Often, we look for the quiet class as a sign of classroom management and student learning; however, one of the most important features of language acquisition, whether you are teaching English Language Development, a Language Other Than English (LOTE) in a Dual Language Program, or are teaching in a World Language program is oracy.  You cannot learn a language unless you engage in an exchange of speaking and listening.  

There are many strategies that you can use to develop listening and speaking skills.  In this article I will give you three of them.

1. The first, or perhaps, the most common strategy is the turn and talk.  Turn and talks are an extremely common way of incorporating oracy into the classroom; however, they can also be ineffective if they are not planned and intentional.  Rather than asking students to just turn and talk about the lesson, teachers should have clear questions in place and potentially sentence frames to help students at earlier levels of proficiency participate.  Because some students process faster than others… especially students who are at earlier levels of proficiency, students should also be given time to think.  I prefer to give students a minute to think and write down their answers before they share with their partners.  Then, the teacher calls on students to say what their partner thought rather than sharing their own responses.  This holds students accountable to a. actually sharing and b. actually listening to one another.  When students are discussing, the teacher may consider allowing them to have their discussions using any language they want and then answer the whole class in the language of instruction.  This translanguaging strategy helps students access everything they know in all the languages they know to think about the content while still encouraging language acquisition.

2. Another strategy is Reader’s Theatre.  There are many published Reader’s Theatre scripts out there.  These are storied dialogues that students read out loud.  By focusing on reading with expression and understanding rather than on the actual props or settings, students can practice fluency and comprehension.  Reader’s Theatre may be performed in front of the class or to administrators and parents.  Performances should consist of reading, not memorizing.

3. Finally, consider having students present on what they are doing.  It is important to establish a culture of respect so that all students can feel comfortable presenting regardless of their proficiency levels.  Provide sentence frames for students at earlier levels of proficiency.  Allow students at earlier levels of proficiency to read what they are going to say.  Students at mid levels of proficiency may do better with less structured sentence frames or sentence frames with more difficult sentence structures.  You may ask them to have notecards rather than fully written presentations that they read.  Students at the highest levels of proficiency may do better without sentence frames but a rubric against which to measure their presentations. You may want to have them present without any notes or limited notes, depending upon their needs.  When carefully guided, students will gain confidence in speaking in front of others in the language of instruction and begin to gain fluency.

Overall, these are just a few ways to build your students’ oracy skills.  Be sure to incorporate oracy throughout your lessons, and you will see your students’ language skills grow!