Scenario 1: The teacher

Natalya has been asked to teach English to a class of intermediate students. She
would like students to speak a lot in class, so she designed a lot of communicative
activities. One of the activities was a debate. When she started the  activity, the
students just quietly sat in their seats and no one wanted to talk. Why might this
happen? What could she do?
 
When teaching, a language or any subject in general, there are always those students that are
prone to answer whatever questions the teacher asks. Sometimes, the students are always the
same, in some cases, only one student does that. It is normally the ones considered “nerds”.
And this might generate the question: why others do not answer as well. One possible answer
might be because the teacher normally relies on the “ones” who are prompt to answer, and do
not give opportunity to others, or because most students feel not comfortable to talk in front
all their colleagues. This is based on the emotional filter where students are afraid of making
mistakes in front of others what causes them to feel anxious.

Concerning Natalya’s task, students might have suffered from other situations where they were
open to talk, but something might have happened that they became anxious about talking in
public. One possible solution to gain students’ interest in talking again is to apply methods that
lower their anxiety and provide a safer place to expose themselves. One possibility is to use
Cooperative Learning structure, such as groups of four students, where each of them has a
different role and contribute to the completion of the final project. Discussions, then, can be
held inside the smaller groups and presented by the one chosen in each group to the larger
class. Working with a small numbers of peers, students tend to feel more secure to exposed
themselves, especially in terms of language learning, where they might be afraid of making
mistakes.