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“Blessed is the man who trusts in
the LORD, and whose hope is
the LORD.”
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Teachers benefit from good communication skills in
three different areas: when communicating with
students, with parents, and with colleagues.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
behavior from our dedicated article
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.
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.
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).
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.
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
1-Guided practice:
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 :
Learner 2 : I am fond of....................... What about you?
Learner 1 : Me? I am fond of..............................................
/sports - Diving /
/running - Walking /
/riding horses - Paddling in a boat /
/traveling outdoors -Staying indoors/
3-Elicitation:
I elicit the rule form from the students themselves.
How?
I ask my learners questions like the following
1-What repeated words have you practiced?
2-What does the structure consist of?
3-What comes before the pattern?
4-What comes after the pattern?
Extension:
View Resources:
1-Go To : CLT Page.
2-Teaching Vocabulary communicatively
4-Active Teaching.
5-Critical Thinking 1
6- Critical thinking 2
7-Critical Thinking Test.
8- Learning outcomes.
9-Learner-centered Teaching.
10- Education with a good quality.
11-A Learning and Teaching
Environment / Environmental Edu
12- Technology in Teaching.
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