For as long as there have been teachers, stock phrases have existed. We don’t get a list of these along with our qualified teacher status certificate; instead, we pick these up from experienced colleagues.
However, our favoured expressions can nudge students in harmful or negative ways. Thinking carefully about the stock phrases we use is an important part of our professional development. So, which well-worn phrases do we need to drop?
‘When you start revising’
Urging our students to revise in a “revision period” sends out dangerous signals. It suggests that revision is an activity done in a block towards the end of the course, rather than from the start of the course in a “little and often” way.
In 2013, Dunlosky and others published Improving Students’ Learning With Effective Learning Techniques: Promising Directions From Cognitive and Educational Psychology, in which they rated spaced practice as highly effective: to encourage your students to adopt it instead of ineffective cramming, use the phrase “as part of your ongoing revision”.
‘You need to work harder’
Parent evenings offer an opportunity to emphasise the need for an improved work ethic.
Telling a student that they need to “buckle down” and “work harder” might give a motivational jolt, but they’ll soon be wondering where to begin.
As Latham and Locke made clear in Building a practically useful theory of goal setting and task motivation: a 35-year odyssey in 2002, the path towards sustained improvement needs specific priorities rather than “do your best” rallying cries.
So use precise phrases, such as: “I want you to put more focus on using flashcards to memorise the formulae for… then spend time practising the eight-mark questions.”
‘To achieve your target grade…’
Teachers often try to boost student motivation by referencing target grades: “If you add in some…, you’ll hit your target C grade”.
Such talk, however, invariably places limits on teacher and pupil expectations of academic potential. Worse still, an obsession with grades implies that extrinsic factors - like passing exams - matter more than the intrinsic rewards of learning.
Research from Dale Schunk in 1996, Goal and Self-Evaluative Influences During Children’s Cognitive Skill Learning, indicated that goals which focus on performance are less likely to lead to high-achievement outcomes than mastery goals.
When students ask about grades, try saying: “Keep improving your… and the exam grades will take care of themselves”.
‘Work quietly during this task’
In 2017, Lucy Erickson’s research, Background Noise and Classroom Design, confirmed what many teachers know to be true: that noisy classrooms can distract students attempting complex tasks.
When the buzz of off-task chatter becomes too much, teachers often ask students to “work quietly” or “settle down”. Yet instructions like these, along with futile shushing, rarely succeed in bringing about a lasting peace. For optimal noise levels, you should have clear expectations: “This activity requires silence” or “using only whispering voices…”
‘You should know this by now’
Telling pupils that they really should understand what you’re saying by now will only demotivate them. We have to accept the dictum that “just because we’ve taught it doesn’t mean it’s been learned”.
We need to reteach the topic, reflecting on why students failed to grasp it the first time around. As Robert Coe and others put it in the Great Teaching Toolkit: Evidence Review in 2019, “great teachers ensure that students practise until learning is fluent, automatic and secure”.
A useful phrase is: “We clearly need to return to that topic. It’s been a while and perhaps I didn’t explain it well.”
Mark Roberts is director of research at a school in Northern Ireland. His book, The Boy Question, is out now (Routledge)
