Verbal discipline involves using talk to direct misbehaving learners to conform with the established school code of conduct. The way teachers use verbal discipline has implications for learners' behaviour in the classroom. Verbal discipline can be effective when used correctly and ineffective when applied wrongly. Verbal discipline tends to curb classroom misconduct among learners when appropriately used. The transformative learning theory by Mezirow serves as an ideal theoretical framework for this study. Following the quantitative research approach and descriptive survey research design, this study aimed to explore effective verbal disciplining strategies to control classroom misconduct. The sample size involved 250 (20% of the population) respondents from the total population of 1,249 primary school teachers in the rural communities of the three Motheo District Municipalities in the Free State Province of South Africa. The instrument for data collection was a questionnaire developed by the researchers from the literature reviewed. The questionnaire was coded and analyzed using descriptive statistics (frequencies, mean, and standard deviation). The hypotheses were tested using One-way Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) at a 0.05 level of significance. Findings from the study showed that well-established routines, concise explanations that highlight the main points of the task, talking to learners calmly and politely, commending learners for a job well done, and involving school stakeholders to talk to learners about the dangers of classroom misconduct are among the effective verbal disciplines to control classroom misconduct. The difference between the mean ratings of respondents from the three municipalities was not statistically significant (p>0.05). The study recommended that teachers should continue to use appropriate verbal discipline strategies to curtail classroom misconduct among learners.

Keywords: Classroom misconduct, primary school teachers, school discipline, verbal discipline.