Communication is key in the classroom: successful teaching is generally
considered to require only 50% knowledge to 50% communication skills. As
a result, a teacher should be proficient in all four modes of
communication – listening, speaking, reading, and writing – and should
know how to utilise this proficiency effectively in a school
environment.
Being able to do this has been proven to impact the success
students achieve in their academic lives, as well as the teacher’s own
career success.
Since the ultimate goal of language
learning is communication, classroom presentation should, from the
outset, be directed toward the development of communication skills.
Learning requires practice, but this practice should be communication
practice, not mere pattern practice.
Why Effective Communication Skills?
Teachers benefit from good communication skills in three different
areas: when communicating with students, with parents, and with
colleagues.
Communicating with Students
Communication skills are most vital for interactions with students,
because the act of teaching itself requires them. In your role, you are
responsible for comprehending and breaking down complex information,
conveying this information clearly to your students (both verbally and
in written resources), presenting in a manner that sustains their
attention, and listening to and resolving their questions or problems.
You are also required to adapt content for different learning styles,
motivate students to learn, build supportive relationships using
encouragement and empathy, manage the classroom, and give feedback –
making your classroom a safe and supportive learning environment. All of
these things require good communication skills.
The better your communication skills, the more effectively you can
perform these tasks. In turn, your students will make more academic
progress. Studies have found that the success of students is directly
related to interactive, engaging teaching environments formed by able
teachers .
Additionally, the way that you
communicate with your students can positively affect their perceptions
of school, their role in the classroom, themselves and their abilities,
and their motivation to succeed .
However, this works both ways: poor communication skills – and thus
poor methods of teaching – causes students’ comprehension levels to
drop, and may affect their academic progress negatively. It could also
lead to students lacking motivation, disliking school, and believing
themselves to be unable to achieve. This could have consequences for the
rest of their lives.
Therefore, effective communication between teachers and students is
extremely important. It allows you to perform your job well, with
positive results for your pupils. An added benefit is that your class
can use you as a model for improving their own communication skills,
which are critical for their development and future learning.
Effective coaching and mentoring can help boost your communication
with students as you focus on three key areas: foundations, principles
and practice. Learn how to coach or mentor with consistency here.
Strategies for Effective Communication in the Classroom
What we classify as ‘good’ or ‘effective’ communication depends on
the context. When you are presenting in front of the class, you will use
different strategies than when you are facilitating a group discussion,
or speaking to a student one-to-one.
Here, we will suggest eight strategies that are applicable to each of the contexts that you may encounter.
1. Create a safe learning environment with supportive relationships
It has been proven that supportive relationships between students and
teachers have a positive impact on class engagement, participation, and
the students’ achievements. It has even been suggested that these
supportive relationships may negate the tendency for low-income students
to have poorer school outcomes.
This is because, when students feel supported, they are more
comfortable expressing their own thoughts and ideas in class
discussions, attempting challenges, and asking when they need help.
Higher levels of engagement and participation then lead to better
developed knowledge and greater achievement.
A supportive learning environment is built using communication: you
should get to know your students well, and show them that they are safe
from judgement or humiliation in your classroom. It is a good idea to
learn students’ names early in the year, and use them often.
Have an
open-door policy for students to come and talk to you about any issues,
and be empathic and caring when you interact with them at all times:
don’t tell them off for not understanding and don’t ridicule their
thoughts and ideas.
Additionally, you should recognize that some students don’t feel
comfortable talking in front of the class. If you do ask them to
participate, you could use scaffolding (such as sentence starters) to
make them feel safer doing so.
However, forced participation is usually
unnecessary: it is likely that quieter students have excellent listening
skills, and are learning just as much, despite not sharing their own
thoughts.
2. More teamwork
Teamwork and group discussions contribute to making the classroom a
more comfortable environment. By working in small groups, students are
able to share their ideas more easily, and improve their own
communication skills.
These activities also give them a good opportunity
to ask you questions and get feedback on their work, leading to
effective communication between you, better understanding of the lesson,
and academic benefits.
You could also try to improve your communication skills through
teamwork with your colleagues. Planning more lessons together, sharing
ideas, and problem-solving together will develop the way that you
interact.
3. Body language
Communication is not only verbal, but also non-verbal: you should
ensure that the signals you are giving out through your body language
are positive, confident, and engaging.
For example, making eye contact with students when you are talking to
them shows that you are being supportive and attentive. Making eye
contact is also important when you are presenting to the whole class –
it motivates everyone to pay attention, which helps them to learn, as
well as making them feel involved.
In order to make more eye contact,
you may have to learn your lesson content more thoroughly in advance, so
that you don’t have to look away to read your notes.
As you teach, you should use gestures to emphasize your words. This
increases the interactivity of the lesson, making it more visually
interesting and hence, more memorable.
Keep your arms open – do not fold
them – and use smiles, nods, and thumbs up to encourage students when
they participate. Moving around the classroom while you teach can help
to remove the barrier between you and your students, and gives them less
opportunity to zone out or get distracted.
Body language is also important when dealing with negative behavior.
To avoid being confrontational, ensure that you don’t stand directly
above or in front of a student, point, or invade their personal space.
It may be effective to get down to their level and talk quietly about
their behavior, or speak to them outside the classroom, to avoid
drawing too much attention.
Remember that students’ behavior is also a
form of communication, and think about what it is telling you.
You can find out more about dealing with challenging behaviour from our dedicated article
4. Active listening
The ‘listening’ component of communication should not be overlooked –
over 60% of all misunderstandings result from poor listening.
Practicing good listening in the classroom can benefit you in two
ways. Firstly, you will be a model for your students, who will improve
their own listening skills, and thus retain lessons better. Secondly, by
using active listening, you can correct misunderstandings and extend learning, resulting in a better education for your students.
Active listening involves listening carefully to what your students
say, checking that you have understood them correctly (for example,
repeating back to them what you think they have said), building on their
ideas, and challenging or questioning them.
It is the best approach to
use to foster understanding in the classroom, and is an excellent
example of effective communication.
5. Feedback
Feedback is also an important component of communication in the
classroom. There have been many studies focusing on feedback in recent
years. It has been shown that positive feedback (i.e.
praise) builds students’ confidence – making them more likely to believe
that they can succeed – and helps to create a supportive environment
and increase academic success.
You can also use positive feedback to modify students’ behavior: for
example, praising a student for having their hand up is likely to cause
the students around them to stop ‘shouting out’ and copy this behavior, in order to be praised themselves
However, positive feedback can be detrimental to learning if it is
used without being deserved, or too frequently . Phrases
such as ‘good job’ or ‘beautiful’ may not motivate students, because
they do not understand what they are specifically being praised for,
while over-praising can cause children to lack interest in situations
where they are not being praised.
As a
result, you should give specific, deserved positive feedback – use the
student’s name, explicitly state what they are doing right, and thank
them enthusiastically.
Negative feedback is used more often in the
classroom than positive feedback, and many researchers have argued that
this should not be the case. While negative feedback can help students
to improve – for example, by changing their behavior, or trying harder
at a task (Conroy et al., 2014) – it does also contribute to conflictual
relationships with students (e.g. Allen et al., 2013). It has also been
suggested that it can cause lower levels of academic success (e.g. Wu
et al., 2010).
These disadvantages are compounded by the fact that the negative
feedback is not always successful – students tend to continue the behavior despite negative feedback around 20% of the time – and it
tends to decrease students’ motivation and interest in a task (e.g.
Spilt et al., 2016). Other consequences include decreased self-worth,
which impacts children’s academic success .
As such, you should ensure that you use negative feedback only
sparingly; for general classroom management, using positive feedback to
illustrate the behavior that you want to see is much more effective. In
situations where you do have to use negative feedback.
You should
explicitly address the behavior you want to stop, give an explanation
why (e.g. ‘don’t do that. I don’t think it is safe’), allow the student
to think about morality (e.g. ‘are you doing the right thing?’), or use a
simple form of ‘no’ (e.g. ‘no’, ‘mm mm’). These techniques increase the
effectiveness of negative feedback, and decrease any detrimental impact
that it might have.
Finally, you should give students the opportunity to give you feedback
on your lessons or teaching styles. This shows that you value their
opinion, increases communication between you, and helps you to improve
your teaching and their learning.
6. Sense of humor
The use of humor in the classroom has been found to increase
learning, self-motivation, and positive relationships between students
and teachers. It allows you to establish a
rapport with your class, and keep them interested in the lesson.
For example, you might tell jokes or funny anecdotes, give
lighthearted personal examples, or laugh at students’ own jokes.
However, you should ensure that you don’t use negative humor – where
you demean or embarrass students – or humor that is either irrelevant
to the lesson, disturbing, violent, sexual, or forced. Only continue to
use humor that has received a positive response from the class (such as
laughing).
7. Technical skills
Using up-to-date teaching aids such as computers, videos, and online
resources is another way to keep students engaged and reinforce their
understanding.
It can also increase the effectiveness of your
communication with students with different learning styles, who may
benefit more from online resources than more old-fashioned ones. Try to
work some of these aids into your lessons on a regular basis.
8. Be clear
Good communication – and good teaching – is about understanding and
being understood. For this reason, you should always be clear and
unambiguous, and adapt your words to your audience. Think about this
while writing lesson plans (ensure that you break complex ideas down
into simple, logical parts for your audience to understand), but also
while you interact with the children after presenting the lesson.
For
example, you may wish to check that your teaching was clear by asking
your students questions, or requesting summaries of the lesson in their
own words.
When you ask your students questions, use appropriate scaffolding to
ensure that they understand exactly what you are asking. If you teach in
a primary school, your students’ language abilities won’t yet be fully
developed.
Closed questions (eliciting yes/no responses), forced
alternatives (such as ‘is he angry or happy?’), and sentence starters
(e.g. ‘a noun is…’) are most effective for communicating with younger
children. For older children, open-ended questions (such as ‘how do you
think…’ or ‘tell me about…’) allow them to extend their thinking and
develop their problem-solving skills.
The importance of effective communication in the classroom should
not be underestimated – it can have an impact on your students’
academic progress, feelings of self-worth, perceptions of school, and
your own career.
Using communication strategies like the ones we have
detailed above could allow you to become a more successful teacher who
better meets your students’ needs.
An Example
The pattern is: (Be Fond of)
1-Guided practice:
/ Football - Basketball /
Learner 1 : What are you fond of ?
Learner 2 : I am fond of...................... , What about you?
Learner 1 : Me? I am fond of........................................... .
2-Free Practice :
/ Swimming - Diving /
Learner 1 : What are you fond of ?
Learner 2 : I am fond of....................... What about you?
Learner 1 : Me? I am fond of..............................................
/sports - Diving /
/reading - Writing /
/running - Walking /
/riding horses - Paddling in a boat /
/traveling outdoors -Staying indoord/
3-Elicitation:
I elicit the rule form from the students themselves. How?