Quiet and talkative students find their places on opposites sides of a continuum. At the ends are students who never speak and students who never miss an opportunity to speak. Most talkative students aren’t at the extreme end, but research consistently finds that a fairly small number of students make most of the comments in courses. The too-talkative students are described in the scant literature as contributing to an over-participation problem which can be addressed by a variety of strategies, some of which I highlighted here. As in my previous column on quiet students, I’m interested in how teachers respond to talkative students.
