How should teachers talk to students? - 令和義塾🛡中高生・高卒生・教員・留学志望者のための学習塾

The way that teachers talk to students - how they interact with them - is one of the crucial teacher skills, but it does not demand technical expertise. However, it requires teachers to empathize with the people they are talking.

One group of people adapting their language to their audience are parents when they talk to their young children. Studies show that they use more exaggerated tones of voice, and speak with less complex grammatical structures than they would if they were talking to adults. Their vocabulary is generally more restricted too and attempt to make eye contact (and other forms of phyunconsciously is greater. They do these things unconsciously.

Though teachers and students are not the same as parents and children, this subconscious ability to 'rough-tune' the language is a skill they have in common. Rough-tuning is that unconscious simplification both parents and teachers make. Neither group sets out to get the level of language exactly correct for their audience. Instead, they rely on a general perception of what is being understood by the people listening to them. This empathy allows them to almost feel whether the level of language they are using is appropriate for the audience they are addressing.

Experienced teachers rought-tune the way they speak to students as a matter of course. Newer teachers need to concentrate on thier students' comprehension as the yardstick by which to measure thier own speaking style in the classroom.

Apart from adapting thier language, experienced teachers also use physical movement, expressions, mime. It becomes almost second nature to show happiness and sadness, movement and time sequences, concepts using these techniques. They become part of the language teachers use, especially with students at lower levels.