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Oral
Language: Teaching Strategies for Listening and Speaking
Effective
language development strategies incorporate a variety of engaging
activities that hold students' interest and avoid straight drill
and practice. The following language activities address aspects
of both listening and speaking skills and can be incorporated into
programs to develop oral language:
- For
students with weak oral language skills, a teacher might collaborate
with a speech and language specialist. Such an individual can
help students with developing vocabulary, identifying multiple
meanings for words, using complex syntax, storing and retrieving
words, and using figurative language.
- Teachers
can provide explicit instruction on targeted aspects of language.
- When
modeling listening skills, do not interrupt students or finish
spoken thoughts for them; give them your full attention and focus
on the meaning rather than on the form of what the child is expressing.
- To
further develop a child's listening skills, read aloud frequently
to the student in multiple forums and encourage students to select
their own books to read.
- After
teaching learning strategies such as story maps and other organizational
tools, encourage students to work together in reading and retelling
stories.
- When
modeling good speaking skills:
- Use
standard grammar.
- Hold
instructional conversations, in which the teacher responds
to students' speech by using grammatically correct, longer,
and more complex sentence structures.
- Expand
upon what the children say and ask them for additional details
or provide for them more ideas related to the specific topic
about which they are speaking.
- Consistently
reinforce students for good listening and speaking.
- Use
specific activities and experiences to model different uses of
language for different social contexts, such as:
- Using
pictures to illustrate new vocabulary, sentence structures,
or concepts.
- Encouraging
students to draw pictures about the books they read and to
identify the elements of the stories in their pictures.
- Having
students make something, play a game, or participate in an
activity, which teaches how to give and follow directions.
- Having
children role play scenes of real life social situations where
one needs language skills, such as making a telephone call,
greeting or interviewing someone, or ordering food at a restaurant.
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