Strategies for keeping attention

Reasons why learners' attention may wander and ways to keep your classes on track

• Keep in control. Anticipation is the best form of teacher defence, so keep scanning the room, making eye contact with all learners. You will catch those who are starting to fidget, look out of the window or chat to their friends. Then you can react accordingly before the noise level distracts everyone and creates a situation.
• Keep in tune with the class. Don’t just glide along with the best. If one learner answers your questions, this is not proof that all the others are following what is being discussed. Aim for responses from as wide a sample as possible. Don’t just accept answers from the three or four class leaders, or you will leave the rest behind.
• Keep checking understanding. Try not to use questions like 'Do you understand ?' or 'Has everyone got that ?' Learners are notoriously wary of admitting they haven't understood, especially if their peers are pretending to understand! Use further questions to see if they have understood the concepts.
• Keep demonstrating. Attention wanders when they don't know what to do and are too afraid to admit it. Keep your instructions to a minimum and demonstrate what to do rather than giving lengthy or detailed explanations. If nearly half of them are clearly unsure and starting to flounder or chat in their mother tongue, take action. Call on the pairs who are doing the task successfully to demonstrate their work as an example for others then try again.

Changing the pace

Here are some tried and tested techniques for changing the pace of the lesson to keep learners awake.

• Chant: Select a weekly chant which rouses learners. Learners stand or sit, clap along or snap their fingers and repeat the rap you have devised. This can be a quotation for higher levels or a sentence construction covered by lower levels. Make it short, snappy and fun.
• Drill: Use some quick-fire questioning around the class and involve as many as possible. Then get the learners to do the questions as well as supplying answers. Use visuals as prompts for this questioning.
• Play a game: Do a 10-minute revision game involving everyone pooling ideas, words or questions. Even a spelling game for beginners does the trick. Word association or memory games work well!
• Give a dictation: They have to concentrate here. It might be just a short piece of text or a list of words. It could be some lines from a popular song.

First published 2010
Updated 2025