Listening as a Language Skill
- Most used language skill!
Center for Research on Education, Diversity and Excellence Report
Empirical lit on oral language development In ELLs Is small - oral language In shadows of research
National Literacy Panel Report
Close relationship exists between English oral proficiency and reading
ELLs need some English proficiency before Interaction w/ native speakers Is helpful
Takes time for ELLs to develop oral English proficiency; several years and slows down due to lack of attention on oral lang development
- Yet, overshadowed by reading and writing In terms of Instruction
Use of English outside of school enhances ELLs' oral development; use of home language from beginning ELLs contributes to development
Testing: oral language proficiency tests fails to capture full oral language proficiency of bilingual students
National Academies Report
Consistent with findings of CREDE and NLP reports
Oral language skills more Important for reading larger chunks of text for comprehension than for reading at the word level
Oral language skills In English strongly associated with English reading comprehension- vocab knowledge; listening comp; syntactive skils; metalinguistic aspects
Oral language skills In English associated w/ better English writing
English oral language proficiency Is not strongly related to English spelling skills!
ELLs need consistent ESL Instruction
Home language literary skills plus good English oral language skills strongly associated with English reading comp skills
Many schools are not providing adequate Instruction to ELLs In acquiring English proficiency
Four Instructional practices for developing oral English proficiency
provide specialized Instruction focused on components of oral language
provide opportunities for Interaction with speakers proficient In the learner's second language
engage In Interactional feedback
dedicate time for Instruction focused on oral English proficiency
Theory
Silent Period and Wait time: ELLs go through silent period; teacher should not assume that students who don't talk are not learning; wait time to allow students to formulate thoughts
Productive talk moves: revoicing; repeating; reasoning; adding on; waiting
Teacher talk: teacher should talk less; scaffold student talk
Correcting student speech errors: teacher should correct only errors that students are read to learn how to correct; provide corrective feedback to avoid embarrassment-recast
Vocab development: the more words ELLs know, the more they can speak/write/understand
Promoting Oral Lang Development In Classroom
Total physical response: teacher provides commands and students respond with action
Listening comprehension tasks
Listening centers