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Interrupting Students

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Teaching > Classroom Techniques
Teaching > Classroom Techniques
TESL/TEFL > Quick Teaching Tips

Interrupting Students is not a good idea in your TEFL classroom.

In everyday speech we interrupt each other, finish each other's sentences and so on. This should be avoided in the classroom. Students (especially at lower levels) need to have time to gather their thoughts, often to translate from their MT into the TL and to think about phrasing.

Interrupting them just breaks this silence and can often lead to discouraged students. In some cultures, it is also considered rude to interrupt someone who is speaking.

Look at this typical example:

T: What's happening here? [shows picture of a man swimming in the sea]
S: There is... one man... er...
T: swimming in the sea. Good.

Instead the teacher should embrace the silence and wait for the student to gather their thoughts and complete the sentence.

This is also related to Teacher Talking Time.

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