one peer reviewed teaching reading-related article on listening and speaking
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WrightListeningSpeaking.pptWright, W. E. (2015). Foundations for Teaching English Language Learners: Research, Theory, Policy, and Practice (2nd ed.). Philadelphia, PA: Caslon Publishing.
What does the research tell us about the relationships between ELLs’ oral language development, literacy development, and educational achievement?
How can an understanding of ELLs’ listening and speaking strengths and needs inform a teacher’s choices of instructional approaches, methods, and strategies?
How can the Common Core State Standards and the World-Class Instructional Design and Assessment (WIDA) Consortium English language proficiency standards guide listening and speaking instructions for ELLs?
How can teachers promote oral language use in the classroom as a foundation for ELLs’ literacy development and academic achievement in English?
How can teachers promote the development of higher levels of oral language proficiency for ELLs?
Past – Listening and reading considered as passive skills
Students simply receiving oral or written input
Present - Listening and reading recognized as active skills of constructing meaning
Ex: native speakers in political debates and personal arguments hear the same thing but interpret it differently
Challenges for ELLs:
At the most basic level must attend to each phoneme
change of one phoneme can change the meaning
Ex: bit/pit
English speakers do not always speak in complete sentences.
Often start a sentence but then get off on a tangent without finishing their earlier thought.
Oral language is invisible
Once spoken, an utterance is gone forever (unless recorded)
Can’t rewind real life conversations to hear an utterance they missed.
Can’t pause the conversation to look up a word in a dictionary.
To be comprehensible to others, an ELL needs
Adequate pronunciation
A smooth rate and flow of speech
A sufficient vocabulary and grammar
An understanding of the sociocultural context of the speech event
Different types of speech activities are structured by unwritten norms that are known by native speakers but may be elusive to ELLs
Despite being the most frequently used mode of communication, oral language typically gets the least amount of classroom instruction time
- Oracy (oral skills) has three components:
Language structures
Vocabulary
Dialogue
The Silent Period
Non-English speaking students (i.e., Level 1) may not be ready to start speaking when they first enter the classroom
Wait Time
ELLs may need time to process the input and time to draw from their developing linguistic system to formulate their thoughts in English before speaking
In different cultures pauses are longer or shorter, so teachers should not mistakenly interpret silence for not knowing the answer
Teacher Talk in the Classroom
Teachers should talk less and plan classroom activities that give students regular opportunities to speak
Correcting Students Speech Errors
Teachers should correct only those errors students are ready to learn how to correct
When to Correct Student Speech Errors
When students are ready to learn the correct form
When errors impede comprehension or communication
During content-area instruction which includes specific target language forms
Ex: a language objective about using the past tense in a lesson about historical events
How to Correct Student Errors
Provide implicit corrections through recasts by responding naturally but in a manner that models the correct form
Student: “My mom, she buy me shirt red.”
Teacher: “Your mom bought you a red shirt? Very nice! My wife bought me a blue jacket.”
Provide explicit corrections in a manner that does not embarrass or ridicule the student
Teacher: “I think you mean your stove is in your kitchen. Is that what you meant?”
Provide corrections with gentle reminders of past instruction
Student: “At my house we have four pet.”
Teacher: “Remember how we practiced making plural words? So how would you say you have more than one pet?”
Student: “Pets.”
Teacher: “You got it. Great job!”
- Revoicing - the teacher tries to repeat some or all of what the student has said:
“So you’re saying that it’s an odd number?”
- Repeating – asking students to restate someone else’s reasoning:
“Can you repeat what he just said in your own words?”
- Reasoning – asking students to apply their own reasoning to someone else’s reasoning
“Do you agree or disagree? Why?”
- Adding on – prompting students for further participation
“Would someone like to add something more to this?”
- Waiting – using wait time
“Take your time…; We’ll wait”
- Ells need about 2,000 words to engage in conversations, about 5,000 words to read authentic texts, over 10,000 words to comprehend complex academic texts
- Three tiers of vocabulary words:
Tier 1: basic words
Tier 2: high-utility words that cut across all academic content areas
Tier 3: content-area specific words
WIDA, 2012a, p70. Courtesy of WIDA Consortium
| Domain: speaking Grade level: 4 Example topic: Community practice Example context for language use: students report information from interviews conducted in their community to class and share stories about local practices | ||||
| Cognitive function: Students at all levels of English proficiency understand community practices | ||||
| Level 1 Entering | Level 2 Emerging | Level 3 Developing | Level 4 Expanding | Level 5 Bridging |
| Tell about community practices using photographs or realia and following a model | Describe community practices | Recount information about community practices | Recount detailed information about community practices | Recount and reflect on information about community practices |
| “This is the bride.” “This is her wedding dress” | “The bride and groom get married in the church”. “Their family and friends attend the wedding” | “In Cambodian weddings, the ceremony is held in the home of the bride” | “In a Cambodian wedding, the groom has to pay for everything. The guests give cash instead of buying gifts” | “It is really difficult for Cambodian men to afford the pride price. Sometimes they have to work for several years to save money needed to get married” |
| Topic-related language: Students at all levels of English language proficiency interact with grade-level words and expressions |
- Total Physical Response (TPR)
Developed in the 1970s by James Asher.
Teachers provide a set of commands in the target language and students respond by taking a specific action.
Examples
“Stand up,” “Sit down,” “Pick up your book,” “Put the book on the table,” and “Put the pencil next to the book.”
Students do a thumbs-up or thumbs-down to respond to a true-false question related to a unit of study
Students use personal white boards to draw or write a response to an oral question and then hold it up
Students point to an illustration or word (or part of a word) in a book that is being read aloud
Students perform a skit or act out a story
Listening Comprehension Tasks
Require students to listen to a source of spoken language and then complete a task that demonstrates their comprehension.
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Listening Centers
A designated spot in the classroom with a tape, CD, or MP3 player with multiple headphones, where students may listen to recordings of books and follow along in hard copies
Enable students to receive comprehensible input in a low-stress environment.
Many listening centers provide lightweight MP3 players that students can use in class or take home for extra practice
Additional take home listening activities are especially important for students whose parents are unable to read aloud to children in English for various reasons
- Examples of listening activities include
Story time for Me – digital story books available free online that feature read-alouds of the text
Audio Boom enable teachers to record the audio to the web from their computer or mobile device
Oral Retelling
Explanations students give in their own words of something they have heard or read
Commonly used with reading as a comprehension check
Songs and Chants
Add a rhythm or a tune to a piece of text to make it more memorable
To be most effective, the song should be
Sung at a moderate pace
Have clearly audible lyrics
Several example from youtube can be found here.
Oral Presentations
A simple but effective oral presentation
Students show something cool they have brought from home, tell their classmates all about it, and answer their questions about it.
Other types of oral presentation provide opportunities for ELLs to use their language skills to create a project individually or in a small group and then to describe it to the class.
Glogster and Prezi are sites that can help students organize their idea and make multimedia presentations
Minimal Pairs
Words or phrases that differ by only one phoneme
Ex: pen/pan; he bit the boy/he hit the boy.
Working with minimal pairs can help ELLs discriminate between words that initially may sound the same to them.
Cooperative Learning
Student collaboration in pairs or in small groups to solve a problem, complete a specific task, or complete a project.
Most effective when the task is made clear and each student is given a clearly defined role.
A form of scaffolding provided by classroom peers that contribute to the oral language development of ELLs in several ways.
Examples of cooperative learning structures
Roundtable
Concentric Circles
Numbered Heads Together
Ex: To practicing forming and asking questions, students role play a buying shoes at a shoe store.
Barrier Games
Students are put into pairs
One student in each pair is the designated artist and is given paper and a pencil
The partner is given a pattern or picture, which he or she places behind some type of barrier where the artist cannot see it.
The partner looks at the pattern or picture and then, using English and with hands behind his or her back (to prevent pointing), tells the artist how to draw it.
Obstacle Course
The teacher sets up an obstacle course in the classroom or outside on the playground.
Students are put into pairs or small groups.
One student in each pair or group is blindfolded and must make it through the obstacle course guided only by instructions from his or her team mates, who must speak in English and may not touch the blind folded student.
What Am I?
Students wear a headband with a card on the front that they cannot see but other can (or card could be taped to each student’s back).
The card has a picture or the name of some objects, animal, or person.
Each student has to figure out what is on his or her card by asking questions of other students, such as, “Am I an animal?” What color am I?...
Enables students to internalize new language learned from reading by incorporating it into the oral performance.
Student must also communicate with their peers to collaborate in planning, creating props and scenery, and preparing for the performance.
Class Discussions
Critically important for ELL students’ oral language and academic development.
Enable students to demonstrate their knowledge and communicate their thoughts and ideas with their classmates and teachers.
Should take place in connection with reading a book together or viewing a film, or as part of a connect area lesson.
Technology for Speaking Practice
Better uses of technology are those that allow ELLs to talk for authentic communication purposes
Students can produce podcasts, videos, narrated presentations, use voice and video chatting and other digital technologies
The only way to effectively assess ELL students’ oral English language proficiency is to talk with them and listen to them talk
The strategies and activities described in this chapter provide avenues for observing students’ oral language use
Ease-drop on student language use when not engaged in academic tasks
Talk with students during these less-structured situations
Before and after school, recess, lunch, etc.
Any time students are listening and speaking teachers have an opportunity for assessment
Formal Oral Language Assessments
Give student a specific task that requires oral language use
Have student describe an illustration of a scene
Read a book together and have the student retell the story
Wordless picture books – student must use illustrations to tell the story
Teacher observations can be guided by rubrics.
Assists the teacher in paying attention to different aspects of students’ oral language development
See Figure 7.2 and 7.3
Focus on 5 aspects of students oral language proficiency
Comprehension
How much does the students understand when he is spoken too? How well does she follow classroom discussions?
Fluency
Does the student have a hard time speaking? Is it difficult to have a conversation with him? Does the student’s speech flow well but occasionally gets stuck as he searches for the correct word
Vocabulary
Is the student able to say everything he wants, or does he struggle because he lacks the vocabulary to fully describe what he is thinking? Does he ever use the wrong words?
Pronunciation
Do others have to struggle to understand what he is saying because he has a strong foreign accent.
Grammar
Are grammar errors so frequent it is hard to understand the student?
- Watch Bernardo’s Oral Presentation
- Assess his English oral language proficiency using the SOLOM
- Discuss your scores and evaluation with your classmates
The SOLOM form is available on the Companion Website
If you have learned (or tried to learn) a second language, what struggles did you have with oral language development? What did you find helpful in improving your listening and speaking abilities?
Why is oral language development so important for ELLs? How is oral language related to literacy? What happens to ELLs in classrooms that neglect oral language development and focus on teaching word-level decoding skills?
Which activities described in this chapter have you observed or used in the classroom? What ideas did you gain from this chapter that you would like to implement in your current or future classroom? What other strategies or techniques have you used or observed that you believe have been effective for ELLs' oral language development?
Watch the video of a teacher using an activity called Chat Show with her young ELL students. How does this activity help the students develop their listening and speaking skills? What are some specific oral language development strategies and techniques the teacher uses during the activity?
Review the Sheltered Instruction Observation Protocol (SIOP) lesson plan on Nocturnal vs. Diurnal Animals for 1st grade students, provided by the Center for Applied Linguistics. What are some of the specific oral language development strategies, techniques, and activities that are integrated into this lesson?
- Correcting Student Errors
Form groups of 4 to 5 student
On the activity sheet read each scenario of an ELL student English speech error
Determine whether you should ignore or correct the error.
If you decide to correct, indicate whether the correction should be provided through direction correction, or in-direct correction through modeling
Share and discuss your decisions with the class
Activity sheet available on the Companion Website
