ABSTRACT
Mr. Dullard peers over the top of his horn-rimmed glasses in a futile attempt to make eye contact with the blurry eyed students trying to pay attention to his lecture on the Continental Congress. His body seems frozen to the lectern where his faded notes rest. His voice, deep, muffled, and monotone, has a numbing effect on the students. Steven is in the back of class, eyes shut, with his head precariously perched on his hand. Several snickering students in the class are watching to see whether Steven’s hand will slip, causing his head to crash on the desk. Another student, Gerald, reads from a novel that he has tucked inside his history text. Debbie and Janis are passing notes about Carlos, the star athlete at the school. Robert is sitting straight up grinning and nodding, pretending to listen while he rehearses football plays for Friday’s game. Once more, Mr. Dullard has lost the battle to engage his students in his lesson. In this chapter, we focus on ways teachers present instructional material. The chapter is divided into two parts. First, we discuss the ways teachers structure instructional material. We explore teacher-centered strategies such as lecturing, and then we explore student-centered communication strategies such as cooperative learning. The second part of the chapter focuses on the communicative processes used to facilitate understanding regardless of the teaching method. We examine ways that teachers explain information and review ways that questions are used in the classroom.
