established listening and speaking procedures
Answers
Effective speaking and listening instruction
The foundational role that oral language plays in learning to read and write has long been recognised (Dougherty, 2014; Hart and Risley, 2003; Snow, Burns & Griffin, 1998).
The relationship between oral language ability and academic success has been well established (Hill, 2012; Resnick and Snow, 2009).
In order to maximise students’ literacy and learning, teachers need to have solid understandings about oral language and its potential as an educative tool.
Oral language involves expressive and receptive skills.
Expressive language encompasses the words and actions used to convey meaning, including tone, volume, pauses and inflections.
Receptive language is the understanding of language expressed by others. Expressive and receptive oral language are often referred to as ‘speaking and listening’.
The curriculum
The Victorian Curriculum F - 10 recognises the importance of oral language as a communicative process, with speaking and listening receiving prominence in the English curriculum, alongside reading, viewing and writing. Speaking and listening in the classroom serve both social and educative purposes. That is, speaking and listening is central to forming relationships, and acting as cognitive tools for learning (Vygotsky, 1978).
Acknowledging the major role speaking and listening play inside and outside of school, it stands to reason that oral language should not be left to chance, but planned for across the curriculum and explicitly taught.
The English curriculum, speaking and listening is a starting point when considering what should be taught. The other modes of the English curriculum, and other curriculum disciplines, all have knowledge, actions and skill development mediated by speaking and listening. At each level of the curriculum and across all disciplines, spoken texts are included with written and multimodal texts, to be explored, analysed and created.
The Victorian Curriculum F – 10 provides the following account of speaking and listening:
peaking and Listening refers to the various formal and informal ways oral language is used to convey and receive meaning. It involves the development and demonstration of knowledge about the appropriate oral language for particular audiences and occasions, including body language and voice. It also involves the development of active-listening strategies and an understanding of the conventions of different spoken texts.
The curriculum presents speaking and listening as a means of addressing purpose. Linguist M.A.K. Halliday expressed purpose in terms of functions. It is useful to examine speaking and listening through Halliday’s functions of language, to see the pervasive roles of speaking and listening (see table below). Teachers can use the functions of language to audit the types of oral language interactions they are planning for their students.
The curriculum has a strong focus on the sounds and letter patterns used to create spoken language; expressing ideas and opinions; interacting with others and presenting formal oral presentations.
The curriculum recognises that speaking and listening, like writing, is used in formal and informal ways. The degree of formality used in an oral language interaction is dependent upon the subject matter to be discussed, the relationship between the participants and the way the interaction will occur (for example: face to face, phone conversation, recorded message, video etc.)