The instructional variable, “wait time,” otherwise known as “think time,” was first introduced by Mary
Budd Rowe in 1972. This is the time that teachers wait between asking a question and allowing students
to answer. According to Rowe, the average wait time is only about 1 second. However, she showed that
increasing that time to 3 seconds or more enables more students to answer the question, increases the
correctness of the answer, and even increases the quality of questions asked by the teacher, among
other benefits (Rowe 1972). When students are learning English as a foreign language, increasing wait
time can cause students to process the questions, work through mental translations, recall English
vocabulary, and gain the confidence to speak. This additional time reveals the students’ knowledge to
the teacher and provides more accurate results to formative assessment questions in the classroom.