PPE1B – Spring 2009

Dagmar Rosenbergová


                                            STT vs. TTT


Teacher talking time (TTT) is the time that teachers spend talking in class, while student-talking
time (STT) is the time the students spend talking in the class. STT vs. TTT is extremely
problematic and complex area of English teaching. Many modern approaches recommend reducing the
amount of TTT as much as possible as to allow learners variety of opportunities to speak, and thus
learn from speaking. According to one theory this should be approximately divided 20 % TTT and 80 %
STT. This approach is given into connection with teacher-centred and students centred classrooms.

However practical teaching bares to light some specific problems:
 1. beginners and young students
 2. introverts, quiet, non-talkative and shy students
 3. mixed ability class
 4. topic


Ad 1.

Main problem is the inability of students at this level to communicate meaningfully. They lack
vocabulary; haven´t mastered the necessary grammatical rules and consequently may in fact teach
their peers bad habits and incorrect expressions.

At this level it´s strongly recommended limiting STT in favour of listening. Susan Halliwell in her
publication Teaching English in the Primary Classroom leaves longer STT periods for later lessons.
The same tendency applies to adult beginners and pre-intermediate students.

Ad 2.

Natural tendencies and characteristics of students plays crucial role. When student usually speaks
very little in his mother tongue it would be unnatural to force him to increase his speaking by
more than 10 %.  Also speech pattern plays important part – student whose speech pattern in mother
tongue is very staid (mulls and thinks over everything) is not going to become the biggest speaker
of the class. This type of students needs longer periods of time to answer even simple questions –
time that is not, especially in big classes, available.

Ad 3.

Mixed abilities class, which is the most probable scenario, is very difficult to balance. Talkative
students tend to get impatient and bored while waiting for the others to express themselves. Many
times the impatience gets the better of them and they finish or interrupt non-talkative students.
On the other side when quiet unassuming student is encouraged enough to talk but chooses lengthy
and boring topic it can disturb the whole class because he may not understand why he is not allowed
to finish his speech.

Ad 4.

Meaningfulness of speech is crucial. It prevents possible boredom. Lots of STT (or TTT) would be
valueless if there was no meaning to it. It is necessary to judge carefully

Conclusion

The balance between STT and TTT mainly depends on the type of students and their mixed abilities.
Every attempt should be made to encourage them to speak as much as possible but student’s
characteristics and natural tendencies have to be considered with utmost importance. Nevertheless
any talking done in the class has to be meaningful to increase its value. Main goal of the teacher
should be students complete language independence.

References:

http://bogglesworldesl.com/glossary/TTT.htm

http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/think/knowledge-wiki/teacher-talking-time

http://www.tefl.net/teacher-training/ttt.htm

The number of resources is endless – the contents are basically similar to each other. There is a
work being currently published by Masaryk University written by M. Adam and P. Najvar also dealing
with this topic.