Transcript Slide 1

Chapter 6
Listening & Speaking
Wright, W. E. (2010). Foundations for Teaching
English Language Learners: Research, Theory, Policy,
and Practice. Philadelphia: Caslon Publishing.
Guiding Questions
1. What does the research tell us about the
relationships between ELLs’ oral language
development, literacy development, and educational
achievement?
2. How can an understanding of ELLs’ listening and
speaking strengths and needs inform a teacher’s
choices of instructional approaches, methods, and
strategies?
3. How can TESOL standards guide instruction and
assessment for ELLs?
4. How can teachers promote oral language use in the
classroom as a foundation for ELLs’ literacy
development and academic achievement in English?
5. How can teachers promote the development of
higher levels of oral language proficiency for ELLs?
Introduction
 Past – Listening and reading considered as passive
skills
o Students simply receiving oral or written input
 Present - Listening and reading recognized as
active skills of constructing meaning
o Ex: native speakers in political debates and personal
arguments hear the same thing but interpret it differently
 Challenges for ELLs:
o At the most basic level must attend to each phoneme
• change of one phoneme can change the meaning
 Ex: bit/pit
o 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.
Introduction
Oral language is invisible
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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 mode of
communication, oral language typically gets the least
amount of classroom instruction time
What We Know from Research about Oral
Language and ELLs
 CREDE Report
o The empirical literature on oral language development in
ELLs is small
o It takes time for ELLs to develop oral English proficiency
o ELLs need some English proficiency before interaction with
native speakers is beneficial
o Use of English outside of school enhances ELLs’ oral
English development
o Use of L1 for beginning-level ELLs contributes to academic
development
o English oral language proficiency tests fail to capture the
full oral language proficiency of bilingual students
What We Know from Research about Oral
Language and ELLs
 National Literacy Panel Report
o Oral language skills are more important for reading larger
chunks of text for comprehension than for reading at the
word level
o Oral language skills are in English are strongly associated
with English reading comprehension
o Oral language skills in English are associated with better
English writing
o English oral language proficiency is not strongly related to
English spelling skills
o L1 language literacy skills plus good English oral language
skills are strongly associated with good English reading
comprehension skills
o ELLs need consistent ESL instruction
Basic Issues for Oral Language
Development in the Classroom
 The Silent Period
o Non-English speaking students (i.e., Level 1) may not be ready to start
speaking when they first enter the classroom
 Wait Time
o 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.
 Teacher Talk in the Classroom
o Teachers should talk less and plan classroom activities that give students
regular opportunities to speak
 Correcting Students Speech Errors
o Teachers should correct only those errors students are ready to
learn how to correct
Promoting Oral Language
Development in the Classroom
When to Correct Student Speech Errors
o When students are ready to learn the correct form
o When errors impede comprehension or communication
o During ESL instruction when a particular language form
has been taught and is being practiced
o 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
o When errors are unintentionally offensive or could be
embarrassing if the student made the errors in front of
fluent English speakers
Promoting Oral Language
Development in the Classroom
 How to Correct Student Errors
o Provide implicit corrections through recasts by responding
naturally but in a manner that models the correct form
o Student: “My mom, she buy me shirt red.”
o Teacher: “Your mom bought you a red shirt? Very nice! My wife
bought me a blue jacket.”
o Provide explicit corrections in a manner that does not embarrass
or ridicule the student
o Teacher: “I think you mean your stove is in your kitchen. Is that what
you meant?”
o Provide corrections with gentle reminders of past instruction
o Student: “At my house we have four pet.”
o Teacher: “Remember how we practiced making plural words? So how
would you say you have more than one pet?”
o Student: “Pets.”
o Teacher: “You got it. Four pets. Great job!”
Group Activity
• 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 indirect correction through modeling
– Share and discuss your decisions with the class
Activity sheet available on the Companion Website
Vocabulary
• The more words ELL students know, the more they can speak
and write and understand what they hear and read.
• 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
(Folse, 2011)
• Tiers of Vocabulary
– Tier 1- Basic words
– Tier 2 - High utility words that cut across academic content areas
• general academic words
• all-purpose academic words
• “words worth teaching”
– Tier 3 - Content- or domain-specific words.
Vocabulary
• The average English-speaking student
– Enters pre-k with knowledge of about 3,400 root words,
– Knows about 8,000 word meanings by the end of second grade
– Learns about 860 new word meanings each year. (Biemiller,
2010)
• ELL students must rapidly develop their English vocabulary
knowledge else they will fall further behind their Englishspeaking peers.
• Bot possible to teach thousands of words directly.
• Imperative for teachers to Engage students in the right kinds
of oral language activities and in extensive reading
– The primary means through which ELLs will naturally acquire the vast
amount of new vocabulary words in English.
– Read alouds and independent reading
Vocabulary
• Need for some direct vocabulary
instruction
– One of the main components of daily ESL
instruction
– Further development through sheltered
content-area instruction
• Robust approaches to to vocabulary
development combines
– Direct explanations of the meanings of
words
Suggestions for Vocabulary Instruction (Marzano
& Pickering, 2005)
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Step 1- Provide a description, explanation, or example of the new
term (along with nonlinguistic representation such as pictures).
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Kid friendly definitions
Can be done in home language
Step 2- Ask students to restate the description, explanation, or
example in their own words.
Step 3- Ask students to construct a picture, symbol, or graphic
representing the term or phrase.
Step 4- Engage students periodically in activities that help them add
to their knowledge of the terms in their notebooks.
Step 5- Periodically ask students to discuss the terms with one
another.
Step 6- Involve students periodically in games that allow them to
play with terms.
Vocabulary
• Same steps can be used during ESL
and sheltered content-area instruction
and within the context of daily
classroom interactions and readings.
• Students need multiple encounters
with new vocabulary words to really
learn them;
• Provide multiple opportunities for
students to hear, read, and use these
words beyond a single lesson or
Common Core State Standards for
Listening & Speaking
• To build a foundation for college and career
readiness, students must have ample opportunities
to take part in a variety of rich, structured
conversations—as part of a whole class, in small
groups, and with a partner. Being productive
members of these conversations requires that
students contribute accurate, relevant information;
respond to and develop what others have said;
make comparisons and contrasts; and analyze and
synthesize a multitude of ideas in various domains.
CCSS Anchor Standards for Listening &
Speaking
• Comprehension and Collaboration
1. Prepare for and participate effectively in a range of conversations and
collaborations with diverse partners, building on others’ ideas and
expressing their own clearly and persuasively.
2. Integrate and evaluate information presented in diverse media and
formats, including visually, quantitatively, and orally.
3. Evaluate a speaker’s point of view, reasoning, and use of evidence and
rhetoric.
• Presentation of Knowledge and Ideas
4. Present information, findings, and supporting evidence such that
listeners can follow the line of reasoning and the organization,
development, and style are appropriate to task, purpose, and audience.
5. Make strategic use of digital media and visual displays of data to express
information and enhance understanding of presentations.
6. Adapt speech to a variety of contexts and communicative tasks,
demonstrating command of formal English when indicated or
appropriate.
ELPA 21 – English Language Proficiency
Standards
Grades 2-3: Standards 1 and 2
Listening Development Strategies
• 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.”
• Thumbs-up or thumbs-down to respond to a true-false
question
• Personal white boards to draw or write a response to an oral
question
• Students point to an illustration or word (or part of a word) in
a book that is being read aloud
• Perform a skit or act out a story
Listening Development Strategies
 Listening Comprehension Tasks
o Students listen to a source of spoken language and then
complete a task that demonstrates their comprehension.
o Video recordings of authentic speech samples may be a
better source for listening comprehension tasks
• See visual clues conveying meaning together with the oral
language.
o Lower-level ELLs—use simpler recordings with speech at a
slightly reduced rate
o Advanced ELLs—use recordings featuring native-speaker
interaction at normal speech rates
 Listening Centers
o A designated spot in the classroom with a tape, CD, or MP3
player with multiple headphones
o Listen to recordings of books, follow along in hard copies
o Enable students to receive comprehensible input in a lowstress environment.
Speaking Development Strategies
 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
Speaking
 Oral Presentations
– Show-and-Tell
• 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.
– YouTube Example: Fanny’s Class 0001
 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.
Strategies for Classroom Interaction
 Cooperative Learning
o 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.
o A form of scaffolding provided by classroom
peers that contribute to the oral language
development of ELLs in several ways.
o Examples of cooperative learning structures
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Think-Pair-Share
Roundtable
Concentric Circles
Numbered Heads Together
Strategies for Classroom Interaction
 Role Play
– 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.
– YouTube Example
Strategies for Classroom Interaction
 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.
– YouTube Example
 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?...
– YouTube Example
Strategies for Classroom Interaction
 Acting Out Stories
– 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.
– YouTube Example (see Companion Website for additional YouTube clips)
 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.
Assessing Listening and Speaking
 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
Assessing Listening and Speaking
 Formal Oral Language Assessments
o 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.
o Assists the teacher in paying attention to different aspects of
students’ oral language development
SOLOM
Student Oral Language Observation Matrix-R
 See Figure 6.2 and 6.3
 Focus on 5 aspects of students oral language proficiency
o Comprehension
• How much does the students understand when he is spoken too? How
well does she follow classroom discussions?
o 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
o 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?
o Pronunciation
• Do others have to struggle to understand what he is saying because he
has a strong foreign accent.
o Grammar
• Are grammar errors so frequent it is hard to understand the student?
Oral Language Assessment Practice
• Watch Bernardo’s Oral Presentation
– http://youtu.be/NsvAgsKGw0s
• Assess hisEnglish oral language
proficiency using the SOLOM-R
• Discuss your scores and evaluation
with your classmates