Lunchtime, Thursday afternoon: I made my way towards a table of pupils and joined them. “So, what did you get up to in class today?” A Year 4 child whispered about subtraction during maths. The boy next to her then began to respond with a wild ramble about the lesson, followed by a rapid rundown of the weekend to come, peppered with a flickering of back-and-forth moments from today and last week.

Another pupil chirped in to tell me that it was her dad’s birthday. A fourth proceeded to inform me that he’d won a medal for karate last year. Next to me, a girl spoke incessantly at the child adjacent to her as he scrambled through his lunchbox, then he wandered away leaving the chattering girl mid sentence. It was chaos.

The next day, I sat with two children from Year 1 and their conversation turned to travel. I watched in admiration as they shared their dream holiday destinations, listened carefully, nodded and built on each other’s comments. “Mrs Beech, have you ever been to Brazil?”

I compared the two experiences. What had been the difference for the two who were able to hold a conversation so well? How might the first group of young people grow into adults who would be able to prompt, maintain and close a conversation successfully?

The answer, you are led to believe, is that this happens organically: with more practice at conversation and exposure to talking, young people will become more proficient, confident and aware of how to hold a conversation. Eventually, they’ll learn how to do it. The end.

Yet, there is still something bothersome about the notion of “they’ll pick it up along the way”. I’m not entirely sure they always do.

We have all encountered adults who lack conversational etiquette. It is risky to assume that all children will move from jumbled and self-centred talk as primary-aged pupils (or limited and indistinct talk as teenagers) to suddenly knowing how to maintain conversations as adults.

Perhaps my concern is compounded by the fact that social media and technology now consume our attention. Young people are less rehearsed with two-way talk and more concerned with online and instant messages. Is the art of conversation being lost?

With so much of our daily lives relying on communication, conversation is key. The way our young people manage conversations, whether light chit-chats or more formal discussions, is going to have a remarkable impact on how they are received and regarded. This, in turn, will impact on the relationships they form with others. And that’s why it niggles - because it matters.

If we have established that relying on an organic process to develop the art of conversation in our young people is slow and often bears little fruit, we then have to ask ourselves: whose job is it to help?

Arguably, teachers already have too much on their plates to put yet another responsibility on the long list of things that educational institutions are now held accountable for. But, with much of a pupil’s time spent in school and much of our curriculum content relying on talk-rich experiences, it seems sensible for schools to assume the role of teaching children the art of conversation.

Most schools already develop academic speaking and attentive listening, and drive the use of subject-specific vocabulary. These vital skills will likely have an impact on pupils’ class responses and discussions (see the copious research from Oracy Cambridge, bit.ly/WhatsDifference).

Yet, despite these efforts, a free-flowing, off-the-cuff conversation is something too many young people are unfamiliar with, leaving them awkwardly rambling or blank-faced while searching for a response. For these reasons, it’s important to make effective communication a priority at your setting. Here are nine ways to do just that.

• 1. Tell them how it is
  Teach a short lesson to the class explaining how the art of conversation is key to building and maintaining successful relationships. Explain how it can make all the difference to how they are perceived.
• 2. Show them how it’s done
  Provide pupils with the opportunity to witness successful conversations being held. Hold a conversation between yourself and another adult, allowing pupils to observe and comment on how the conversation unfolded.
• 3. Offer ways to open and close a conversation
  Beginning and ending a conversation is often something young people find challenging. Having a few go-to phrases can really help them to feel confident and prepared.
• 4. Provide a bank of ‘I don’t know’ responses
  Teach the children that, sometimes, they won’t know how to answer a question or how to respond to someone’s prompt - and that this is OK. Providing a bank of simple phrases to fall back on can make them feel response-ready. Examples might include “That’s a good question - I’m not actually sure”, “Can I get back to you?” or “I’ve not had any experience of that before”.
• 5. Practice makes perfect
  Provide opportunities for pupils to practise and encourage them to hold effective conversations during their free time.
• 6. Reflect
  Build in time for pupils to evaluate their own and others’ conversational skills.
• 7. Teach pupils to think about the ‘when’
  Knowing when to spark up a conversation is not always easy. Instruct pupils on the right and wrong times to begin one.
• 8. Don’t forget body language
  Discuss, model and rehearse the use of body language during conversation.
• 9. Get the team on board
  Ensure all adults in the setting understand the aims and outcomes for enhancing children’s ability to converse. In this way, a drive for decent conversation creates rich models for young people to absorb.

Of course, we could just wait for pupils to fumble their way into adulthood and hope they pick up the art of conversation along the way. But whether, as teachers, we should just leave them to it is another question.

When it comes to conversation, levelling the playing field by teaching pupils the “how” and the “when” affords them the opportunity to confidently communicate, connect and collaborate with those around them. In this way, we set them up for success.

Hanna Beech is deputy head at Ramsgate Arts Primary School in Kent

This article originally appeared in the 18 October 2019 issue under the headline “If we don’t teach children the art of conversation, who will?”