Oral language - On-line emails

Greetings koutou

Oral language has definitely become the ‘hot’ topic over the last year or so, and currently is 'VERY hot’. Oral language is, of course, the  prime meaning-making tool of humans and this cannot be under-emphasised. Limitations in oral language, understanding and expression, limit one’s overall and specific control over meaning-making of a person’s immediate and extended worlds of thinking, doing, believing. Most importantly, minimal oral language capabilities can often mean the difference between being a power-holder and having the means to be involved and be fully participatory, or being only somewhat or not much at all.

Neale Pitches rightly points out that oral language, namely, the exchange of meaning via spoken language, whether face-to-face and conversational involving ‘you’ directly, or via other contexts where spoken language is available and interacted with, as in great radio broadcasts, the spoken commentary of documentary, great interviews, running commentaries, etc, is one of two prime sources of language learning and acquisition. 

The second prime source is print, especially print that provides great models of ‘more than conversational’ text, with cutting edge vocabulary in meaningful contexts, expressed in more grammatically complex ways than might be used independently by the child. So being involved in print text in abundance is major in expanding the language capabilities of children and adults alike. Print text, especially factual text, offers language that is more usually grammatically tighter, with more technical and topic specific vocabulary than 'typical’ day-to-day speech, conversational exchanges in the cut and thrust of daily living. Of course, most importantly, print opens up new worlds, new insights…a rich expanded viewpoint of and on others.

Children who have environments that provide both rich conversational exchanges, where spoken text other than day-to-day functional conversations are also available, and who are immersed in an abundance of meaningful, relevant, inspiring print texts, are certainly cognitively, conceptually and linguistically advantaged. Capabilities in listening, speaking, reading and writing, are premised on these conditions – for better or worse.

Let the oral language conversation continue.

Best regards. Jannie

A key reference you might wish to access:

van Hees, J. (2007). Expanding oral language in the classroom. Wellington, New Zealand: NZCER.

Dr Jannie van Hees

Project Director - ELA / OLLI

Auckland UniServices Ltd

University of Auckland

Ph 09-623 8899 ext. 48348

Mob: 0274952684

j.vanhees@auckland.ac.nz

From: <primaryesol-request@lists.tki.org.nz> on behalf of Lynne Carlin <lcarlin@edendale.school.nz>
Reply-To: "primaryesol@lists.tki.org.nz" <primaryesol@lists.tki.org.nz>
Date: Thursday, 17 March 2016 5:05 pm
To: "primaryesol@lists.tki.org.nz" <primaryesol@lists.tki.org.nz>
Subject: [FORGED] Re: [Primary ESOL] ELLs and Oral Language, Primary ESOL Online Weekly Update, 16 March 2016

Hi Janet,

I would also like to thank you for the discussion about oral language. It appears that oral language often gets missed during the many 'professional learning' discussions that teachers have. 

I have found 'Teaching Language in Context' by Beverley Derewianka and Pauline Jones  (Oxford University Press) to be an excellent resource/reference book for oral language. It would be really good to hear of other reference books that ESOL/classroom teachers may be using.

 It is great to see a new oral language resource - I look forward to viewing it. Thank you Jane!

Lynne Carlin

Edendale Primary

On 15 March 2016 at 20:47, Jane van der Zeyden <janez@clear.net.nz> wrote:

Hi Janet

I am so happy to see that there is discussion going on again about the importance of developing oral language competence and proficiency. All too often in my work in schools I see literacy programmes both in mainstream classes and in intervention and support programmes where oral rehearsal for writing or talk about texts in reading is minimal and consequently our English Language learners are not scaffolded enough to achieve the task successfully.

For all students oral language is an absolutely vital aspect of learning. We need to remember that talking is our primary thinking tool. There are so many reasons why being articulate is a highly desirable skill. Based on my work with English Language learners along with my literacy work, I have written a book called The Essential Oral Language Toolkit because I know that many teachers struggle with how to integrate focussed and strategically designed oral language tasks across the curriculum. My belief is that oral language should be an integral part of all learning areas  and that we need to deliberately structure oral language tasks in order to ensure that students are learning new language rather than sticking within the known. The book is a practical guide for teachers at all levels of Primary and Intermediate schools.

If anyone is interested in my book there is more information on my website www.tools4teachers.co.nz and it can also be ordered from there.

Let's continue the conversations about oral language because I think our ESOL community are the people who have most knowledge about how to structure oral language teaching and learning and we can play a pivotal role in upskilling the wider education world.

Jane van der Zeyden

Literacy and ESOL facilitator

Tools 4 Teachers 

On 14/03/2016, at 4:06 PM, Janet McQueen <pandjmcq@gmail.com> wrote: