Pupils can only talk when they are nominated by their teachers, which makes their speech desirable at times, but also rather extraordinary.

– Beliefs about Silence in the Classroom

It is perhaps therefore unsurprising that, in addition to Nao, a significant number of learners were observed to be off-task and not orally participating over the course of the observation period.

– Classroom Silence and the Dynamic Interplay between Context and the Language Learner: A Stimulated Recall Study

Being quiet outwardly allows us to hear. Listening is a different matter. Someone may be quiet by not saying anything when someone else is speaking. Even so, the mind can be very loud even when the lips are not moving. Without clarifying if received meaning is intended meaning, one has only heard what one wants to hear.

There are several reasons why someone may not wish to confirm what they understood is indeed what a speaker wished to convey. One of these is what on the surface could appear to be a lack of trust. If I did tell you this is what I hear (and what I hear says something negative about you) you will of course deny it. I am several steps ahead of you and know how to question you to catch you red-handed and reveal your true position which must of course show you up to be a person who is looking to get the most for the least. In actual fact, what has to be inferred from such a line of thinking is that the hearer does not value the speaker enough for meaning to matter. Everyone has the right to assigning whatever value they wish to whatever they wish. There is nothing further that needs to be said in or about this type of situation.

In the language classroom though, it is important that students say something. Though silence in a classroom has positive cultural connotations especially in Asia, many educators perceive silence as “reticence” and “negative phenomena” (King, 2015). This is especially so in a language classroom.

Language entails both reception and production. Production includes speaking and writing. Students are tested on both in Paper 1 and Paper 4. Though these components test production capability, some observers could suggest that students are still silent while writing and speaking.

The writing component of the primary school English syllabus includes Situational Writing and Continuous Writing. This is a total of 55 marks. While not every student might want to pursue a career or as a hobby the literary arts, every student would in time have to be able to write to achieve some non-artistic aim. This makes Situational Writing a very important component. Currently, students, for some reason approach letter writing in a formulaic way – do this in formal situations and that in informal situations. In this sense, they are not really communicating but exchanging templates with interlocuters. This leaves much on the table.

Given the persuasive and communicative power of metaphors and allegory, students could be taught to tell stories in their letters. This would entail a combination of what are at the moment distinct components. While artificial intelligence is able to produce letter templates for any conceivable situation, it would not be able in its current state to infuse pragmatics, which is highly relevant for high context Asian cultures, in its suggested response. To be preferred over artificial intelligence, pragmatics becomes very relevant.

Students are also silent when writing letters in another way. Currently, they are given a situation through some stimulus such as a comic strip along with the objective to be achieved in such situation. In the real world though, situations do not come with pre-determined objectives. To increase voice and to better prepare them for the real world, students could be asked to come up with their own objectives for a given situation.

Oral communication assessment has two components. These are Reading and Stimulus-Based Conversation. This is a total of 30 marks. Students are silent here in the sense that they are only expected to speak when asked questions on some stimulus. This kind of training does have its use. They would know how to formulate and communicate opinions on a wide variety of issues. This might be relevant in interviews.

However, real world communication requires other types of skills. These include the skill to make small talk and the skill to persuade in a disagreement.

Small talk is very crucial to break the ice with an interesting or intriguing stranger and to avoid looking friendless at social functions such as a party or when sipping a cocktail at a reception lounge. Small talk is also what disarms interlocuters and is a necessary first step to continued, richer communication. Unless artificial intelligence and robotics mean people will no longer have to interact with each other, enabling small talk should be seriously considered as a legitimate aim of the language classroom.

Arguments and disagreements feature heavily in real life. In such situations, interlocuters would need to communicate in a way which enables the other side to see a situation from where they stand. They would need to persuade. To train students, oral examinations could be reformatted to include, scenario-based role-playing.

The shadow education industry, in driving transformation, has been rolling out EdTech at a frenetic pace with some touting Netflix-like experiences which promise to increase student motivation by making learning enjoyable and increasing autonomy. This is through some LMS. There is much to gain. LMSs allow scaling and a reduction of man-hours. They create a huge market for IP.

When watching Netflix, we need to be quiet and get lost in the story world. There is no need for us to make small talk or persuade or clarify. We just suspend belief and receive whatever is on offer. Learning on the other hand, requires interaction. Interactive in the context of EdTech as it stands entails moving graphics or gamification. Games are designed to increase time spent in the game world. At least with regards to language, the aim is to communicate in the real world in all kinds of situations. By passively watching a recorded lesson or by interacting with an educational game, would students be preparing to communicate with humans who are a lot less predictable or consistent and a lot more dynamic?

Kang (2021) says “EdTechs do not increase learning motivation”. He cites Ito and others (2019) who tried to find out if “computer-aided instruction” increased students’ motivation to learn. They concluded that, the use of computer-aided lessons “raised students’ expectations in terms of future studies” but had “no significant effect on their motivation and self-esteem”. Kang (2021) also adds that a 2015 OECD report suggested that “deep, conceptual understanding and higher order thinking require intensive teacher-student interactions, and technology distracts from this valuable human engagement.”

When it comes to language learning, students should indeed hear more; of their own voice.

The Brain Dojo