Silence and the ESL Child

Five first grade ESL children, labelled nonverbal by their teacher, were taken out of their regular classroom and placed in a different room with a new teacher as part of an investigation designed to get them talking. In the new setting, the teacher encouraged the children to talk freely under a variety of circumstances. The children initially did not talk, but gradually gained confidence in themselves and ended up talking a great deal. The loosely‐structured situation, the small number of students, the tension‐free atmosphere, and the teacher's concern with their attempts to tell stories are offered as possible explanations for the change. It is unlikely that the children learned how to talk during the time of the study; it is more likely that the new conditions were appropriate to elicit speech.