”; “Occasionally teachers talk for too long during the lesson.” Not long ago, criticisms like this were common in inspection reports. And on many occasions I have watched pupils become distracted, start to fidget and bicker or even fall asleep while the teacher talked at great length. In fact, there have been a few lessons where I have found myself drifting off. But is a lot of ‘teacher talk’ always a bad thing?

Last year I was sitting in an office with another inspector analysing some data. Outside the room in the library area we could hear a teacher talking to her pupils. I couldn’t make out what she was saying, but the talk went on for quite a long time. When we left the office we saw the teacher, dressed up and ‘in role’ as a pirate, talking about treasure to a group of Year 4 pupils who were totally engrossed and hanging on to her every word. As we walked past, she said to the pupils, “Look at these evil scoundrels walking by here!” You’ve got to hand it to that teacher. Not only did she do a great job of using ‘teacher talk’ to develop her pupils’ vocabulary, as shown by their subsequent written work, but she also managed to refer to two inspectors, quite legitimately in the context, as “evil scoundrels”. Genius.

Listening is an incredibly important skill and we need to find the most effective way of developing this. The secret is in thinking very carefully about what we actually say. If we’re explaining something, what’s the very best way of doing this? How much do we really need to say and what language should we use? I’ve seen teachers devote a tremendous amount of time to preparing good resources for a lesson, which hasn’t then gone according to plan simply because their explanations lacked detail or, conversely, included far too much unnecessary detail that resulted in pupils being overwhelmed. This happened in a lesson I observed earlier this year where the teacher, reading from the board, said, “And if you’re aiming for a Level 4a you need to develop and interweave elements of description, action and characterisation… and if you want to get a Level 5a you need to effectively combine description, action and characterisation and experiment with imagery and alliteration…and if you’re going for a Level 5b you need…” At this point I turned my fading attention to the glazed over expressions on the pupils’ faces. One sighed and said to me, “Are we going to get to do some writing?” The answer was yes – but only after another 10 minutes of teacher talk about things that, quite frankly, had very little impact in improving the quality of the pupils’ writing.

I once visited a school where ‘too much teacher talk’ had been identified as a key issue. I watched a teacher giving an excellent introduction to a maths task; it was clear, engaging, well- paced and humorous with just the right amount of detail. Every pupil was listening carefully. However, the teacher looked at the clock and then rushed at breakneck speed through the final part of the explanation, leaving most pupils confused and unsure about the task. She later explained that, “We’ve all been told about the 20/80 rule. We are banned from talking for more than 20 per cent of a lesson and my 12 minutes was nearly up.” I could understand the school’s approach to tackling the key issue, but this experience highlighted a vital point: quality must be considered alongside quantity.

I’ve seen lessons with little teacher talk where the learning has been quite poor; I’ve also seen lessons where teachers have talked for long periods to fascinated pupils, using teacher talk brilliantly to bring about high quality learning. No observer should criticise ‘too much teacher talk’ without considering the impact on learning. And so many pupils would benefit enormously simply from us giving more thought to planning how we use talk to bring about learning.

About the author

Julie Price Grimshaw is a teacher, teacher trainer, and education consultant. She has taught in primary and secondary phases in schools and has been involved in school inspections since 2001.