64 Part II: Putting Your Lesson Together
report writing. In Chapter 6 I talk about ideas for practice and production
activities and how to use them.
Stepping Out of the Spotlight to Let Your Students Shine
In the TEFL industry, TTT, or Teacher Talking Time, is seen as something
to be minimised. Unlike the traditional image most people have of what a
teacher does, in TEFL, it isn’t a good thing to be standing at the board talking
for the majority of the lesson for several reasons:
✓ Students need time to practise speaking in the lesson and if the
teacher hogs the limelight this becomes difficult. Bearing in mind that
the lesson is sometimes the only opportunity the student has to speak
English, it would be tragic if the only person speaking is the one who
already knows the language perfectly.
✓ Students get bored when they have to sit listening. Much better to
have them actively involved in a task or interaction.
✓ Lectures leave no room for progress checks. Students need to dem-
onstrate understanding throughout the lesson, which means they need
to speak and write. Even if they smile and nod while you’re speaking, it
doesn’t guarantee understanding.
You can employ a variety of techniques to avoid talking too much to the det-
riment of your students:
✓ Encourage students to solve problems. Whenever possible, get stu-
dents to work things out for themselves. Eliciting means asking students
questions that lead them where you want them to be. So ask focused
questions instead of making statements.
✓ Promote learner independence. Encourage your students to develop
strategies that allow them to cope without you. For example, show them
how to organise information in their notebooks in a logical fashion so
that they end up with a sound reference book, instead of asking you all
the time.
✓ Make dictionaries available. If there’s a class set of English-English dic-
tionaries (with the key word and the definition both in English instead of
translated from language into another) in the classroom, you won’t have
to define every difficult word.
