This document discusses strategies for developing students' oral language skills. It defines oral language as using spoken words to express knowledge, ideas, and feelings. Oral language skills are important for school readiness, literacy development, and academic achievement. Key strategies discussed include encouraging conversation, maintaining eye contact, modeling clear speaking, having students summarize information, incorporating questions, and teaching for oral reading fluency. The goal is to help students communicate effectively through speaking and listening.

1. TEACHING DELIVERY SKILLS:
ORAL LANGUAGE

2. What is oral language?
Oral language is the system
through which we use spoken
words to express knowledge,
ideas, and feelings.

3. Oral language skills are the main
medium through which learning takes
place in school and at home.
Subsequently they are a major
contributor to school readiness, to the
development of literacy, and to school
achievement. Children with poor
literacy skills almost always have poor
oral language skills.

4. Language development underpins the
development of phonological awareness,
early literacy development and print
awareness. Phonological awareness is also
closely associated with the development of
awareness of grammatical morphology –
changing word meanings with small changes
to word endings (e.g., –s and –ing );
knowledge which supports both reading
comprehension and spelling.

5. Key Strategies for Developing Oral Language
Being able to talk and express your thoughts
clearly is vital in life. Yet, too many students
are graduating without sufficient experience
with group discussions, or arguing their
ideas effectively, and they are finding
themselves unprepared for the
communication demands of college and
their careers.

6. How can we prepare our student?
To lay a better foundation for this learning, we
can do a few things: we can value oral language
development, we can value communication of
ideas over grammatical correctness, and we can
value oral language as a powerful way to learn
and remember content.

7. These teaching strategies can
help students with specific
language disabilities
(including dyslexia), and they
can boost the language skills
of your other learners, too.

8. Encourage conversation.
Every social interaction gives students a new
opportunity to practice language. Some of
your students might need a little guidance
from you to engage in conversations, so
spark interactions whenever you can. Ask
questions, rephrase the student’s answers,
and give prompts that encourage oral
conversations to continue.

9. Maintain eye contact.
Engage in eye contact with students during
instruction and encourage them to do the same.
Maintaining eye contact will help learners gauge
their audience’s attention and adjust their
language, their volume, or the organization of
their speech. This will help them be better under-
stood, communicate more clearly, and
successfully interpret nonverbal cues about their
clarity.

10. Remind students to speak loudly and articulate clearly.
Ask students to feel the muscles used for
speech while they’re talking and monitor
their volume and articulation. Remind
them that clear and loud-enough speech
is essential for holding the attention of
the group and communicating their
information and opinions effectively.

11. Have students summarize heard information.
Encourage students to verbally summarize or
otherwise discuss the information they hear.
This should begin in kindergarten and
continue with increasingly difficult questions
as students grow older. Teach students to
ask for clarification when they don’t
understand something, and emphasize that
they can ask you directly or query fellow
students.

12. Model and guide sentence construction.
Some students have trouble getting started with the
wording of a sentence. Saying the beginning word
or phrase for the student can help the student
structure their response. Give students time for
thinking and formulating an oral or written
response. Students’ explicit experience in both
producing their own oral language and processing
others’ language will help facilitate their
comprehension of reading material.

13. Explain the subtleties of tone.
Your students have probably experienced playground
arguments related to tone; misunderstandings are common
when students are using loud outdoor voices. Remind your
students how tone of voice—which includes pitch, volume,
speed, and rhythm—can change the meaning of what a
speaker says. Often, it’s not what they say, it’s how they say it
that can lead to misunderstanding of motives and attitudes.
Ask your students to be mindful of tone when they’re trying
to get a message across, and adjust their volume and pitch
accordingly.

14. Attend to listening skills.
Ensure that your students are listening
by using consistent cues to get their
attention. You might use a phrase like
“It’s listening time” to give students a
reminder. Some students might also
benefit from written reminders posted
prominently on your wall.

15. Incorporate a “question of the day.”
During each school day’s opening activities, ask a question
to encourage talk. (You can even write one on the board so
your students can read it and start thinking about their
answer as soon as they come in.) Start with simple one-part
questions like “What is your favorite animal?” If a student
doesn’t answer in a complete sentence, model a complete
sentence and ask the student to repeat your model. Once
your students are successfully answering these simple
questions in complete sentences, move to two-part
questions that require more complex answers: “What is
your favorite animal? Why?”

16. Compile a class booklet of students’ phrases.
Give your students a sentence to finish, such as “When
my dog got lost I looked…” Have each student
contribute a prepositional phrase to complete the
sentence (e.g., at the grocery store, in the park, under
the bed). Then have your students create a class
booklet by writing and illustrating their phrases. When
all the phrase pages are assembled into a booklet,
students can practice reading the very long sentence
with all the places they looked for the dog. Encourage
them to come up with a conclusion to the story.

17. Teach concept words.
Some students may have difficulty with abstract concepts
such as before, after, or following, and with sequences such
as days of the week or months of the year. To help students
learn and retain these concepts, you may need to present
and review them many times and in multiple ways. For
example:
You might ask students to identify which holiday comes in
each month and then review holidays for other months in
sequence: “Groundhog Day is in February. What holiday is in
March? In April?”
Have students identify the month before or after a given
month. “May is before June and after April.” “May is between
April and June.”

18. Question to boost comprehension.
Asking questions before and
after a reading assignment not
only helps sharpen oral
language skills, it also helps
students think about what
they’re reading and absorb
information from the words.

19. You might try the following strategies to facilitate reading
comprehension:
If there’s an introduction to the story or passage, ask students to
read it and answer purpose-setting questions: “Where does the
story begin? “What kind of story or article is this? Why do you
think so?”
Ask students to predict outcomes: “What will happen? How do
you know?”
After the reading, ask students to reveal whether their predictions
were correct and identify where the ending or conclusion begins.
Have students summarize the passage: “Who were the
characters?” “What was the plot?” “What was the outcome?”
“What was the main idea?” “What were the supporting details?”

20. Teach for oral reading fluency.
Oral reading fluency refers to how
rapidly, smoothly, effortlessly, and
automatically students read text. The
goal is accurate and fluid reading with
adequate speed, appropriate phrasing,
and correct intonation.

21. Here are a few activities that aid fluency:
Sentence completion: Read a phrase and signal for a
student to complete the sentence. Then read another
phrase and signal another student to complete the next
sentence. This activity provides good modeling of rhythm
and inflection and builds reading group skills.
Round-robin repeated reading: Each student reads a
sentence, paragraph, or page, and then the next student
gets a turn. Prompt each student to read with rhythm and
fluency.
Partner reading: Paired readers choose a quiet, cozy spot
practice reading to one another. This activity provides
additional practice after reading in small groups.

22. Monitored reading: Ask an aide or parent
volunteer to listen to a student’s oral reading
and watch for good phrasing and rhythm.
Repeated reading: Parents may assist with
repeated reading at home by asking students to
read orally the same 150- to 200-word passage
repeatedly over several days. Students do not
have to spend more than 10 minutes rereading
each night.

23. Never assume students understood your instructional talk.
You use oral language every day to teach—but some
students may not be getting your message. In this chart
from Berninger & Wolf’s book, Beverly Wolf shares
some examples of how students in her classroom
misinterpreted sentences delivered orally:
Be aware of the potential disconnect between what you
say and what your students hear. Go over your message
and present it in multiple ways to be sure all students
understand.

26. Thank you
for listening!
