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2.4 Developing spoken English

Key messages
Spoken English is both a tool for learning and a bridge to literacy. Informal spoken English and written English use different vocabularies and structures. Oral English usage can be viewed as a continuum from context embedded exploratory talk to more formal spoken English talk as process or talk as performance. The more formal spoken English relates most closely to the language of school texts. Low literacy background learners need to build a strong oral language base for literacy and to develop skills and understandings about oral language that relate to purpose and context.

Relationship of spoken language to learning to read

As we read we begin to perceive patterns in spelling and the sound system, and to learn strategies for working out how to read and the meanings of unknown words. EAL learners go through a similar process, but they have a smaller set of English on which to base their learning. These learners first need to build a bank of oral English on which to base their literacy development. This works best where the written language they encounter in the early stages is familiar to them. An EAL literacy learner usually has no more difficulty that any other EAL learner in acquiring basic conversational English. Such English is heavily context embedded (usually about the here and now) and filled with redundancies (filler words like um or like, hesitancies and repetition) which gives the listener time to process meaning. EAL literacy learners have more difficulty acquiring the more formally structured spoken English which is more closely related to the language they will find in written texts, the language required for academic reading and writing, for oral presentations, or for comprehending formal teacher talk. Here the lexical content is dense, there is less redundancy, and the context often relates to other times and other places. An EAL literacy learner has the two fold challenge of: learning new conceptual understandings with limited oral English acquiring the structures of formal oral and written English on which their literacy development will be based.

They may be unaware that: written texts are different from spoken texts and that there are different kinds of written texts. The older the learner, the more complex the structures of the texts they will be expected to read and the greater the dissonance between their own spoken language and the language of written texts.
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The oral language learning continuum

It is helpful to think of oral language as being on a continuum (Gibbons 1991) ranging from informal conversation to the formal English of a lecture or presentation (See Figure 1 below). The different characteristics of both kinds of speech are shown in Figure 2 below.
Figure 1:Oral language continuum (overview)

Interactive, Spontaneous planned talk eg conversation, together informal putting dialogue eg a group report small group or pair talk

Longer stretches Planned of organised planned formal spoken text speech eg a eg recount, presentation, story telling, lecture news telling

Figure 2:Characteristics of formal and informal speech

Conversational English
spontaneous dialogue unstructured interactive contains redundancies fewer content words

Formal spoken English

planned monologue sequenced cohesive many content words meaning stands alone

meaning is context embedded

shares features of written text

Moving students along the oral language continuum

Small group exploratory talk Initial exploratory talk about a new topic links new learning to students existing language and understandings and provides a base for new concepts and vocabulary. Exploratory talk typically occurs in small group activities, is shared by group members, usually taking short turns. Its face to face, spontaneous and often fragmented because the context makes the meaning obvious. For the same reason there may be fewer content words (see Transcript 1,
Transcript 1
Jackie: Craig: Jackie: Paula: Jackie: Craig: Jackie: Let it go. You gotta you gotta count. No, you. Im doing this. Youre moving it with your hand. It wont Hang on. If ? What if um Lets get a Yeah we could hang it from the desk. How? I dunno. Wheres What about

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Paula: Sticky tape. Craig: No, it itd come off. Got a thumbtack? Here, put it here. Text from Derewianka, B. (1992) Assessing Oral Language in Derewianka, B (Ed) Language Assessment in Primary Classrooms. Sydney: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich

Reporting back talk When a member of the group reports back to the class on the activity,(see transcript 2) the talk needs to include the details that the context provided. Items need to be named and the actions described, including where, how and when they occurred. The speaking and listening demands of the second context are much greater and may require teacher scaffolding.
Transcript 2
Craig: Jackie: Craig: We got the made the pendulum thing that had a bit of a oh a just a bit of string and a bit of plasticine and to tie that on and sort of then we made a stuck it to the desk to the desk and then we had to put it up higher because it was too long and it wouldve hit the ground so we put the books under the desk and then we had trouble um because it wouldnt work properly and we kept making the string longer and we um we got about 58 centimetres no 58 seconds and 60 things but we never got it exact the right amount.

Formal reporting back For formal presentations students help scaffold students with practice with the more formal features of spoken English with explicit teaching of the kind of language that is appropriate through teacher modelling and reshaping of student utterances.
Transcript 3
Paula: We had to make a pendulum that would swing 60 times in a minute. First we got a swing, some plasticine and a stopwatch and a ruler. There were two ways we tried to measure the pendulum first by changing the length of the string and secondly by changing the amount of the plasticine the weight. When the string was 75 centimetres long it took 57 centimetres to get 60 swings. Then we kept repeating the experiment and changing the length and the weight, but we couldnt get the velocity exact. We think that the longer the string is the longer time it takes.

Text from Derewianka, B. (1992) Assessing Oral Language in Derewianka, B (Ed) Language Assessment in Primary Classrooms Sydney: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich

Aim to structure learning to help students move along the oral language continuum. They then have a linguistic base for reading and later writing the formal structures of written English. Approaches such as the Language Experience approach and the Curriculum Cycle are particularly appropriate for taking students along the oral language continuum.
Talk as process and talk as performance

Pauline Jones expands on these ideas by categorising spoken English in the classroom as either talk as process or talk as performance.
Talk as process refers to learning experiences in which talk is associated with other activities. For example students may be engaged in hands-on activities where students and teachers usually focus on meaning or on talking their way to understanding.

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Talk as performance refers to spoken language activities that take account of an audience. Like written tasks, these formal spoken tasks (such as information reports and morning news) often have identifiable generic structures and the language used is more predictable. The resulting texts is at the written-like end of the continuum. With less contextual support, the speaker must include all necessary information in the text hence the importance of topic as well as textual knowledge. And while meaning is still important, there will be more emphasis on form and accuracy Talking to Learn, p. 14, 1996, edited by Pauline Jones, Primary English Teaching Association, NSW

Low literacy background students, as do all students, need to talk their way into understanding through process talk, but need to learn the different conventions of talk as performance where the notion of audience, purpose, form and accuracy are important. Students from oral language cultures are likely to be familiar with conventions of performance talk as in storytelling or reporting and this knowledge can be built on.
Further Information

ESL Teacher Support Material, Stages A2, B2 and B3, pp 55 60 Gibbons, P. 1991 Learning to Learn in a Second Language, pp 26 42 Gibbons, P. 2002 Scaffolding Language, Scaffolding Learning, pp 14 75
Gibbons, P. (2002). Scaffolding Language, Scaffolding Learning: teaching second language learners in the mainstream classroom. Newtown: PETA.

Language Australia and the Department of Education, Training and Employment, South Australia, Early Literacy and the ESL Learner, Participants Manual 1998, Module 3

Strategies to develop oral English

Teacher student question styles
The two most common forms of teacher-student interaction are: Question Response Evaluation Question Response Feedback

The second form provides the most assistance to the EAL learner.
QuestionResponseEvaluation

In this common form of classroom interaction, students engage in guessing what is in the teachers head. The teacher either accepts or rejects the students responses. Often if a students response is deemed incorrect, they are not given feedback, or the opportunity to reflect on their responses. Example Teacher: Abdul: Teacher: Ivan: Abdul, why do you think Maria closed the door? Stop wind?(quietly) Stop the wind. No. Ivan? To stop the smoke

Teacher: To stop the smoke. (Three second pause) Not exactly. It would stop the oxygen getting to the fire and making it burn more severely wouldnt it?
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Question Response Feedback (QRF)

The QRF model mirrors the process by which children acquire first language. The teacher-asks a question, followed by the students response, followed by the teacher-facilitated negotiation of meaning, or feedback (Simich, 1984; Tharp and Gallimore, 1991). Paraphrasing and reshaping of students responses affirms the learner and gives them the opportunity to co-construct a response with their teacher and their peers. EAL students hear the correct form of the response and the teacher builds on existing knowledge, corrects errors and introduces more complex language in a natural way. Tharp, R. G., & Gallimore, R. (1991). The instructional conversation; Teaching and learning in social activity. Santa Cruz, CA: The National Centre for Research on Cultural Diversity and Second Language Learning Example Teacher: Abdul Teacher Abdul: Teacher: Abdul Teacher Abdul Teacher: What happens first? Lay egg Yes, but something else happens before that Before that, the man butterfly and woman butterfly, together. Yes thats right. They mate. The male and female butterfly mate. And what happens next? Female butterfly lay egg The female butterfly lays eggs. Where? Lays eggs in leaf. Yes, she lays her eggs on a leaf.

Collaborative discussion: Pair or group work

In collaborative discussion, students work to solve a problem together providing opportunities for authentic communication. Students experiment with new language and can ask for assistance from other students or the teacher. The teacher can identify student strengths and gaps and focus teaching accordingly. Fist review the purposes of group work, group roles and rules. Focus on the actual language of interaction, e.g. how to get your turn, how to disagree politely, how to make a suggestion or to offer a suggestion. Similarly teach and scaffold the language of reporting. The fish bowl technique helps to model the group work interactions. This involves demonstrating with a small group of students out the front. The other students comment on how well the group worked together, what kind of language was used in the discussion and the reporting back section, and how they could work more effectively. List the language used for group talk and reporting back on a chart for display.

Think Pair Share

Think Pair Share is a cooperative learning strategy that allows students to think about a question/idea/issue before sharing their ideas with a partner and then sharing their joint
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Developing spoken English

Back to contents response with the group. The focus is on short term purposeful talk. It can be used in any curriculum area. The strategy maximises learners opportunities to formulate ideas and to receive feedback. The think and pair parts of the strategy combine the benefits of wait time for cognitive processing with the benefits of cooperative learning. The share component takes students closer to the formal spoken language end of the oral language continuum, and helps build the kind of academic language they need. It involves all members of the group in discussion rather than just the more confident, articulate few. It demonstrates to students the benefits in learning of active listening, exploratory talk and cooperative learning

The strategy helps students: activate prior knowledge before reading a text or commencing a new topic predict outcomes of an experiment, an activity etc interpret meaning in text respond to issues Note: The success of the strategy depends on students being explicitly taught, and practising: active listening skills; (e.g. eye contact, no interruptions, non verbal encouragement such as nodding) ways to express their joint thinking ( e.g. We both agree, We think that) language to express possibility (e.g. maybe, possibly, it could be)

General strategies to assist oral English development

Allow wait time for students to form a response to a question. Practise pausing and sentence stress for extended utterances. Practise nonverbal language eg body stance (not fidgeting), eye contact when speaking, Use oral story telling across the curriculum to draw from students previous background experiences and cultural traditions. Storytelling helps develop written like language. After listening to a story, model how to complete a story map. Teach and practise the necessary language of narratives e.g. sequence words, active verbs. Students jointly construct a story map and, using the story map, they then retell the story. They can use the same procedure as preparation for telling a story from their culture Build in information gap activities where learners have to exchange information in order to complete a task. They use a range of oral language functions e.g. describing, clarifying, locating, explaining. Do mime and role play Practise formal debates to help students develop the kind of language they will encounter in opinionative texts and will need for writing arguments. Formal debates need to be built into
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Back to contents a topic so that students have something to say and know the language needed to express opinions, develop an argument, give reasons etc. Use Games to help develop informal language and language of instructions Use Songs and jazz chants for pronunciation and rhythm Practise asking questions. Use question charts to prompt questions. For further information go to Refugee Bridging Programs support material, section 7.0

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Developing spoken English