Over the Wall of Silence

Getting Students to Talk 23

Chapter 1

kind of testing away from the group, while other students are doing something else. But is it even possible to do that in class time? We’re here to say that, yes, it’s very possible -up to a point. All you need is a system that is efficient (at least half the class tested in thirty minutes) but light (wasting no time on organizing seating charts) and a little bit of math on the side. OK, let’s talk numbers. In a standard university class you have 90 minutes to work with, but of course you don’t want to devote most of the class time to testing. How about thirty minutes? Would you be willing to use that time to ensure increased motivation and par ticipation? Here’s how it works. Let’s imagine you have 32 students in your class. You call two random students, and they come and sit with you in a corner of the classroom. They have a conversation with each other and you for around three minutes (based on what they have learnt over the last few weeks). You give them each a grade on the spot, based on a rubric you have decided upon and communicated to the class beforehand. They go back to their seat and the next pair comes up. In this way, you manage to test half of your class one week, and the other half the next. This process takes you 32 minutes (8 pairs x 3 minutes each) + (1 minute of changeover time between each pair). This might sound like a lot. After all, it is a third of the class time. But once you see the motivating effect this has on the students, it will seem like a bargain. If you’ve ever sat down with students for conversation away from the rest of the class, you’ll know that this is worthwhile. Meanwhile, one hundred percent of your students are doing meaningful conversation practice! And students truly enjoy