In 1985 Aleksandr Korobov, having started teaching physics in a town in Karaganda (Kazakhstan, USSR), once came to the conclusion that a school lesson, in its ordinary, accustomed state is ineffective. Most of the time students are bored or are busy with something that is inapt and, more than often, does not meet their abilities. These lessons require constant effort from the teacher to maintain discipline, and exert imminent pressure onto students.
Aleksandr thought, why not tender all the students to retell, present the gist or a scheme of the just given information (or present homework in the beginning of the lesson), immediately after the teacher’s narration, with it still being on the students’ minds. Not only with this type of task being an ideal way of developing speech, it also has a lot of other advantages, such as:
Firstly, the method is complex and difficult, but it is easy to use for anyone. Academically poor student wouldn’t be able to retell in the same way as a more successful one, but he certainly would be able to tell at least something.
Secondly, this type of task is interesting to students and it doesn’t cause the tension that students usually experience when being individually questioned in front of the teacher and the class. This means that the pupil’s mental capacity is unlocked.
Thirdly, psychologists agree that retelling the content contributes to a greater degree of understanding, and the information is being relocated from short-term into the long-term memory.
The main problem was finding a way of giving all the students the opportunity to speak simultaneously without interfering with each other, and to keep it controlled ?
For this purpose, every student in class received a microphone and a pair of noise absorbing headphones, that were installed on their desk. And on the teacher’s table was a console, with which the teacher could connect to any student’s microphone and listen to the answer, using his own pair of headphones.
The lesson is planned like this: it began with a brief, 5 minutes-long repetition of the previous lesson by means of a group discussion with the class. After that, Aleksandr asked students to put on their headphones, and to retell the material of the previous lesson, with the support of a short summary or diagrams in their exercise book, into the microphones. Thus, Aleksandr used to question only several students in order to see how well they understood the material and to grade them.
During the process there was some minimal noise in class, but the students didn’t interfere with each other, because they used noise absorbing headphones. After the process Aleksandr used to comment on retellings and graded students’ answers.
After that, Aleksandr explained the subject‘s topic to the class, asking them to do notes or draw a diagram in their exercise books during his explanation, in order to use these materials to support them during later repetitions. Having finished his explanation, Aleksandr asked students to put on their headphones again, and for seven to eight minutes pupils had to tell what they had learnt into the microphones. During the rest of the lesson, the teacher evaluated the students’ answers and graded them.
Simultaneous verbal questioning gave children an opportunity to speak freely during 15 minutes in each lesson, and in this way they could express themselves, remain from being silent, and relieve stress. Childrens’ attention was drawn towards the studied subject and students participated in an interesting educational activity, the discipline remained automatically without any disturbing strictness.
The experiment also showed that the studied topic was comprehended by children without the necessity to revise at home. This allowed children to have more free time. Furthermore, the students started to reason better and use the subject terms correctly. Students were getting used to working not only for good grades, but also for the fulfillment of their own activities.
A personal retelling of the subject’s topic and reasoning aloud that is within one’s abilities, is fully focused upon, and without constant interruptions by the teacher enables the student to open up and stimulates the development of speech and intellectual development which has great educational and psychological effect. This experiment received everyone’s recognition, including the students’ and their parents’.
«SPEAK & LEARN» OU company offers you free customer advice as well as free workshop sessions on the Simultaneous Verbal Questioning Method ® at your school . If you choose to use our Method®, our company will install all the necessary equipment in one or several classrooms on a turnkey basis. Our company will also provide you with staff training – your teachers will learn how to use the equipment and how to apply this Method® in their work. Within a year our company offers you a guaranty maintenance of the installed equipment. Your school will be also be receiving Method® development updates and you will get necessary contacts of schools which also use our Method®.