Wednesday, April 30, 2025
“Open your student’s books to page…”, “We need a subject in front of the verb.”, “How was your weekend?”.
These are just a few examples of the everyday language we use as teachers. Often, we say these things without giving it a second thought. But have you ever considered the importance of the language we use in the classroom and the impact it can have on your students’ learning experience? In this post, we’ll explore why classroom language matters and how fine-tuning it can make your teaching more effective, inclusive, and student-centred.
The term “classroom language” includes all the phrases and expressions used by both teachers and students. Edge’s (1988) framework, highlights the importance of three competences: being a user, an analyst, and a teacher of the language. As foreign language teachers, our grasp of English should exceed that of the students’, for obvious reasons, such as being a proper model or noticing errors. The analyst domain is the technical knowledge of the target language and it covers all areas of language description, such as skills and systems (Wright, 2002).
While knowledge of the language system is essential, it's the teaching competence—how we use that knowledge—that directly impacts learning. This includes storytelling, modelling tasks, giving instructions, checking understanding, and correcting mistakes. In other words, this is the space where classroom language lives.
Classroom language isn't just about giving directions. The way we speak shapes the classroom atmosphere and directly affects how students feel and behave.
Positive environment: Using a supportive tone and respectful, encouraging language, make students feel safe and valued in the classroom, which creates a supportive environment where students feel confident enough to participate.
Confidence & Language Acquisition: The obvious benefit classroom language has, is that it increases the language input that learners are exposed to, which in turn, boosts the students’ confidence and their language acquisition. Think about it, regular exposure to functional classroom phrases, through structured routines and predictable phrases, gives students models to follow, helping them feel more confident using English.
Comprehension & Engagement: Effective classroom language boosts student comprehension and keeps them engaged. Usually, students who tend to be more disruptive are the ones who have difficulties following the lesson. Clear and consistent classroom language helps students understand instructions and content more easily, which keeps them focussed. In addition, it gets them actively involved in lessons, since it is language they are used to hearing and that makes them confident in using it and expanding on it. So, it also fosters an interactive and responsive learning environment.
Getting more practical, let us look at four areas where thoughtful classroom language can really make a difference.
Clear and concise instructions are crucial for effective classroom management. They are the backbone of your classroom communication. Doing it well will save you time and energy, while reducing confusion and promoting better results. There are many “recipes for success” but the majority of resources agree on the following steps:
Top tip: Plan your instructions ahead, especially when you are going to introduce a multiple-step activity.
Even though effective instructions can make teaching easier, they will always be incomplete without ICQs (Instruction Checking Questions) and CCQs (Concept Checking Questions). They are an essential part of managing an activity that the majority of us tend to forget. They help ensure students understand instructions and concepts, thus facilitating a smooth lesson flow and assisting with classroom management, since a student who understands what they have to do, usually does it! Avoid general questions like “Do you understand?”. Go for specific questions about your instructions such as “Who is in your group?”
Top tip: Make sure you address them to students who sit in different parts of the classroom, so that you have everyone’s attention.
Providing feedback is a crucial part of our job and if done properly, it can help students learn from their mistakes while maintaining confidence. Making mistakes is part of the process and it is important to ensure the students that we all see it this way. Echoing, recasting, gesturing, etc, should all be used politely and always with a smile, in order to protect the students’ confidence and not discourage them from participating. Focussing solely on correcting language only gets half of the job done. Correcting content as well helps students to express their ideas more effectively by organising their thoughts and deepening their thinking.
Top tip: Give delayed feedback a chance. Throughout the lesson, make notes of mistakes students make and devote five minutes at the end to displaying them on the board and correcting them as a group. This will help everyone realise their mistakes and will not single anyone out.
Maintaining order in the classroom can also become easier once we start noticing the language we use. Clear language supports a positive atmosphere, so make sure you use positive statements instead of negative ones. For example, “we listen to the teacher” is better than “don’t talk”. Addressing the behaviour, rather than singling out the student is also crucial for maintaining order, since allocating the role of the “troublemaker” for example, to any student might actually cause them to act accordingly.
Top tip: Have a set of rules you regularly revise with your students and only use the same wording when addressing wrong behaviour. This will make it as little personal as possible.
Even though each of the classroom language types we saw above could fill a whole post itself, there are a couple of strategies we can apply in order to make our classroom language as effective as possible on all occasions.
As already mentioned, it is natural that there will be times when students will not understand instructions. In cases like that, we often result to L1 to save time. Using the L1 is not wrong, and sometimes it is necessary, but more often than not, it takes away chances for valuable input and student talk. Patience and classroom language reinforcement along with language grading and plenty of gesturing will definitely help reduce the use of L1 to the minimum.
Another common mistake we make is excessive teacher talking time (TTT). Less is more, especially when it comes to what we say to our students in the classroom. Modelling and instructing them is an inextricable part of our job, but providing the students with chances to use as much English as possible should be on the top of our priorities list too. Gesturing, and careful planning of our instructions and ICQs/CCQs, will definitely help with that.
The way we speak in the classroom matters—more than we often realise. By being just a little more intentional with what we say and how we say it, we create space for better communication and more effective learning.
So next time you catch yourself saying, “Open your books to page…,” take a second to think: Could this be an opportunity for input, engagement, or even interaction? With a little prior planning, the answer is probably yes.
