How Silence Helps in Speech Formation: Learner Perspectives

Learner silence in the EFL classroom is a widespread concern among teachers. Such a phenomenon often induces teacher struggles in identifying the causes of non-participation and understanding the learning nature of quiet students. Indeed, understanding how silence functions during the learning process and how it influences learners' willingness to speak might help teachers make better informed pedagogical decisions to bring up an environment inclusive to both eloquent and introspective students. Despite scholar efforts in silence discourse, little is known about the supportive relationship between silence and speech formation in language learning. This presentation reports on an illustrative case study of Vietnamese tertiary students investigating their perspectives on silence in English verbal practice. The results, collected through open-ended questionnaires, offer insights into the way silence fosters and intimidates speaking task performance, the kinds of classroom tasks or lesson phases where silence needs to arise, and the learning strategies mostly employed during silent time. Overall, the study proposes a reconceptualization of the usefulness of silence in cognition and language regulation. With this in mind, teachers thereby should consider reflective learning needs in classroom contexts, and be more mindful in task design so that thinking products generated in learner silence can be well developed into speech.