Job Discussion Forums

[Atlas]

Do you allow the talkative students to dominate English corner, or do you put a muzzle on them?

In my school, the students pay a pretty penny to attend, and while I take care to include everyone and make a safe atmosphere for conversation, I decided not to muzzle any student. They paid for the right and I let them use it. If another student complains, I say, I'm a capitalist, not a communist. The early bird gets the worm. Try to answer faster and speak more. I listen to everyone equally, but I can't force anyone to speak. The onus is on the student, to interact and not wait to be called on.

Of course, I'm in China, where the students are accustomed to a very robotic lecture atmosphere, answering only direct questions and sitting in silence when asked for general opinions on things. No one wants to be the first to break the silence, nor be the first to offer an opinion. It's regarded as too egotistical I suppose. However, seeing as how we are preparing them for cross-cultural interaction, I think it's a more valuable lesson to make themselves heard or risk being discarded in a business meeting. The English corner is a safe environment to stretch one's assertiveness muscles too.

It's not much of a problem, but I'm curious about other teacher's opinions and experiences on this matter.

[Glenski]

I'm a bit confused.

[Atlas]

I teach adults, so I just mean someone who wants to answer every question and talk for 3 minutes. They tend to want you to lecture and answer brief direct questions....

[merlin]

during pairwork pair them up with another just like themsleves and let the battle begin! Group the untalkative types in 3s and 4s and hope they can muster a few sentences each to break up the silence in their corner.

Do a changeup every once in a while and match a silent type with a talker just to give everyone a feel for the difference.

[Glenski]

Atlas,

Ah, now I understand.

When I taught conversation school classes to adults, I ran into a handful of people like that. Sorry to say, there were no others in the class with them, so I couldn't pawn them off on equally talkative types.

I just made sure they knew they had time limits and had to stay on target with the topic. Two guys didn't like that and quit.

[shmooj]

A couple of times when I was in Japan I had a really dominant student join a class and monopolise every opportunity to speak. I would wait until another student inevitably sidled up to me after class a few weeks later to complain. They were usually speaking for the rest of the group. I would suggest that they learn strategies such as interrupting, holding the conversation and active listening to counteract this, as we would do. In both cases, this was successful with the classes reaching equilibrium about three/four months after the dominant students joined and, in both cases, the other students working really hard to acquire conversational strategies that worked well.

Obviously, this approach requires the same students and is long term. Doesn't work with very large classes where people are swapping partners a lot and may only be on a course for a few weeks. But then, arguably, they wouldn't have to put up with it for the long term as in my example.

[dajiang]

What about appointing those very talkative ss to be 'moderators' of a discussion. So, they'd be in charge of keeping the discussion going by prompting others. This way they'd still have a central role in the discussion but won't speak too much themselves, and it might be a good learning activity for them having to listen to everyone else?
The teacher will be even more in the background that way, only speaking when absolutely necessary.
Once I had lots and lots of people in an EC, so I appointed the more advanced students to lead the discussions in different groups. I'd walk among the groups sitting in with each one for some time. Then after a while we'd share our conclusions among the groups.

Dajiang

[carnac]

I am fascinated by your use of the phrase "peanut gallery" and wonder where you learned it? The etymology is very specific and unusual. I am, I will confess, very surprised to see it appear in this forum.
Where did you learn this phrase? Please!

[Atlas]

[Dragonsaver]

'Peanut gallery' is an old expression. I have been around for an eon or two and I have heard it used many times. It is, sort of, in the same vein as ' the cheap seats'. I think it may have originated in old saloons where they served peanuts with the beer but that is just a guess.

[Guy Courchesne]

Q] From Steve Klimback: �May I please ask what is the origin of the phrase peanut gallery in the context: �That is enough from the peanut gallery�. The only mildly plausible origin I could guess was in relation to a section of seats sold at plays.�
[A] It does have a theatrical origin, and goes back to America at the end of last century. The peanut gallery was the topmost tier of seats, the cheapest in the house, a long way from the stage. The same seats in British theatres were (and still are) often called �the gods� because you were so high you seemed to be halfway to heaven, up there with the allegorical figures that were often painted on the ceiling. On both sides of the Atlantic, these seats attracted an impecunious class of patron, with a strong sense of community, often highly irreverent and with a well-developed ability to heckle, hence the modern figurative meaning. A significant difference between the American and British theatres is that American patrons ate peanuts; these made wonderful missiles for showing their opinion of artistes they didn�t like.
Most Americans of a certain age will know the phrase because it was used in a slightly different sense in the fifties children�s television programme, the Howdy Doody Show. There it was the name for the ground-level seating for the kids, the �peanuts�, though the phrase was almost certainly derived from the older sense. They were just as noisy and irreverent as their theatrical forebears, or indeed the groundlings of Shakespeare�s time, with a liking for low humour and a total lack of sense or discrimination.

[Mangler]

I've got a one ESL class, just one, with 13-15 year old German teenagers.

At times I wish they would bring back flogging. I envy anybody whose non-adult students retain the ability to quiietly pay attention for longer than 15 minutes.

If your young people don't go beserk during 90 minutes of instruction then consider yourself blessed.

[Sheep-Goats]

[eslHQ]