Getting students talking more about the content

The challenge

The ability to effectively discuss academic content does not come naturally to many students. 'Class' discussion is often dominated by a few students, while other students may remain silent because:

• they are shy,
• because they feel they don't have anything to contribute,
• because they don't want to risk sounding unintelligent if they get the wrong answer, and/or
• because they lack the language to express their ideas clearly.

Students can be trained to have intelligent conversations with each other about the content of any course. With appropriate scaffolding, students can talk to each other in ways that not only enhance engagement with each other, but also with the content. With guidance, students can move away from one word responses and encourage each other towards higher- level thinking.

For EAL students, in particular, classroom conversation can be intimidating because their previous English training may have had a strong focus on reading and writing and minimized conversation skills. Nevertheless, these skills need to be fostered.

Sentence starters are key

Students need to be taught appropriate ways to ask and answer questions about academic content. Sentence starters are key. Offering students a few ways to frame a question and to respond will help to give them a starting point. At first, forcing them to use the sentence starters may seem a little awkward, however with practice, the sentence starters will become part of the students' working vocabulary.

Start small...

Offering students 15 sentence starters at once may overwhelm them. It is recommended to offer a couple at a time and add to the list when it is evident that students are ready for some fresh prompts.

Sentence starters to prompt elaboration on a given topic

 Questions 

• Can you elaborate?
• What does that mean?   What do you mean by....?
• Can you clarify the part about…?
• Tell me more about…
• How is that important? How does it support your point that…
• I understand the part about…, but I want to know…
• Can you be more specific?

 Responses

• I think it means…
• In other words,
• More specifically, it is … because…
• Let’s see, an analogy might be…

 
 




Sentence starters to promote academic dialogue, reasoning and reflection on content.
from Jeff Zwiers, Stanford University (2011)