Obviously as a teacher when you are teaching you need to teach which generally means talking!  However, if you speak too much you take away the opportunities for your students to peer teach, interact and practice their speaking skills.  Here are some basic tips for reducing TTT and increasing STT:

• Don’t read out the questions for them to answer from the worksheet. They can do that and gives you an opportunity to work on some pronunciation with them
• Have a list of eliciation questions ready to keep a discussion going
• If you have planned a pair work activity and have an odd number, get them to work as a group. Never become a student in your own class
• Keep instructions short and model the activity exactly as you want them to do it so you don’t need to give lengthy explanations
• Don’t give away definitions to vocab, give some contextual examples so they can discover it for themselves
• Look at your plan and check the interaction patterns – if you are involved in every activity, you have created a teacher centric plan and are likely to have a class with high TTT.
• Ensure there are lots of opportunities to work in pairs and groups
• Elicit, elicit, elicit