After completing this module you will be able to:

 Identify the different purposes and functions which communication serves in

the classroom
 Identify the different types of communications
 Understand and define the term classroom register
 Identify the differences between how a teacher uses communication and how
a student uses communication
 Manage different situations in class through applying the different functions
and types of communication
Introduction to Communication in the Classroom
As a teacher, you face almost continual talk at school, supplemented by ample
amounts of non-verbal communication - gestures, facial expressions, and other
“body language”.
Often the talk involves many people at once, or even an entire class, and individuals
have to take turns speaking while also listening to others having their turns, or
sometimes ignoring the others if a conversation does not concern them.
As the teacher, therefore, you find yourself playing an assortment of roles when
communicating in classrooms: Master of Ceremonies, referee - and of course a
source of new knowledge.
Your challenge is to sort the roles out so that you are playing the right ones in the
right combinations at the right times.
Often, you will indeed be more sincere and brief, and you will find that minimizing
power differences between you and students is a good idea.
Classroom events are often so complex that just talking with students can become
confusing. It helps to think of the challenge as a problem in communication - or as
one expert put it, of "who says what to whom, and with what effect" (Lasswell, 1964).
In classrooms, things often do not happen at an even pace or in a logical order, or
with just the teacher and one student interacting while others listen or wait patiently.
While such moments do occur, events may sometimes instead be more like a
kaleidoscope of overlapping interactions, disruptions, and decisions - even when
activities are generally going well. An example of this may be seen on the next slide.
One student finishes a task while another is still only halfway done. A third student
looks like she is reading, but she may really be dreaming.
You begin to bring her back on task by speaking to her, only to be interrupted by a
fourth student with a question about an assignment. While you answer the fourth
student, a fifth walks in with a message from the office requiring a response; so the
bored (third) student is overlooked for a while longer.

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Meanwhile, the first student - the one who finished the current task - now begins
telling a joke to a sixth student, just to pass the time. You wonder, “Should I speak
now to the bored, quiet reader or to the joke-telling student? Or should I move on
with the lesson?”
While you are wondering this, a seventh student raises his hand with a question, and
so on.
One way to manage situations like these is to understand and become comfortable
with the key features of communication that are characteristic of classrooms.
One set of features has to do with the functions or purposes of communication,
especially the balance among talk related to content, to procedures, and to
controlling behavior.
Another feature has to do with the nature of non-verbal communication - how it
supplements and sometimes even contradicts what is said verbally
A third feature has to do with the unwritten expectations held by students and
teachers about how to participate in particular kinds of class activities - what will later
be known as the structure of participation.
Content, Procedures, and Behavior Control
Classrooms are different from many other group situations in that communication
serves a unique combination of three purposes at once (Wells, 2006) :
 Content
 Procedures
 Behavior Control
Content Talk
Content talk focuses on what is being learned; it happens when a teacher or student
states or asks about an idea or concept for example, or when someone explains or
elaborates on some bit of new knowledge (Burns & Myhill, 2004).
Usually content talk relates in some obvious way to the curriculum or to current
learning objectives, as when a teacher tells a high school history class, “As the text
explains, there were several major causes of the American Civil War.”
But content talk can also digress from the current learning objectives; a first-grade
student might unexpectedly bring a caterpillar to school and ask about how it
transforms into a butterfly.
Procedural Talk
Procedural talk, as its name implies, is about administrative rules or routines needed
to accomplish tasks in a classroom. It happens, for example, when the teacher says,
“When you are done with your spelling books, put them in the bins at the side of the
room”, or when a student asks, “Do you want us to print our names at the top of
page?"

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Procedural talk provides information that students need to coordinate their activities
in what can be a relatively crowded space - the classroom - and under conditions in
which time may be relatively short or tightly scheduled. It generally keeps activities
organized and flowing smoothly.
Procedural talk is not primarily about removing or correcting unwanted behavior,
although certain administrative procedures might sometimes annoy a particular
student, or students might sometimes forget to follow a procedure.
Instead it is intended to provide the guidance that students need to coordinate with
each other and with the teacher.
Control Talk
Control talk is about preventing or correcting misbehaviors when they occur,
particularly when the misbehaviors are not because of ignorance of procedures. It
happens, for example, when a teacher says, “Jill, you were talking when you should
have been listening”, or “Jason, you need to work on your math instead of doodling.”
Most control talk originates with the teacher, but students sometimes engage in it
with each other, if not with the teacher. One student may look at a nearby classmate
who is whispering out of turn and quietly say, “Shhh!” in an attempt to silence the
behavior. Or a student may respond to being teased by a classmate by saying
simply, “Stop it!”
Whether originating from the teacher or a student, control talk may not always be
fully effective. But its purpose is, by definition, to influence or control inappropriate
behavior.
Combining Functions
What can make classroom discourse confusing is that two of its functions - content
and procedures - often become combined with the third, control talk, in the same
remark or interaction. For example, a teacher may ask a content-related question as
a form of control talk.
She may, for example, ask, “Jeremy, what did you think of the film we just saw?” The
question is apparently about content, but the teacher may also be trying to end
Jeremy’s daydreaming and to get him back on task - an example of control talk.
Or a teacher may state a rule: “When one person is talking, others need to be
listening.” The rule is procedural in that it helps to coordinate classroom dialogue, but
it may also control inattentive behavior.
Double functions like those mentioned can sometimes confuse students because of
their ambiguity, and lead to misunderstandings between certain students and
teachers.

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A student may hear only the content or procedural function of a teacher’s comment,
and miss an implied request or command to change inappropriate behavior (Collins
& Michaels, 2006).
Double functions can also help lessons to flow smoothly by minimizing the disruption
of attending to a minor behavior problem and by allowing more continuous attention
to content or procedures.
Types of Communication
Another way to understand classroom communication is to distinguish verbal from
non-verbal communication and intended from unintended forms of communication.
Click on the following tabs to explore this concept in further detail.
Verbal Communication:
As the name suggests, verbal communication is a message or information
expressed in words, either orally or in writing.
Classrooms obviously have lots of verbal communication; it happens every time a
teacher explains a bit of content, asks a question, or writes information or
instructions on the chalkboard.
The classroom language register works the same way; it helps indicate who the
teacher is and who the student is. Teachers and students use the register more in
some situations than in others, but its use is common enough that most people in our
society have no trouble recognizing it when they hear it (Cazden, 2001).
Non-Verbal Communication:
Non-verbal communications are gestures or behaviors that convey information, often
simultaneously with spoken words (Guerrero, 2006). It happens, for example, when
a teacher looks directly at students to emphasize a point or to assert her authority, or
when the teacher raises her eyebrows to convey disapproval or disagreement.
Non-verbal behaviors are just as plentiful as verbal communications, and while they
usually add to a current verbal message, they sometimes can also contradict it.
A teacher can state verbally, “This math lesson will be fun”, and a non-verbal twinkle
in the eye can confirm the message non-verbally. But a simultaneous non-verbal
sigh or slouch may send the opposite message - that the lesson will not in fact be
fun, in spite of the teacher’s verbal claim.
Unintended Communication:
Whether verbal or non-verbal, however, classroom communications often convey
more meaning than is intended.
Unintended communications are the excess meanings of utterances; they are the
messages received by students without the teacher’s awareness or desire.

4
A teacher may say, “This section of the text won’t be on the test, but read it anyway
for background.” But a student may instead hear the message, “Do not read this
section of the text.” What is heard is not what the teacher intended to be heard.
Avoiding Misinterpretation:
Like many public settings that involve a diversity of people, classrooms tend to rely
heavily on explicit, verbal communication, while at the same time recognizing and
allowing non-verbal communications to occur (Neill, 1991).
This priority accounts for the characteristically businesslike style of teacher talk. A
major reason for relying on an explicit, businesslike verbal style is that diversity
among individuals increases the chances of their misinterpreting each other.
Because of differences in background, the partners may differ in how they expect to
structure conversation as well as other kinds of dialog. Misunderstandings may result
- sometimes without the partners being able to pinpoint the cause.
Register
Teachers and students have identifiable styles of talking to each other that linguists
call a register. A register is a pattern of vocabulary, grammar, and expressions or
comments that people associate with a social role. Click on the following tabs to
explore this concept in further detail.
Register:
A familiar example is the "baby-talk" register often used to speak to an infant. Its
features - simple repeated words and nonsense syllables, and exaggerated changes
in pitch- mark the speaker as an adult and mark the listener as an infant.
The classroom language register works the same way; it helps indicate who the
teacher is and who the student is. Teachers and students use the register more in
some situations than in others, but its use is common enough that most people in our
society have no trouble recognizing it when they hear it (Cazden, 2001).
Scenario of a Register

A: All right now, I want your eyes up here. All eyes on me, please. B, are you ready
to work? We are going to try a new kind of math problem today. It’s called long
division. Does anyone know what long division is? C, what do you think it is?
C: Division with bigger numbers?
A: Any other ideas? D?
E (not D): Division by two digits.
A: …I only call on people who raise their hands. D, can you help with the answer?
D: Division with remainders.
A: Close. Actually you’re both partly right.

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In this scene Person A must surely be the teacher because he or she uses a lot of
procedural and control talk, and because he or she introduces a new curriculum
topic, long division. The other Persons (B, C, D, and E) must be students because
they only respond to the questions, and because they individually say relatively little
compared to Person A.
Why this is Important
In general, effective classroom communication depends on understanding how
features of the classroom register operate during actual class times.
Throughout this module it is assumed that the better the communication, the better
the learning and thinking displayed by students.
How Teachers Talk
Although teacher talk varies somewhat with the tasks or purposes at hand, it also
has uniformities that occur across a range of situations.
Using detailed observations of discourse in science activities, for example, Jay
Lemke identified all of the strategies on the following page from observations of
teachers' classroom talk (1990).
Each strategy simultaneously influences the course of discussion and focuses
students' attention, and in these ways also helps indirectly to insure appropriate
classroom behavior.
How Teachers Talk
Click on the following tabs to further explore the concept of how teachers talk.
Nominating, Terminating and Interupting Speakers
Teachers often choose who gets to speak. (“Jose, what do you think about X?”).
On the other hand, they often bring an end to a student’s turn at speaking or even
interrupt the student before he or she finishes. (“Thanks; we need to move on now.”)
Marking Importance or Relevance
Teachers sometimes indicate that an idea is important (“That’s a good idea, Lyla.”).
On the other hand, they sometimes also indicate that an idea is not crucial or
important (“You're right, but that’s not quite the answer I was looking for.”), or fully
relevant (“We’re talking about the book Wuthering Heights, not the movie that you
may have seen.”).
Marking importance and relevance obviously helps a teacher to reinforce key
content. But the strategy can also serve to improve relationships among students if
the teacher deliberately marks or highlights an idea offered by a quiet or shy student
(O’Connor & Michaels, 1996; Cohen, et al., 2004).
In that case marking importance can build both a student’s confidence and the
student’s status in the eyes of classmates.

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Signaling Boundaries between Activities
Teachers declare when an activity is over and a new one is starting. (“We need to
move on. Put away your spelling and find your math books.”)

In addition to clarifying procedures, though, signaling boundaries can also insure

appropriate classroom behavior.
Ending an activity can sometimes help restore order among students who have
become overly energetic, and shifting to a new activity can sometimes restore
motivation to students who have become bored or tired.
Asking Test Questions and Evaluating Students’ Responses
How Teachers Talk
Click on the following tabs to further explore the concept of how teachers talk.
Teachers often ask test questions - questions to which they already know the
answer. Then they evaluate the quality or correctness of the students’ answers
(Teacher: “How much is 6 x 7?”
Student: “42.”
Teacher: “That’s right.”).
Test questions obviously help teachers to assess students’ learning, but they also
mark the teacher as the expert in the classroom, and therefore as a person entitled
to control the flow of discourse.
There are additional features of teacher-talk that are not unique to teachers. These
primarily function to make teachers’ comments more comprehensible, especially
when spoken to a group, but they also help to mark a person who uses them as a
teacher (Cazden, 2001; Black, 2004).
Exaggerated Changes in Pitch
When busy teaching, teachers tend to exaggerate changes in the pitch of their voice
- reminiscent of the “sing-song” style of adults when directing speech to infants.

Exaggerated pitch changes are especially characteristic of teachers of young

students, but they happen at all grade levels.
Careful Enunciation
In class teachers tend to speak more slowly, clearly, and carefully than when
conversing with a friend.
The style makes a speaker sound somewhat formal, especially when combined with
formal vocabulary and grammar.

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Formal Vocabulary and Grammar
Teachers tend to use vocabulary and grammar that is more formally polite and
correct, and that uses relatively few slang or casual expressions. (Instead of saying
“Get out your stuff”, they more likely say, “Please get out your materials.”)
The formality creates a businesslike distance between teachers and students -
hopefully one conducive to getting work done, rather than one that seems simply
cold or uncaring.
The touch of formality also makes teachers sound a bit more intelligent or intellectual
than in casual conversation, and in this way reinforces their authority in the
classroom.
How Students Talk
Children and youth also use a characteristic speech register when they are in a
classroom and playing the role of students in the presence of a teacher. Their
register - student talk - differs somewhat from the teacher's because of their obvious
difference in responsibilities, levels of knowledge, and relationships with each other
and with the teacher.
Student-talk and teacher-talk are similar in that both involve language strategies that
guide content and procedures, and that sometimes seek to limit the inappropriate
behavior of others.
Compared to teachers', though, students' language strategies often pursue these
goals a bit more indirectly.
Verbal Communication Used by Students
Click on the following tabs to further explore the concept of verbal communication
used by students.
Agenda Enforcement :
Sometimes students interrupt a discussion to ask about or remind others, and
especially the teacher, of an agreed-on agenda.
For example: if the teacher tells students to open their text to an incorrect page a
student may raise her hand to correct the teacher - or even do so without raising a
hand.
This communication strategy is one of more public, direct ways that students
influence activities in the classroom, but its power is limited, since it does not create
new activities, but simply returns the class to activities agreed on previously.
Digression Attempts
During a discussion or activity, a student asks a question or makes a statement that
is not relevant to the task at hand.
For example: while the teacher is leading students in a discussion of a story that they
read a student raises his hand and asks, "Mr X, when does recess begin?"

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Side Talk
One student talks to another student, either to be sociable ("Did you see that movie
last week?") or to get information needed for the current assigned task ("What page
are we on?")

Sometimes side talk also serves to control or limit fellow students' behavior, and in
this way functions like control-talk by teachers (as when a student whispers, "Shhh!
I'm trying to listen" or "Go ahead and ask her!").
The ability of such talk to influence classmates' behavior is real, but limited, since
students generally do not have as much authority as teachers.
Calling Out
A student speaks out of turn without being recognized by the teacher. The student's
comment may or may not be relevant to the ongoing task or topic, and the teacher
may or may not acknowledge or respond to it.
Whether ignored or not, however, calling out may change the direction of a
discussion by influencing fellow students' thinking or behavior, or by triggering
procedural and control talk by the teacher. ("Jason, it's not your turn; I only call on
students who raise their hands.")
Answering a Question with a Question
Instead of answering a teacher's "test" question directly, the student responds with a
question of her own, either for clarification or as a stalling tactic ("Do you mean X?")
Either way, the effect is to shift the discussion or questioning to content or topics that
are safer and more familiar.
Non-Verbal Communication Used by Students
Click on the following tabs to further explore the concept of non-verbal
communications used by students.
Silence
The student says nothing in response to a speaker's comments or to an invitation to
speak. The speaker could be either the teacher or the fellow student.
The silence makes the speaker less likely to continue the current topic, and more
likely to seek a new one.
Eye Contact and Gaze Aversion
The student looks directly at the teacher while the student is speaking, or else
deliberately averts gaze.
The timing of eye gaze depends partly on cultural expectations that the student
brings to school. But it may also represent a deliberate choice by the student - a
message to the teacher and to classmates.

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Posture
The same can be said about sitting posture. The student may adopt any variety of
postures while sitting (sit up straight vs slouching).
In classroom situations, listening is conventionally indicated by looking directly at the
teacher, and either sitting up straight or leaning slightly forward. Although these
behaviors can be faked, they tend to indicate, and be taken as, a show of interest in
and acceptance of what a speaker is saying.
By engaging in or avoiding these behaviors, therefore, students can sometimes
influence the length and direction of a discussion or activity.
The main points from this module are as follows:
 In classrooms, communication serves a combination of 3 purposes at one
time: content, procedures, and behavior control.
 There are 3 different types of communication: verbal, non-verbal, and
unintentional.
 A register is a pattern of vocabulary, grammar, and expressions or comments
that people associate with a social role. In the classroom, teachers and
students have extremely different roles, so their registers are very different.
 Teachers use communication in ways that signal their authority, some
examples include: nominating, terminating, and interrupting speakers;
marking importance or irrelevance; asking "test" questions and evaluating
students' responses; using enunciation and grammar that formalizes the
environment.
 Students also use communication in the classroom to guide content and
procedures, but are limited in how much they can do this. Some examples
are: agenda enforcement, digression attempts, and answering a question with
a question.
After completing this module you will be able to:
 Identify the different types of verbal communication
 Identify the different forms of non-verbal communication
 Describe strategies used by both teachers and students to communicate
effectively about content
 Describe strategies used by teachers to communicate procedures and
keep control of a class
 Describe some of the issues with non-verbal communication
 Understand and explain why a teacher must take care when
communicating non-verbally
Introduction to Effective Verbal Communication
The following slides contain instructional strategies both for students and for
teachers, and indicate how they contribute to effective verbal communication about
content.

10
As a teacher, when explaining ideas it helps:
 To offer organizing ideas in advance
 To relate new content to prior knowledge
 To organize and elaborate on new information

There are ways in which students can talk about content which may result in greater
understanding of their own thinking, such as:
 Inquiry learning
 Cooperative learning
Content Talk by Teachers
Click on the following tabs to further explore the concept of content talk by teachers.
Using Advance organizers
Advance organizers are statements or ideas that give a concise overview of new
material.
They are used because they orient students’ attention to new ideas that are about to
be learned, and assist in understanding and remembering new material
Relating New materials to Prior Knowledge
This creates explicit connections of new ideas to students’ existing knowledge, which
facilitates discussion of new material by making it more meaningful to students.
Elaborating and Extending New Information:
By explaining new ideas in full and complete terms the teacher can avoid ambiguities
and misunderstandings about new ideas or concepts.
Organizing New Information:
Providing and following a clear structure when explaining new material assists in
understanding and remembering new material.
Content Talk by Students
Click on the following tabs to further explore the concept of content talk by students.
Inquiry Learning
Inquiry Learning is when students pursue problems that they help to formulate for
themselves. This helps because to formulate and investigate a problem, students
need to express clearly what they wish to find out.
Cooperative Learning
If students are to work in small groups to solve a common problem or task they will
need to explain ideas and questions to fellow students clearly.

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Procedural and Control Talk
Click on the following tabs to further explore the concepts of procedural and control
talk.
Introduction
In addition to communicating about content, teachers need to communicate
procedures and expectations about appropriate classroom behavior.
Procedural talk and control talk matter are used in teaching simply because clear
procedures and appropriate classroom behavior are necessary if students are to
learn.
Note that the difference between procedural and content talk is arbitrary to some
extent; in many situations one kind of talk serves the needs of the other kind.
Examples of Strategies for Procedural Talks
■ Creating and discussing procedures for daily routine
■ Announcing transitions between activities
■ Reminding students periodically of procedures for completing a task
Examples of Strategies for Control talks
■ Creating and discussing classroom rules of appropriate behavior
■ Clarifying problem ownership
■ Listening actively and emphatically
■ Using I-messages. I-messages are short messages which assert the feelings of
the person speaking. Usually in the form of one sentence beginning with the word "I".
Introduction to Effective Non-Verbal Communication
In spite of their importance, words are not the only way that teachers and students
communicate.
Gestures and behaviors convey information as well, often supporting a teacher's
words, but sometimes also contradicting them.
Students and teachers express themselves non-verbally in all conversations, so
freely and automatically in fact, that this form of communication can easily be
overlooked.
Eye Contact
One important non-verbal behavior is eye contact, which is the extent and timing of
when a speaker looks directly at the eyes of the listener.
For example, in conversations between friends of equal status most native speakers
of English tend to look directly at the speaker when listening, but to avert their gaze
when speaking (Kleinke, 1986).

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In fact, re-engaging in eye contact often signals that a speaker is about to finish a
turn and is inviting a response from the listener.
Conversations follow different rules if they involve someone of greater authority
talking with someone of lesser authority, such as between a teacher and a student.
In that case, the person in authority signals greater status by gazing directly at the
listener almost continuously, whether listening or speaking.
This alternate pattern can sometimes prove awkward if either party is not expecting
it.
For students unused to continuous eye contact, it can feel like the teacher is staring
excessively, intrusively, or inappropriately; an ironic effect can be for the student to
feel more self-conscious rather than more engaged, which was intended.
For similar reasons, inexperienced or first-time teachers can also feel uncomfortable
with gazing at students continuously.
Nevertheless research about the effects of eye contact suggests that it may help
anyone, whether a student or a teacher, to remember what they are seeing and
hearing (Mason, Hood, & Macrae, 2004).
Communication problems result less from eye contact as such than from differences
in expectations of eye contact. If students' expectations differ very much from the
teacher's, one party may misinterpret the other party's motivations.
Among some non-white ethnic groups, for example, eye contact follows a pattern
that reverses the conventional white, English-language pattern: they tend to look
more intently at a partner when talking, and avert gaze when listening (Razack,
1998).
The alternative pattern works perfectly well as long as both parties expect it and use
it. As you might imagine, though, there are problems if the two partners use opposite
patterns of eye contact.
In that case one person may interpret the direct gaze as an invitation to start talking,
when really it is an invitation to stop talking.
Eventually the conversational partner may find himself interrupting too much, or
simply talking too long at a turn.
The converse can also happen: if the first person looks away, the partner may take
the gesture as inviting the partner to keep listening, when really the first person is
inviting the partner to start talking. Awkward gaps between comments may result.
In either case, if the conversational partners are a teacher and student, rapport may
deteriorate gradually.

In the first case, the teacher may even conclude, wrongly, that the student is socially
inept because the student interrupts so much.

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In the second case, the teacher may conclude - also wrongly - that the student is
very shy or even lacking in language skill.
To avoid such misunderstandings, a teacher needs to note and remember students'
preferred gaze patterns at times when students are free to look wherever and at
whomever they please.
Traditional seats-in-a-row desk arrangements do not work well for this purpose; as
you might suppose, and as research confirms, sitting in rows makes students more
likely to look either at the teacher or to look at nothing in particular (Rosenfield,
Lambert, & Black; Razack, 1998).
Almost any other seating arrangement, such as sitting in clusters or in a circle,
encourages freer patterns of eye contact.
More comfortable eye contact, in turn, makes for verbal communication that is more
comfortable and productive.
Wait Time
Another important non-verbal behavior is wait time, which is the pause between
conversational turns. Wait time marks when a conversational turn begins or ends.
For example, if a teacher asks a question the wait time both allows and prompts
students to formulate an appropriate response.
Studies on classroom interaction generally show that the wait time in most classes
are remarkably short - less than one second (Good & Brophy, 2002).
Unfortunately wait times this short can actually interfere with most students' thinking;
in one second, most students either cannot decide what to say or can only recall a
simple, automatic fact (Tobin, 1987).
Increasing wait times to several seconds has several desirable effects: students give
longer, more elaborate responses, they express more complex ideas, and a wider
range of students participate in discussion.

However for many teachers, learning to increase wait time this much takes
conscious effort, and may feel uncomfortable at first. (If you are trying to wait longer,
a trick is to count silently to five before calling on anyone.)

After a few weeks of practice, discomfort with longer wait times usually subsides,
and the academic benefits of waiting become more evident.
As with eye contact, preferred wait times vary both among individuals and among
groups of students, and the differences in expected wait times can sometimes lead
to awkward conversations.

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Though there are many exceptions, girls tend to prefer longer wait times than boys -
perhaps contributing to an impression that girls are unnecessarily shy or that boys
are self-centered or impulsive.
Students from some ethnic and cultural groups tend to prefer a a much longer wait
time than is typically available in a classroom, especially when English is the
student's second language (Toth, 2004).
Therefore, when a teacher converses with a member of such a group, what feels to
the student like a respectful pause may seem like hesitation or resistance to the
teacher.

Yet other cultural groups actually prefer overlapping comments - a sort of negative
wait time.
In these situations, one conversational partner will begin at exactly the same instant
as the previous speaker, or even before the speaker has finished (Chami-Sather &
Kretshmer, 2005).
The negative wait time is meant to signal lively interest in the conversation. A
teacher who is used to a one-second gap between comments, however, may regard
overlapping comments as rude interruptions, and may also have trouble getting
chances to speak.
The negative wait time is meant to signal lively interest in the conversation. A
teacher who is used to a one-second gap between comments, however, may regard
overlapping comments as rude interruptions, and may also have trouble getting
chances to speak.
Even though longer wait times are often preferable, they do not always work well
with certain individuals or groups. For teachers, the most widely used advice is to
match wait time to the students' preferences as closely as possible, regardless of
whether these are slower or faster than what the teacher normally prefers.
To the extent that a teacher and students can match each other's pace, they will
communicate more comfortably and fully, and a larger proportion of students will
participate in discussions and activities.
As with eye contact, observing students' preferred wait times is easier in situations
that give students some degree of freedom about when and how to participate, such
as open-ended discussions or informal conversations throughout the day.
Social Distance
When two people interact, the physical space or distance between them - their social
distance - often indicates something about how intimate or personal their relationship
is (Noller, 2006).

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Social distance also affects how people describe others and their actions; someone
who habitually is more distant physically is apt to be described in more general,
abstract terms than someone who often approaches more closely (Fujita, et al.,
2006).
In white American society, a distance of approximately half a meter to a meter is
what most people prefer when talking face-to-face with a personal friend.
The closer end of this range is more common if the individuals turn sideways to each
other, as when riding on an elevator; but usually the closest distances are reserved
for truly intimate friendships, such as between spouses.
If the relationship is more businesslike, individuals are more likely to situate
themselves in the range of approximately one meter to three meters.

For example, this is a common distance for a teacher talking with a student or talking
with a small group of students.
For still more formal interactions, individuals tend to allow more than three
meters; this distance is typical, for example, when a teacher speaks to an entire
class.
Just as with eye contact and wait time, however, individuals differ in the distances
they prefer for these different levels of intimacy, and complications happen if two
people expect different distances for the same kind of relationship.
A student who prefers a shorter social distance than her partner can seem pushy or
overly familiar to the partner. The latter, in turn, can seem aloof or unfriendly -
literally "distant". The sources of these effects are easy to overlook since by
definition the partners never discuss social distance verbally, but they are real.
The best remedy, again, is for the teacher to observe students' naturally occurring
preferences as closely as possible, and to respect them as much as possible:
students who need to be closer should be allowed to be closer, at least within
reasonable limits, and those who need to be more distant should be allowed to be
more distant.
Effective Non-Verbal Communication - Wait Time and Social Distance
The main points from this module are as follows:
 Three of the main types of verbal communication used in the classroom are:
content talk, procedural talk, and control talk.
 Three of the main types of non-verbal communication used in the classroom
are: eye contact, wait time, and social distance.
 Some ways in which students communicate about content are: inquiry
learning and cooperative learning.
 Some ways in which teachers communicate about content are: relating new
material to prior knowledge and elaborating and extending information.

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  Some issues may arise with non-verbal communication, because different
people have different: patterns of eye contact, wait times that they are
comfortable with, and preferences for social distance.
 Due to these issues, teachers should pay close attention to the preferences
for eye contact, social distance and wait times of their students.
After completing this module you will be able to:
Identify and describe the four main participation structures that guide communication
in ways expected by the class
Describe advantages and disadvantages of the participation structures: lecturing;
questions and answers; discussions; and group work.
Understand and describe the effect that the different structures have on preparation
for class for the teacher
Effects on Communication
Many class activities take on patterns that guide communication in ways that class
members learn to expect, often without being reminded.
Each pattern is a participation structure, a set of rights and responsibilities expected
from students and teachers.
Sometimes the teacher announces or explains the rights and responsibilities
explicitly, though often they are just implied by the actions of class members, and
individual students learn them simply by watching others.
For example, a lecture has a particular participation structure: students are
responsible for listening, for raising a hand to speak, and for keeping comments brief
and relevant if called on.
The teacher, on the other hand, has the right to talk at length, but also the
responsibility to keep the talk relevant and comprehensible.
In principle, a host of participation structures are possible, but just a handful account
for most classroom activities (Cazden, 2001).
Click on the following tabs to explore the most common participation structures.
Lecturing
The teacher talks and the students listen. Maybe students take notes, but maybe
not.
Question and Answer
The teacher asks a series of questions, calling on one student at a time to answer
each of them. Students raise their hands to be recognized and give answers that are
brief and "correct". In earlier times this participation structure was sometimes called
recitation.
Discussion:

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The teacher briefly describes a topic or problem and invites the students to comment
on it. Students say something relevant about the topic, but also are supposed to
respond to previous speakers if possible.
Group Work
The teacher assigns a general task, and a small group of students work out the
details of implementing it. The teacher may check on the group's progress before
they finish, but not necessarily.
Each of these structures influences how communication among teachers and
students tends to occur; in fact each is itself sort of an implied message about how,
when, and with whom to interact.
To see how this influence works, a small case study will be undertaken: how the
participation structures affected classroom communication for Kelvin Seifert as he
taught one particular topic - children's play - over a twenty-year period (2009). The
topic was part of a university-level course for future teachers.

During this time, Kelvin's goals about the topic remained the same: to stimulate
students' thinking about the nature and purposes of play. But over time he tried
several different structures of participation, and students' ways of communicating
changed as a result.
To view Kelvin Seifret's notes from the case study, please download the PDF
labelled "Module 3 Download: Kelvin's Class Notes", which can be found in the
module list of the course plan.
Lecture
The first time Kelvin taught about children's play, he lectured about it.
He used this structure of participation not because he believed on principle that it
was the best, but because it was convenient and used widely by his fellow university
teachers.
In some ways the lecture proved effective:
 Kelvin covered the material efficiently (in about 20 minutes)
 He related the topic to other ones in the course
 He defined and explained all key terms clearly
 He did his best to relate the material to what he thought were students' own
interests

These were all marks of good lecturing (Christensen, 2006).

Students were mostly quiet during the lecture, but since only about one-third of them
took notes, Kelvin has to assume that the rest had committed the material to memory
while listening.

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The students' quietness bothered him a little, but as a newcomer to university
teaching, Kelvin was relieved simply to get through the class without embarrassment
or active resistance from the students.
But there were also some negative signs. In spite of their courtesy, few students
lingered after class to talk about children's play or to ask questions.
Worst yet, few students chose children's play as a term paper topic, even though it
might have made a highly interesting and enjoyable one.
On the final exam few seemed able to relate concepts about play to their own
experiences as teachers or leaders of recreational activities.
There was an even more subtle problem. The lecture about play focused overtly on a
topic (play) that praised action, intrinsic motivation, and self-choice.

But by presenting these ideas as a lecture, Kelvin also implied an opposite message
unintentionally: that learning is something done passively, and that it follows an
intellectual path set only by the teacher.
Even the physical layout of the classroom sent this message - desks faced forward,
as if to remind students to look only at the person lecturing.
These are features of lecturing, as Kelvin later discovered, that are widely criticized
in educational research (McKeachie & Svinicki, 2005; Benedict & Hoag, 2004).
To some students the lecture format might even have implied that learning is
equivalent to daydreaming, since both activities require sitting quietly and showing
little expression.
An obvious solution might have been to invite students to comment from time to time
during the lecture, relating the topic to experiences and knowledge of their own. But
during Kelvin's first year of teaching about play, he did little of this.
The lecture medium, ironically, contradicted the lecture message, or at least it
assumed that students would think actively about the material without ever speaking.
Questions and Answers
Because of these problems, Kelvin modified his approach after a few years of
teaching to include more asking of questions which students were invited to answer.
This turned the lecture on children's play into something more like a series of
explanations of key ideas, interrupted by asking students to express their beliefs,
knowledge, or experience about children's play.
Asking questions and inviting brief responses was reassuring because it gave
indications of whether students were listening and understanding the material.
Questions served both to motivate students to listen and to assess how much and
how well they knew the material.

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In this regard Kelvin was using a form of communication that was and continues to
be very popular with many teachers (Cazden, 2001).
But there were also new challenges and problems.
For one thing the topic of children’s play took longer to cover than before, since
Kelvin now had to allow time for students to respond to questions.
This fact forced him to leave out a few points that he used to include.
More serious, though, was his impression that students often did not listen to each
other’s responses; they only listened carefully to Kelvin, the teacher.
The interactions often become simply two-way exchanges between the teacher and
one student at a time: Kelvin asked, one student responded, Kelvin acknowledged or
(sometimes) evaluated. (Mehan, 1979; Richards, 2006).
Some of the exchanges could in principle have happened just as easily without any
classmates present.
In general students still had little control over the course of discussion. Kelvin
wondered if he was controlling participation too much - in fact whether the question-
and-answer strategy attempted the impossible task of controlling students’ very
thought processes.
By asking most of the questions himself and allowing students only brief responses,
was Kelvin trying to insure that students thought about children’s play in the “right”
way, his way?
To give students more influence in discussion, it seemed that Kelvin would have to
become less concerned about precisely what ideas about children’s play he covered.
Classroom Discussion
After several more years of teaching, Kelvin quit lectures altogether, even ones
interspersed with questions and answers. He began simply leading general
discussions about children’s play.
Instead of outlining detailed content, he now just made concise notes that listed
issues about children’s play that students needed to consider.
The shift in participation structure led to several major changes in communication
between teacher and students as well as among students.
Since students spoke more freely than before, it became easier to see whether they
cared about the topic.
Now, too, more students seemed motivated to think and learn about children’s play;
quite a few selected this topic, for example, for their term projects. Needless to say,
these changes were all to the good.
But there were also changes that limited the effectiveness of classroom
communication, even though students were nominally freer to speak than ever.

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Kelvin found, for example, that certain students spoke more than their share of the
time - almost too freely, in fact, in effect preventing more hesitant students from
speaking.
Sometimes, too, it seemed as if certain students did not listen to others’ comments,
but instead just passed the time waiting for their turn to speak, their hands propped
permanently in the air.
Meanwhile there were still others who passed the time apparently hoping not to
speak; they were busy doodling or staring out the window.
Furthermore, since the precise focus of discussion was no longer under Kelvin’s
control, discussions often did not cover all of the ideas about children’s play that
Kelvin considered important.
For example, on one occasion he meant for students to discuss whether play is
always motivated intrinsically, but instead they ended up talking about whether play
can really be used to teach every possible subject area. In itself the shift in focus
was not bad, but it did make Kelvin wonder whether he was covering the material
adequately.
In having these misgivings, as it happened, he was supported by other educators
who have studied the effects of class discussions on learning (McKeatchie &
Svinciki, 2005).
Group Work
By the time he had taught about children’s play for twenty years, Kelvin had
developed enough concerns about discussion as a communication strategy that he
shifted approach again.

This time he began using a form of collaborative group work: small teams of students
carrying out projects on aspects of children’s play that interested them, making
observations of children at play, reporting on their results to the class, and writing a
common report about their work.
Kelvin hoped that by giving students a common focus, communication among them
would improve.
Conversations would deal with the tasks at hand, students would necessarily listen
to each other, and no one could afford either to dominate talk excessively or to fall
silent.
In some ways these benefits did take place. With a bit of encouragement from
Kelvin, students listened to each other more of the time than before.
They also diversified their tasks and responsibilities within each group, and they
seemed to learn from each other in the course of preparing projects.
Participation in the unit about children’s play reached an all-time high in Kelvin’s
twenty years of teaching at university.

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Yet even still there were problems.
Some groups seemed much more productive than others, and observing them
closely suggested that differences were related to ease of communication within
groups.

In some groups, one or two people dominated conversations unduly. If they listened
to others at all, they seemed immediately to forget that they had done so and
proceeded to implement their own ideas.

In other groups, members all worked hard, but they did not often share ideas or
news about each other’s progress; essentially, they worked independently in spite of
belonging to the group.
Here, too, Kelvin’s experience corroborated other, more systematic observations of
communication within classroom work groups (Slavin, 1995).
Furthermore, when all groups were planning at the same time communication broke
down for a very practical reason: the volume of sound in the classroom got so high
that even simple conversation became difficult, let alone the expression of subtle or
complex ideas.

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