How Long Should English Lessons Be? Small Talk, Teacher Breaks, Grammar, and Classrooms - S07E04

How long should an English lesson be: 60 minutes or 90 minutes? How much teaching is sustainable in a week? And is spending 30 minutes on small talk valuable language practice — or a waste of lesson time?In S07E04 of the How to English TEFL Podcast, Gav and Em compare their approaches to lesson length and workload. Gav explains why he prefers 60-minute lessons, while Em makes the case for 90 minutes, including time for students to warm up through genuine small talk.They discuss teaching hours vs real hours, back-to-back classes, and why teachers need time to reset. What actually happens between lessons? Reflecting, organising notes, sending homework and materials, doing admin, checking the next class — and hopefully finding time for tea and a bathroom break. Gav shares his digital note-taking system, while Em describes her more analogue approach.Next: how can teachers make grammar example sentences meaningful rather than just another gap-fill? Using I used to live in Spain, Gav suggests building a story and context around grammar, while Em argues for connecting examples to students' lives. Their imaginary character Colin — who used to live in Seville — demonstrates how context, creativity and humour can make language memorable.Why do students sometimes stare silently after a teacher tells them a story? Learners may not know how to react naturally, may view the teacher-student relationship differently, or simply need more processing time. Gav and Em also consider cultural expectations and why lower-level learners sometimes need space to listen.Finally, they reveal how much body language and gesture they use when teaching. They demonstrate gestures for tenses, big vs tall, word order, syllables, vocabulary, pronunciation, uncertainty and error correction — including why online teachers may need to reverse timeline gestures for students on the other side of the screen.If you teach TEFL, ESL, EFL, ELT, Business English or online English, this episode is full of practical classroom experiences, disagreements and ideas to try.☕ Support How to English TEFL Podcast: https://ko-fi.com/howtoenglishpodAs Gav says, only send them a coffee if you want to encourage them. Actually... apparently you should send one even if you want to discourage them.Timestamps00:00 Welcome01:00 Who is the podcast for?02:00 How many lessons per week?03:00 Timetable “floaters”04:00 Teaching hours vs real hours05:00 60 or 90 minutes? Is small talk a waste?06:00 Teaching students to small talk07:00 Why Em prefers 90 minutes08:00 Back-to-back classes09:00 Time to reset10:00 Reflection and notes11:00 What happens during a break?12:00 Gav's digital notes13:00 Reflection with back-to-back classes14:00 Tabs, worksheets and memory15:00 Sending documents and homework16:00 Registers, invoices and admin17:00 Context for example sentences18:00 Does every sentence have context?19:00 The problem with grammar gap fills20:00 I used to live in Spain21:00 Colin in Seville22:00 Humour and memorable sentences23:00 Teachers telling personal stories24:00 Why don't students react?25:00 Teacher-student relationships26:00 Cultural differences?27:00 Why learners need to listen28:00 Processing and response time29:00 The classroom “soap opera”30:00 Gestures for teaching English31:00 Past-simple gestures32:00 Big, tall and present simple33:00 Past-to-present gestures34:00 Word order, vocabulary and syllables35:00 Tear vs tear and facial expressions36:00 Error correction and goodbye37:00 End music🎙️ How to English TEFL Podcast — teaching and learning English as a foreign language with Gav & Em.