How to teach interrupting

Smoothly jumping into conversations is one of the most difficult things to do in another language, for reasons such as lack of confidence, cultural differences, and not knowing enough suitable phrases. However, interrupting something that students must master if they want to have the chance to speak English! This article gives tips on presenting and practising suitable interrupting phrases and tactics.

Typical student problems with interrupting

Students often suffer from:

• waiting for a long enough pause from the other person
• interrupting too forcefully and/ or too suddenly
• talking over the other person
• always using the same tactics and phrases

What students need to know about interrupting in English

First of all, students need a range of phrases for cutting in like “Sorry to interrupt, but…”, “Sorry, can I just say something here?” and “Before you go on,…” However, we often only use part of those phrases, first to give warning that we want to interrupt, and then to start speaking as soon as we get the chance. For example, we might say “Sorry”, “Sorry, can I?”, “Sorry, can I just?” and then “Sorry, can I just say?” until the other person finally yields.

The next step could be teaching tactics that are less clearly interrupting such as agreeing and adding phrases like “Me too! I…”, “That’s such as coincidence, I also…” and “That reminds me of the time when…” This ties in well with the topic of active listening, as we often move from “Really?”, “Yeah yeah yeah” to interrupting phrases like “No way! When that happened to me I…”

How to present interrupting tactics and phrases

The classic presentation for this point is students listening to two or three conversations to spot the one interaction that has successful interruption, with the bad versions including not being able to speak and/ or using bad techniques like talking over the other person. Students can then analyse the good example for suitable tactics and phrases, before being tested on their memories with brainstorming into categories (“Apologising words for interrupting”, etc), key words, bad examples like “Let me speak” to improve, etc. The two activities below can also be used at the presentation stage.

Interrupting tips and useful phrases

Students choose good tips and phrases like “Use requests – Can I add that…?” and cross off bad tips like “Demand that the other person let you speak – Stop speaking!” They then look at just the good tips and try to remember or think of suitable language to do those things.

Interrupting cultural differences and useful phrases

This is similar to the task above, but with students labelling tips with names of countries in which they know those things to be true in, e.g. “There are often pauses between people speaking so you don’t often need to interrupt – Japan” and “People often apologise when they interrupt – Sorry to butt in, but… – UK” They then try to remember useful phrases to go with the tips.

How to practise interrupting

Practice activities should get students to interrupt more but make sure they do so politely and smoothly. One way is for them to put a piece of paper into the middle of the table each time they successfully interrupt, with their partner(s) being able to give that paper back if they think the interruption was impolite, badly timed, or used exactly the same phrase again. These can be blank paper, have key words which they must use (“go on”, etc), or describe techniques they should use (“React and interrupt”, “Request”, etc).

You could also just have one person giving scores to the other two students for enough interrupting, smooth interrupting, using a range of different phrases, etc.

There are more activities including interrupting in 12 Fun Turn-Taking Practice Activities.