I recently exclaimed to my students that the seemingly compulsive background noise that some of them frequently made in class sounded like a military drone, distracting for the teacher, if not for the whole class. When small groups of students drift off in side-conversations, one wonders whether they are unable to control their talkativeness while the teacher is lecturing. It is well known that students with ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder) and DLD (developmental language disorder) are easily distracted as illustrated in this article from Queensland University of Technology: “My Mind Drifts Off: What Happens When Teachers Talk Too Much”. Ironically in this scenario, it is the teacher that is perceived as talking too much!
Insightful research has been conducted on excessive
talkativeness in general. The term "talkaholic" was coined in 1993 by
researchers James McCroskey and Virginia Richmond, who rightly distinguished
high-quality talk from trivial chatter. On the other hand, most of the early
research on talkativeness in educational settings revolved around student
behavior that disrupted learning for others. More recently, however, research
has turned towards talkative teachers as they may also be viewed as
misbehaving, as demonstrated in this article by Bolen and Sidelinger: “Compulsive
Communication in the Classroom: Is the Talkaholic Teacher a Misbehaving
Instructor?”.
While we teachers are in a sense hired to talk, we must try not to over-do it if we wish to avoid labels such as “conversational narcissist”. The
students are probably as bothered by us droning on as we often are with them.
In fact, Dan Lyons wrote a book about the importance and power of silence
entitled The Power of Keeping Your Mouth Shut in an Endlessly Noisy World.
Here is a video of him on CBS urging his audience to “Talk Less, Listen More”.
The lessons learnt from the research on talkativeness reflect
the importance of balancing silence with meaningful communication, and keeping conversations
democratic to the extent possible, whether in the classroom or elsewhere.
