‘I told you to practise!’

‘But I am practising! That’s a fermata (pause) over a rest sign, which means I need to prolong the rest and I am still playing my piece…’

This was an exchange that I had with my mother when I was small. Little did I know that I was learning an important skill of being a teacher i.e. pause. I still have vivid memories of my teacher shouting at me ‘B flat in the left hand, D flat in the right hand, change to finger 4, legato in the left hand, slur in the right hand and light and staccato at the end; clear change of pedal’. My mind would become totally blank and even by the time I was at post-grade 8 level, I sometimes found myself unable to follow simple instructions of correcting a wrong note!

Over the years, I have realised that giving time and space for my pupils to process has a lot of benefits: that they would be encouraged to understand the task and figure out the solution themselves and that they would not be easily overwhelmed and that I could grasp better the level that they are at and guide them accordingly etc. I have found this helpful from allowing time for young beginners to work out the letter name of a note, to slightly more advanced students to find out why a certain fingering would not work, and also to more advanced students to think about the interpretation of the pieces.