Wait Time

The pause a teacher leaves after asking a question before calling on a student or rephrasing. First systematically researched by Mary Budd Rowe, who discovered that teachers typically wait less than one second — and that extending this pause to three seconds or more transforms the quality of classroom discourse.

Rowe's original research was in science education, but the findings apply directly to language classrooms, where the pressure to fill silence is even greater and the cognitive demands on learners (processing in L2) are higher.

Two Types

Rowe (1986) identified two distinct wait times:

Wait Time I — the pause after the teacher asks a question and before a student responds. This is the one most people think of. It gives learners time to process the question, formulate an answer, and find the language to express it.

Wait Time II — the pause after a student finishes speaking and before the teacher reacts. This is less obvious but equally important. It gives the student time to elaborate, self-correct, or add to their answer — and signals that the teacher is genuinely considering what was said, not just waiting for the "right" answer to move on.

The Research

Rowe's findings (synthesised across multiple studies from 1972 to 1986) are remarkably consistent:

Effects on Students (Wait Time I ≥ 3 seconds)

• Response length increases by 300–700% — students say significantly more
• Responses become more complex — longer sentences, more subordinate clauses, more connectors
• Confidence increases — fewer "I don't know" responses
• More students participate — including quieter, lower-proficiency, and minority students who are typically silent
• Student-student interaction increases — learners begin responding to each other, not just to the teacher
• Speculative thinking increases — students offer hypotheses and reasoning, not just recall
• Failure rate decreases — more responses are correct or partially correct

Effects on Teachers (Wait Time II ≥ 3 seconds)

• Fewer questions, better questions — teachers ask fewer recall-level questions and more referential and higher-order questions
• More probing — teachers follow up on student responses rather than moving immediately to the next question
• Greater flexibility — teachers respond to what students actually say rather than following a script
• Expectations shift — teachers revise their perceptions of "slow" learners upward

Why It Matters for ELT

In language classrooms, wait time is especially critical because:

1. L2 processing takes longer — learners are not just thinking about content; they are also searching for vocabulary, constructing grammar, and monitoring their output. One second is not enough for any of this.
2. Silence feels uncomfortable — teachers (and students) often interpret silence as failure. Reframing silence as thinking time is a cultural shift that benefits everyone.
3. It interacts with question type — display questions (known-answer) require less wait time than referential questions (genuine information-seeking). But even display questions benefit from a pause — it allows more students to formulate an answer, not just the fastest.
4. It supports elicitation — when teachers elicit, they need to resist the urge to answer their own question. Wait time is the discipline that makes eliciting work.
5. It reduces TTT — paradoxically, by slowing down, the teacher talks less and students talk more.

Practical Techniques

• Count silently to three after asking a question — the simplest technique
• Tell students explicitly: "I'm going to ask a question and give you 10 seconds to think before anyone answers" — normalises thinking time
• Think-Pair-Share — builds wait time structurally into the activity: think alone, discuss with a partner, then share with the class
• Avoid nominating immediately — ask the question first, pause, then choose who answers. Nominating before the question means only one student thinks
• Write the question on the board — gives a visual anchor during the wait time and helps lower-level learners process it
• Avoid filler — "Come on, who knows this?" or rephrasing the question after two seconds destroys the wait time. Silence must be genuinely allowed.

Common Pitfalls

• Extending wait time for every question — factual recall questions ("What day is it?") do not need three seconds. Reserve extended wait time for cognitively demanding questions.
• Confusing wait time with dead time — wait time is purposeful silence. If students are confused (not thinking), more wait time will not help — the question needs to be rephrased or scaffolded.
• Cultural mismatch — in some classroom cultures, silence signals disrespect or disengagement. Teachers may need to explicitly teach the value of thinking time.

Key References

• Rowe, M. B. (1986). Wait time: Slowing down may be a way of speeding up! Journal of Teacher Education, 37(1), 43–50.
• Rowe, M. B. (1974). Wait-time and rewards as instructional variables, their influence on language, logic, and fate control. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 11(2), 81–94.
• Tobin, K. (1987). The role of wait time in higher cognitive level learning. Review of Educational Research, 57(1), 69–95.
• Stahl, R. J. (1994). Using "think-time" and "wait-time" skillfully in the classroom. ERIC Digest. ED370885.