| The information in this section applies to all grade levels, 6-9. Grade level differences will be reflected in the teacher's choice of learning objectives, resources, and activities. Although the language processes are presented in three separate sections in this curriculum guide (Speaking and Listening, Writing, and Reading), it is intended that they be integrated throughout the year and the language arts program. |
| An integrated approach to learning and curriculum development enables students and teachers to participate in new dialogues and pathways to learning. Shifts in thinking and learning patterns emerge, providing an integrated, relevant curriculum where meaning is constructed and purposeful to the lives of students (Seely, A.E., 1995, p. 36). |
Oral communication is a vital component of the English language arts curriculum and provides the base for growth in reading, writing, and listening abilities. Oracy consists of both verbal and nonverbal communication. It is important that teachers recognize that nonverbal communication is culture specific, and be aware of the differences that may exist across cultures when students express themselves nonverbally.
As learning and applying the skills of oral English are so closely related, the classroom should be a place where the use of spoken language is sensitively supported and where active listening is developed and valued. Talk enables students to make connections between what they know and what they are learning, and listening helps them to acquire knowledge and explore ideas.
Talk can be immediate and spontaneous, or planned and deliberate. Confidence and enthusiasm are critical factors in oral language development, and because much oral language is immediate, it involves taking risks. Student learning is most effective when there is a relationship of mutual trust, when students' oral language is accepted and a variety of communication styles are accommodated in the classroom, and when students have frequent opportunities to talk in formal and informal situations.
Functions of Talk
Talk serves two important functions in the classroom: the social and the intellectual. Students' oral language skills develop in conjunction with their expanding social awareness and their ability to reflect upon and reconstruct experience. As a social function, talk helps students adjust to ideas and ideas are reformulated to facilitate student understanding. Within this function, students share information and ideas with listeners by speaking informally and sharing through conversation. Talk is also used to form relationships through language.
Intellectual Function
Talk, as an intellectual function, shapes students' perceptions of the world and represents these perceptions as knowledge. Talking encourages students to reproduce and transform knowledge as they sift through observations, evaluate information, and compare views. Talk that transforms knowledge increases students' critical thinking abilities and retention.
Both social and intellectual talk have a place in the classroom. Instruction must ensure a full range of talk and allow for crossover between social and intellectual talk. Some classroom talk experiences are spontaneous and occur without teacher prompts or instruction, while other speaking activities require planning and structure.
Growth in oral communication revolves around increasing fluency and effectiveness. Students need to be able to speak clearly, using appropriate volume. They need to be able to give directions, follow directions, negotiate, ask questions, suggest answers, and organize and present information. They need to adapt their speaking for different audiences, purposes, formats, and topics.
As students become more proficient speakers, they develop their abilities to:
Interact Socially
Develop Self-awareness
Inform
Fluency and effectiveness in speaking develops gradually. The chart on the following page describes the developmental stages of speaking, from dependence to independence.
| Developmental Stages of Speaking: From Dependence to Independence | |
| Stage 1 Novice Speaker (unskilled, needs encouragement) |
|
| Stage 2 Transitional Speaker (self-involved, becoming more confident) |
|
| Stage 3 Willing Speaker (peer-involved, achieving self-assurance) |
|
| Stage 4 Independent Speaker (autonomous speaker, assuming leadership roles) |
|
As students actively engage in the speaking process, their perceptions can change from moment to moment and from week to week. As individuals acquire new information, the language they use to make meaning changes. As they reflect upon information shared or received, they revise their understanding, further developing their schemas about language and the world.
The speaking process includes activities that occur prior to, during, and after the actual speaking event. For example, before speaking, the speaker might determine the actual content of the message, how it should be presented, and what kind of audience will be hearing the message. While speaking, the speaker must attend to such things as presenting a clear message, tone of voice, suitable vocabulary, possible responses, the environment, and nonverbal gestures. Following speaking, the speaker might accept comments, answer questions, explain concepts not understood, and/or assess the process.
Pre-speaking: Planning and Organizing
Just as pre-writing precedes drafting, pre-speaking begins before students actually speak. Students' experiences, observations, and interactions inside and outside of the classroom have an impact upon what they say and how they say it. Pre-speaking activities involve thought and reflection, and provide opportunities for students to plan and organize for speaking. Some purposes for pre-speaking are listed below.
To choose a speaking topic:
Students generate and explore ideas for speaking topics through a variety of pre-speaking activities such as the following:
To determine purpose:
Speakers talk to express ideas, emotions, and opinions, and to share information. Students must ask themselves "What is my purpose for speaking?"
To determine audience:
Speakers must ask themselves "Who is my intended audience?" Some possible audiences are:
To determine format:
Speakers must consider how their ideas and information can be presented most effectively. Some possible formats include the following:
See the Writing section for a variety of pre-writing suggestions which also can be useful as pre-speaking scaffolds.
Speaking: Going Public
Speaking actively engages students in interactions with peers and other audiences. Students who have been provided with supportive, collaborative environments and opportunities to prepare for their informal and formal speaking experiences are more likely to have the confidence needed to "go public" with their ideas and information.
In order to communicate and interact with others, students need to engage in a variety of formal and informal speaking situations, depending upon their purpose for speaking. Some purposes for speaking include the following:
Some scaffolds to support speaking include the following:
Post-speaking: A Time for Reflection and Setting Goals
Following speaking experiences, both formal and informal, it is important to have students reflect upon their performance. Their reflection, whether it is oral or written, should include the teacher, who can help them set personal goals for improving their speaking abilities. This type of reflective assessment and goal setting encourages critical thought. Some purposes for post-speaking activities are listed below.
To reflect upon performance:
Students who have opportunities to reflect upon their speaking experiences, in light of pre-determined criteria, grow in their abilities to speak effectively.
To set goals for improvement:
When students reflect upon their performance, they begin to recognize what they have done well and where they require improvement.
Some post-speaking scaffolds include:
When students have reflected upon their own speaking performance, peers may be invited to comment. Peers may comment through a structure similar to a writing conference and may give oral feedback, written feedback, or a combination of the two. Conferences may be guided by specific questions determined by the teacher or may take the form of conversation between peers.
Students' speaking skills develop best in dynamic interactive learning environments, where enough time is provided for them to share and listen to a variety of ideas. A safe, comfortable, and relaxed atmosphere is critical for the development of productive talk in the classroom for all students and is particularly important for those students who may come from backgrounds that differ from the classroom norm.
Classrooms should be places where students can ask and answer meaningful questions and in which the teacher and students are co-learners, collaborating with one another to communicate ideas and information. Different group sizes (pairs, small groups, and large groups) provide opportunities for students to practise the different thinking and oral skills unique to each configuration.
The role of the teacher is to:
The following should be observed in the classroom on a day-to-day basis:
Assessment of speaking should be continuous and take into account both process and product. A variety of assessment techniques that consider students' knowledge, skills, and attitudes should be used.
Teachers may collect anecdotal notes, use checklists, or use audio or videotapes to collect data about students' speaking abilities. This data can then be used during conferences or interviews with students about their performance and progress. Specific assessment suggestions are provided with each of the speaking and listening activities included later in this section of the curriculum guide.
Listening is an essential part of the communication process. Students spend the majority of each school day listening and much of what students know is acquired through listening. It is essential that students have opportunities to practise the behaviours of effective listeners.
Listening is more than hearing; comprehending spoken language involves process-oriented thinking skills. Because listening involves the use of language and thought, the ability to listen effectively develops as students' language abilities develop and mature.
Developing effective listening abilities cannot be left to chance. Active listening experiences should be structured into daily English language arts activities. Students learn to value listening when it is given a prominent role in the English language arts classroom and when it is meaningfully integrated with their speaking, writing, and reading experiences.
Exposure to oral English is very important for ESL students, who need to hear the language spoken in meaningful contexts in order to acquire it. Their receptive (listening) language abilities precede their expressive (speaking) language abilities, so they need to spend a great deal of time listening before and as they develop their speaking abilities.
Students become active listeners when they deliberately attend to the speaker's message with the intention of immediately applying or assessing the ideas or information. For example, students may take notes if they wish to refer to the information; they may offer words of agreement or ask questions if they are part of a conversation; they may formulate questions to ask the speaker; or they may evaluate the message, determining the speaker's motive and what is fact and what is opinion.
Effective listening requires the listener's participation. The effective listener wants to understand what is said and actively tries to assign meaning to the speaker's verbal and nonverbal language. The effective listener responds appropriately to what is said and fosters a productive exchange. The meaning generated depends upon the listener's desire and ability to engage in thinking and listening, as well as on prior knowledge of the speaker's language use and topic. Effective listeners are able to:
The listening process is recursive in nature. Students may hear sound from a stimulus, attend to it, evaluate it, and continue to listen. Students may attend to a speaker's message and respond to it without choosing to remember or evaluate it. The listening purpose and context, and the student's listening maturity will determine the level of listening. The chart on the following page outlines three levels of listening: literal, interpretive, and critical and describes the factors that influence listening abilities at each level.
| Levels of Listening | Factors That Influence Listening Abilities | |
| Literal Level (hearing, receiving, attending) |
|
|
| Interpretive Level (remembering, responding, assigning meaning) |
|
|
| Critical Level (evaluating, judging, reacting, responding) |
|
|
One way of helping students to become aware of their own listening habits and abilities is to have them complete Listening Strategies Questionnaires or Listening Inventories such as those on the following pages. As well as informing the students about their own listening skills and understandings, the questionnaire or inventory can inform teachers about instructional needs. The questionnaire or inventory can be completed by individual students or can be used as a structured interview for pairs of students. Discussion in small groups or as a whole class is a useful follow-up activity; as students talk about what they know about their listening behaviours, they begin to develop understanding about what it means to be an effective listener. As well, discussion offers students the opportunity to share their successful listening strategies with others, and to gain knowledge of other students' strategies.
Listening is a complex process in which listeners interact with a speaker to construct meaning, within the context of their experiences and knowledge. Understanding oral language is essential to the learning process, so students require strategies for becoming accurate, effective listeners. When students are made aware of the factors that affect accurate listening, the levels of listening, and the components of the listening process, they are more likely to recognize their own listening abilities and engage in activities that prepare them to be effective listeners. Students can extend their listening abilities most efficiently when listening instruction is integrated into their speaking, writing, and reading activities, and when it is structured as pre-listening, listening, and post-listening experiences.
Pre-listening: Setting the Stage
Effective listening requires that students be prepared for what they are about to hear so that their listening goes beyond the literal level. Pre-listening activities encourage students to listen at the interpretive and critical levels. Some purposes for pre-listening are listed below.
To spark interest and motivate students to attend to the spoken message:
To activate or build students' prior topical and linguistic knowledge:
To set purposes for listening:
Activities that prepare students for reading are often equally helpful in preparing them for listening. See the Reading section of this curriculum guide for examples of pre-reading scaffolds that can be used as pre-listening scaffolds.
Sample Listening Strategies Questionnaire
Sample Self-assessment Listening Inventory
Listening: Interpreting Speech and Constructing Meaning
Listeners who participate actively in the listening experience are more likely to construct clear, accurate meaning as they interpret the speaker's verbal message and nonverbal cues. During the listening experience students verify and revise their predictions. They make interpretations and judgements based upon what they know, assessing what more they need to know. Some purposes for listening follow.
To foster students' comprehension of the speaker's language and ideas:
To focus students' attention on such things as the speaker's organizational patterns:
To encourage students' critical reactions and personal responses to the speaker's ideas and use of language:
Scaffolds, such as partner journals and prediction points (see the Reading section of the curriculum guide), which engage students in text during the reading process are also useful during listening activities.
Post-listening: Responding, Reflecting, and Reconstructing Understanding
Follow-up activities to listening experiences are critical because they extend students' learning, encourage students to understand that there are purposes for listening, and emphasize that the information gained will be useful to them. Post-listening activities are most effective when implemented immediately after the listening experience, becoming a direct extension of it. Well-planned post-listening activities offer students opportunities to connect what they have heard to their own ideas and experiences, and encourage interpretive and critical listening and reflective thinking. As well, post-listening activities provide opportunities for teachers to assess students' comprehension, check their perceptions, and clarify their understandings. Some purposes for post-listening are listed below.
To examine relationships between prior knowledge and experience, and new ideas and information gained from the speaker or discussion:
To invite and encourage student reflection and response:
To clarify and extend comprehension beyond the literal level to the interpretive and critical levels:
To check comprehension, correct inaccurate concepts, and clarify tenuous learning:
To give students the opportunity to apply new information immediately:
It is important to encourage students to reflect, and to clarify and extend their thinking about what they have heard by making concrete responses which may be written, spoken, visual, or dramatic. Many of the same means used to help students extend and clarify their reading experiences can be used to extend and clarify their listening experiences.
Creating separate instructional listening situations may be useful occasionally; however, it is more effective when listening instruction permeates the school day. Isolated listening instruction is artificial and does not foster transfer to students' real life. To practise listening in meaningful contexts, students require opportunities to engage in open dialogue with peers in such informal situations as writing conferences and literature circles. They also need practice in more formal situations such as listening to student prepared speeches and guest speakers.
Some ways that teachers can promote effective listening and help students develop as mature, active listeners include the following:
The following should be observed in the classroom on a day-to-day basis:
Assessment of learning should be continuous. A variety of assessment techniques which consider students' knowledge, skills, and attitudes should be used. Assessment suggestions are provided with each of the speaking and listening activities that follow.