Christinah Mulder, Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah, USA

I first recognized the difficulty of offering clear, understandable instructions as a student teacher in an intensive ESL program. I felt confident in my ability to explain grammatical concepts, new vocabulary, and other relevant content. However, in this speaking and listening fluency class, explanation of new concepts was not nearly as important as frequent quality activities for students to practice. When it came to explaining the parameters of a new activity, I found I was dismally prone to evoke a glazed look in my students’ eyes. When I asked if they had any questions, of course, no one would venture one—yet the awkward pause before beginning the activity made it clear that they didn’t know what they were supposed to do. I knew that the activities I was conducting were not convoluted, so the problem must reside in the way I was giving the instructions. Thankfully, an observant teaching mentor recognized the breakdown in communication and helped me focus my attention on it.

When teachers have to repeat instructions multiple times or when they have to stop activities and restart them, valuable class time is wasted. Additionally, student talk time is replaced with needless teacher talk time, and student confidence is diminished along with the effectiveness of the activity. However, giving ESL/EFL-friendly instructions is not an easy task. Often, teachers think they are being clear just by speaking slowly and “simply,” perhaps in the same manner we would speak to younger English-speaking children. This method of speaking, though, often misses the mark when giving instructions to English learners. Following are just a few examples of ways in which ESL and EFL teachers can make their class instructions clearer and more effective.

Be Concise

One thing stopping teachers from giving clear instructions may be their hesitancy to be adequately concise. A document for an English-teaching forum in the Ivory Coast offers the suggestion that “good instruction-giving begins in the preparation stage.…A good way to make sure your instructions for an activity are clear and concise is to write them out as you develop your lesson plan” (Sowell, 2017, p. XX). The document models several particularly wordy instructions and then gives examples of more concise translations. One notable element of difference between the two sets of instructions is that the more concise version frequently removes hedging and softening devices that may make the instruction feel less polite. This could be a common element causing misunderstanding between teachers and students—in our effort to be polite, we are often not as clear. For example, though an English-speaking teacher might prefer to say, “Now, I would like for you to take out a piece of paper and put it on your desk,” students might prefer the instruction, “Take out a piece of paper” (Sowell, 2017).

In my case, I thought I was speaking clearly to my low-intermediate level class. Upon further scrutiny, however, I realized I was using vocabulary that was out of reach for them. For example, for a group activity, I instructed them to “circle up,” and only when I received the blank stares did I realize that a more direct “stand and make a circle” would be much more effective.

Be Specific

Another way to increase the clarity of our instructions is to make them more detailed and specific. Woodberry and Aldrich (2000) offer the example, for instance, that rather than telling students to simply “discuss” a topic, teachers can offer a more specific task or prompt, such as choosing the best option from a set of alternatives. For additional detail, teachers can model the activity, as advised by Ur (1996). Modeling an activity, either with a coteacher or one of the students, gives students greater confidence in their ability to complete the activity and also provides comprehensible input to help students grasp the concept being practiced.

As an example, I taught a thematic unit about hotels. In our warm-up discussion, instead of just asking students to “talk about staying in a hotel,” or some overly general variant that I might otherwise have been tempted to use, I asked students, “What is something you always do when you stay in a hotel?” To model an answer, I said, “For example: My husband’s mother always wears her socks when she stays in a hotel. She is worried that the floor is dirty.” Then I asked again, “What is something you always do in a hotel?” The conversation soon started buzzing.

Ask Better Questions

A third piece of advice for teachers is to change the way we ask for questions after giving the instructions. Many teachers (myself included) fall into the trap of asking, “Are there any questions?”—a question that often leaves students feeling hesitant to admit that they did not understand the instructions. A better alternative might be to ask, “Who can summarize the activity?” Instead of calling for less confident students to make their confusion known, a teacher is asking for a more confident student to repeat the instructions—helping their classmates to hear them again in a different way as well as offering more concrete evidence that the teacher’s instructions have been understood. I found that asking students to summarize my instructions resulted in fewer blank stares and more meaningful activities.

To summarize, we can help teachers maximize the effectiveness and clarity of their classroom instructions in the planning stage by writing out their instructions in advance and trimming hedges, softening devices, and complex vocabulary items that hamper concision. In the classroom itself, they can further enhance their instructions by giving specific details and modeling their instructions. After the instructions have been given, teachers can ask direct and specific questions to ensure that students understand. We can help teachers to recognize that, though these measures require additional time and effort, they can help both teachers and students to enjoy greater understanding and confidence, lead to more effective activities, and save valuable class time.

References

Sowell, J. (2017). Good instruction-giving in the second-language classroom. English Teaching Forum, 10–19. https://americanenglish.state.gov/files/ae/resource_files/etf_55_3_pg10-19.pdf

Ur, P. (1996). A course in language teaching: Practice and theory. Cambridge University Press.

Woodberry, R. D., & Aldrich, H. E. (2000). Planning and running effective classroom-based exercises. Teaching Sociology, 28(3), 241–248.