Ever wonder what to do when your students just won’t talk in your world language classroom?

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In this episode of Comprehend THIS!, we dive into the universal teacher struggle: student silence. You’ll learn why forcing output usually backfires, how to build student confidence through comprehensible input, and three practical strategies to gently coax participation without pressure. Plus, we’ll cover what not to take personally when your students sit in stone-faced silence. If you’ve ever felt like you’re teaching into the void, this episode will give you laughs, reassurance, and real classroom strategies to keep your sanity intact.

#WorldLanguageTeaching, #ComprehensibleInput, #LanguageAcquisition, #LanguageTeachingTips, #CIClassroom, #LanguageTeachers, #StudentEngagement, #SecondLanguageAcquisition, #TeachingStrategies, #ComprehendTHISPodcast

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• Scott Benedict - https://www.instagram.com/immediateimmersion

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Host: Scott Benedict — Immediate Immersion

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Good morning and

welcome to today's podcast.

How's everybody doing this morning?

Okay.

Let's talk about the elephant in the room

or rather the 20 elephants sitting

silently in your classroom,

pretending they don't

understand basic human language.

You ask a question, they stare at you

like you've just spoken Klingon.

Sound familiar?

Today we're tackling the question every

teacher secretly screams in their head.

What if they just won't talk?

Spoiler alert, forcing them to open their

mouths works about as well as forcing a

cat to wear pants.

So let's figure out a smarter, saner way

to handle the silence.

We'll be right back in just a moment.

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Welcome to comprehend this real talk for

real language teachers.

No drills, no dry

theory, just honest stories,

practical ideas, and a reminder you're

not alone in the CI trenches.

Let's dive in.

And welcome back today

is solo week. Uh, every,

about every four weeks I do a solo one

instead of having

guests and that's today.

So let's go ahead and continue with our

talking about kids who just

won't speak in class. So, you know,

the awkward turtle lives in every

classroom. Let's face it,

silence in your class isn't a referendum

on your teaching skills.

Sometimes kids are just tired.

They're hungry or they're practicing for

a career in competitive mind

translation. Don't panic.

Don't take it personally and please don't

start juggling markers

just to fill the dead air.

We want to normalize the

student silence because it's not

about you.

And what I usually like to

say when kids are being silent,

it's because they don't have the

confidence to be able

to say what they want to

be able to say. And so we need to work on

building the comp, uh,

the confidence input is like a funnel.

So think of it like a funnel where all

this input is coming in at the

wide part of the funnel.

And then out the

bottom trickles droplets of

actually talking of output.

And so we need to think about that.

We need to flood their

brains with so much input

that their confidence is up

and their ability is there to

actually produce. So

that's what you need to work on.

Making kids feel comfortable in the

classroom, making mistakes,

um, a learning, uh, lost my words, um,

a learning opportunity for them.

So they're not feeling bad when they make

a mistake that they're actually just

working really,

really well and learning at their own

pace. Think of babies.

Babies don't just flood

out the output right away.

They get tons and tons and

tons years of input before

the language starts coming

out. And let's be honest,

teenagers could win Olympic medals in

stone faced silence if

it were a sport.

So the takeaway here is just don't panic.

Don't take it personally.

And for the love of everything,

CI don't start doing

standup comedy just to

fill the silence.

Continue using your input.

Trust the process. It

will come out. I always say,

I know everybody says, you know,

kids should always be speaking in the

target language. But again,

for me, it's that there's this confidence

when they're not speaking in the

target language,

it's because they don't think that they

have the skill or the ability or the

confidence to do so.

So my thing is I can only control my

language usage in the

class. So I try to speak only Spanish or

whatever language you're teaching

in the classroom.

And then when the kids feel confidence

and comfortable enough,

then they'll start producing as well.

Next, why forced output backfires?

Yeah, sure. You can do it,

but everyone's going to end up resentful

and possibly scratched.

Do you remember those times when you were

in language class and your teachers

like complete sentence, you need to have

a complete sentence.

I need you to speak right now

and putting you on the spot.

The effective filter was way up. That

stress was way up. And let's be honest.

We don't speak in complete sentences. We

write in complete sentences.

But when we're having conversations, we

don't speak in complete sentence.

It's awkward. And that was

forced output. And you know,

it made us feel icky.

Students need tons of

that input before words even

start to spill out naturally.

We need to think less

interrogation spotlight and more

Netflix binge with subtitles.

So what I do is I'm always

talking in the classroom.

I'm always asking

questions in the classroom.

And I do a lot of

interviews with students.

I don't put my students on

the spotlight. I don't do that.

I don't have them come

to the front of the room.

They sit where they are going to sit.

And I am really bad at

keeping my words all.

And I forgot the phrase that they use.

Inbounds. Sorry.

Ever since COVID, my mind

has gone completely gone.

Anyway, inbounds. I've never done that.

How I combat that though, is I write all

the translations of those out

of bound words on the board.

And I find that my kids grow

exponentially because of that.

When I limit it too

tightly, they don't really grow.

And so that's how I kind

of do those types of things.

But I'm not pushing output.

I'm good with one word answers.

I'm good with yes or no.

And if it's a more complex question like,

what did you do over the weekend?

And they said I went, they

just said like, Fui Artine.

And then they started

explaining it in English.

I'm good with that in the beginning.

And then I start I'll put the stuff what

they said in the target language.

And then we'll ask questions

about that to get it going.

But I'm OK with that because

it tells me it's an assessment.

It's an on the spot formative assessments

telling me they're not comfortable enough

with the language that

they have to be able to speak.

And that's OK.

And when you push out

output way too soon.

That makes stress.

That's going to create resistance and

that's going to create fake language.

That's going to create where they're

going to start making up

words to be able to speak it.

And that's not what

we want to have happen.

A funny comparison.

It's like making your cat wear a sweater.

It's possible, but now

both of you are hating life.

So we want more input first.

I don't even ask my kids to do any really

speaking activities, any true speaking

activities until the third month on a

traditional school year.

Or if you're on a four by four where you

teach one class per

semester, that's about five

weeks. That's kind of how I do it.

I'm on that four by four.

So my Spanish one goes

from August to December.

And then in the fifth week of school,

which will be coming up

like the second week of

September, I'll start having

them do some output activities.

So we want to make sure we have that more

input first and output later.

That's how acquisition works.

Think about it like a

baby for about 18 months.

They're getting nothing but input.

You're talking to them.

You're exploring the world with them.

You're reading with them.

And then around 18 months to two years,

the words start to

slowly come out at first.

They're just words.

They're not sentences.

They're not paragraphs and they slowly

build more language

as they get more input.

And that's what we

need to really focus on.

Confidence is built, not assigned.

And this is a big one for me.

Confidence, I never

really thought about it before.

I never really thought about it before.

I had this experience in

Germany a couple of years ago,

but it really does play a

large part of what we do.

It plays a huge part in what we do.

And that's really, really important.

So let me tell you a story.

Again, Covid mind going everywhere today.

A couple of years ago, I was in Germany

and I went to go buy a water bottle

in one of those kiosks on the side of the

street that they have.

So I was going to buy one and

I knew it's going to be what?

Two euros, something like that around two

dollars, somewhere around that.

And I pulled out my cash.

And my cash, I always was taught, you

know, you have your bills put in order.

So large, the medium and small

denominations, you put them in order.

And so I pulled out my my cash and I was

getting ready to look for a small bill.

But what was on the

outside was a large bill.

And the German guy started yelling at me

in German that he wanted a smaller bill.

I needed a small bill.

He couldn't have a big bill.

And I was like, I wasn't

even giving him a big bill.

But because he was yelling at me and kind

of getting a little aggressive, I was

getting really flustered and my

confidence went way down

and I lost all my German.

So it was really difficult to make that

transaction because of that.

And so at that moment, I made the

realization that our kids are somewhat in

the same way when they're put on the spot

and they're not expecting it.

And it's not something that's routinely

done in the classroom.

Their confidence is going to go way down

and they're not going

to be able to produce

anything. So it needs to be made a habit.

It needs to be built slowly.

Your classroom needs to be

a comfortable place to stay

and speak and to make mistakes because

students won't

suddenly feel confident just

because your lesson

plan says now they speak.

We need to build that confidence.

And it's not something

we can build overnight.

It's something that we

have to build slowly.

And the more input that they hear, the

more they'll start realizing,

oh, hey, I actually get this because

confidence grows quietly.

Like the random plants in your classroom.

Nobody remembers watering.

Students need the massive input, that

funnel idea to feel like,

oh, hey, I can actually do this.

And the more input that they get, the

more exposure, the

more your classroom is a

relaxed place where

mistakes are honored, not shameful.

Then the confidence is

going to sneak up on them.

And it's going to be like that random

classroom plant that somehow didn't die.

And so your job as a teacher, as a

facilitator of language,

is to load their brains with

comprehensible input in

every different way that you can.

You want to vary it.

We've got stories, we've got picture

talks, we've got movie talks.

You can find short videos, short

podcasts, all these different types of

comprehensible input that you can do

until those words start spilling out

naturally. That's our goal.

That's only going to happen

when you have tons of output.

We need to not look at kids silence as

the refusal to speak,

but that they don't have the confidence

in their ability to speak.

So we need to boost that

up in any way that we can.

So

here are some gentle nudges.

Think of them like your Jedi mind tricks

that you can take to help students become

more confident, become more comfortable

and get a little bit more

output out there.

So first, a low stakes pair chat.

Let them whisper to a buddy first.

It feels less like a Broadway audition

and it is a very low key way for kids to

actually practice and utilize their

skills. It's stressless.

It's with their peers, their whispering.

So nobody else is listening and it really

works well to boost their confidence and

lower that effective

filter, lower that stress level.

And that's what we want to actually do.

Another strategy is coral response

because they can hide in that coral

response because everyone answers

together and there's no spotlight on one

particular student,

there's no strange fright.

None of that happens.

I use a lot of core responses,

especially in level one at

the beginning of the year.

I'm not putting any kid on the spot

because I want to build that confidence.

And then in those coral

responses, I'm listening.

I'm listening for strong responses.

I'm listening for weak

responses so that I can actually

take that formative

assessment to where my kids are.

And then the kids who do speak with more

confidence, with more loudness, then I

know those kids are ready for individual

questions, but I don't just start

randomly calling out.

And I'm keeping note of who my weaker

students are so that I can use them to

gauge my instruction.

And again, with lower levels or anybody

who lack the confidence,

we want to start with yes, no, or either

or questions because

those are really easy

to answer.

Those are really they can build

confidence because the

answer is right there with them.

They're not having to think on their own

and coming up with a sentence.

They can either say yes, they can say no,

or you've given them two choices.

And this is where my little phrase, ask

the right question to the right student

at the right time, comes in.

My more capable students, I'm going to

ask my who, what, where, when, how, why

questions. My mid level students and my

lower students, I'm going to stick with

yes, no, either or.

The how and the why

definitely are advanced

questions because they

require more language.

My who, what, where, when questions.

So it's going to be my upper mid level

kids because they can be answered in one

word or in a short phrase.

But for my lower mid and my lower kids,

it's yes, no, either or.

So I need to know my kids so that I can

actually ask those questions

at the right time for them.

Because whenever I ask a question of a

student, I want to be confident that that

student can answer it correctly because I

don't want to make

them look dumb in front

of their peers. And so this really,

really helps with that.

So learning which where my kids are.

And then I can ask them

the particular question.

And if my kid is really, really

struggling, really struggling.

I'll give them hints that the

other kids won't even notice.

So like if it's an either or question and

the answers are on the board,

I'm going to put my hand

right under the right answer.

Now, the top kids aren't even going to

notice I'm doing

that, but my lower kids do

because they're always looking around the

room to use their resources and they

have that skill built in.

So then they're going to take that hit

and they're going to look successful and

smart in front of their peers. If it's a

yes or no question, then I'm going to

stick my thumb in the proper

position and hold it there.

And I know that my top kids don't notice

these cues because have you

ever been in the classroom where

we're going over you're going over a quiz

or an assignment and then the top kids go

don't get the answer right and the lower

kids do get the answer right.

And the lower kid goes, well, it's on the

board, dummy, or it's on the wall because

you have a poster about that, and that's

because the top kids aren't used to

clinging to those resources

to survive in the classroom.

And your lower to mid students are

they're always looking

for things that they can

use to get them out of any situation.

So they're hyper aware of all the

resources around them.

And so that really, really works well.

So when you do give them questions, give

them choices so they can't just shrug.

And say they don't know, they need to be

able to know and they can when you give

them a yes or no or an either or.

So those are three simple tips,

strategies to start them small.

You've got your low stakes pair chat.

Whispering to a buddy is so much easier

than a Broadway solo.

You've got your choral response.

Whole class answers, safety in numbers.

And then you've got your yes, no or

either or questions to keep the choices

simple and impossible to fail.

Add humor because nothing motivates

students like the chance to be correct

with just one syllable.

So you want to make sure you

can add some humor in there.

I'm always looking for the funny because

when people are laughing,

they're more relaxed.

And our last point for

today, what's not about you?

Their silence isn't proof that they hate

Spanish, French, German,

mandarin, your haircut, your clothing.

Sometimes they just had a breakup.

They forgot lunch or busy perfecting the

art of the teenager face.

So the pro tip here, shrug it off, keep

the input flowing and trust the process.

Words will come eventually and hopefully

not all at once in the hallway after the

bell. Silence is not

that rejection of you,

your teacher, your

subject or your outfit.

Sometimes kids are just hungry.

They're tired.

They're heartbroken.

They're stressed or

they're just being teens.

So think to yourself,

little teacher mantra.

It's not me. It's puberty.

It's not me.

It's puberty.

Think this out over and over.

But if you make your

classroom a safe place, a fun place,

a place where it's OK to laugh, where

it's OK to be yourself,

your kids will eventually be able to

speak and speak with confidence.

So you want to keep

delivering that input.

Smile through that silence

and trust that output will come

probably at the worst possible time, like

during a fire drill, but it will come.

So there we have it.

That's a wrap on today.

Thanks for tuning in and

hanging out with me today.

I realize it's not as

interesting when it's just me.

So I appreciate you letting me rant about

this glorious joy of students who just

won't talk.

And hopefully you're walking away with a

few strategies to keep your sanity intact

and maybe even coax a word or two out of

your class without breaking into

interpretive dance.

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Hit that subscribe button.

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Ditch the drills, trust the process, and

I'll see you the next time on Comprehend

This. Have a good weekend, everybody.