Advancing Oral Proficiency in our World Language Classrooms Jie Tian 1 Taiwan Teacher Professional Development Series

Objectives  Explore reasons why many learners fail to engage in lesson discussions  Develop thoughts on Integration of communicative language in lesson instruction 2

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Active and Passive Learning Students tend to be more actively involved in certain learning environments and more passive in others. In looking at your WL classroom, are your students active or passive? What are the characteristics of a classroom learning environment that helps you to be a more active and confident student and one in which you tend to remain more passive? 4

Activity  Venn Diagram 5 PassiveActive

Learner Engagement – the # 1 first priority in active learning Definition:  To attract and maintain a learner’s interest and active involvement in all lesson content and related tasks, with clearly articulated “evidence checks” of a concrete, productive response to instruction (i.e., some objective, behaviorally observable response to instruction) 6

Expanding Students’ Oral Proficiency Opportunities in Class ***All students want to be able to speak & share ideas*** Essential components to consider when building OP to promote communicative competence:  Vocabulary- words that students know, learns, uses  Syntax- the way words are arranged to form sentences or phrases  Grammar – the rules according to which the words of a language change their form and are combined into sentences  Register – the communicative style of language use of degree of formality reflected in word choice and grammar 7

Steps in Structuring Accountable Discussions in WL Classes  Establish a clear purpose - pose an open-ended contextualized task.  Build up the path - model an appropriate response with vocabulary/content/ grammar.  Monitor students’ speaking process and offer assistance as necessary  Pair to share responses using the assigned starter  Synthesize contribution and establish connections to the curricula. 8

What is conscientiously planned and structured in scaffolded interactive discussions? EVERYTHING!  The task – something that all students should be able to complete  Who? – assigned partner or group  Time – relatively brief, highly focused  Preparation – Prepared participation – model response, think time, pre-teaching of targeted vocabulary, rehearsal with partner  Academic language use – linguistic framing with written and verbal application of target vocabulary and grammar  Listening – note-taking task; active listening & acknowledging tasks and9

Try this in your TL  Using one of our in-class lesson demos or a lesson you have created yourself, think of a topic or way you would like to open an interactive discussion in your WL classroom in the TL  Clearly ask the question  Clearly ask students to respond orally (to provide a model)  You may want 1 – 2 word answers first,  Then, depending on level/age, the students may expand those into sentence form using YOUR SENTENCE STARTER(S) 10