1. Foregrounding Oral Communication
Chapter 6
Foregrounding Oral Communication

2. Simultaneous First and Second Oral Development
Bilingual children develop:
Flexibility with metalinguistic concepts
Early understanding of cultural norms
An understanding of signification systems (body language, prosody, gestural cues)

3. Simultaneous First and Second Oral Development
Teachers should:
Draw on student’s background knowledge
Be aware of potential conflicts with student’s previous schooling or home experiences
Model unfamiliar oral language responses
Allow for adequate wait time
Scaffold instruction
Strive for continuity between home & school

4. Developing Oral Communication in Sequential Language Acquisition
Early language development with literacy as a goal involves oral practices based on meaningful uses of printed material:
Question and answering routines
Sharing time with books
Storytelling
Illustrating stories and sharing them
Creating games
Reciting poems/singing
Dramatization

5. Developing Oral Communication in Sequential Language Acquisition
Practices with print prepares students to think and use language for learning
Engagement in relevant and sustained oral practices is necessary in the classroom
Be aware of interference from the first language, but realize that not all student will progress through the normal developmental pattern at the same pace.

6. Research demonstrates:
Language as a Resource
Research demonstrates:
How language is used as social action
How teacher’s oral interactions with her students need to be monitored
Distribution of turns, student recognition,sanctioning of behaviors
How both the physical settings and the speakers’ backgrounds and influences have bearing on oral interactions

7. Language as a Resource
Teachers need to teach beginning second language learners how daily social interactions are affected by:
frame
participation structure
positioning
paralinguistic elements

8. Classroom Language Learning
Teachers should:
Examine with their students the ways people communicate with each other and discuss the underlying values and attitudes.
Help students recognize which language to use in different social situations and offer them alternatives for different audiences.

9. Subtractive Bilingualism
Subtractive Bilingualism includes educational practices where:
Children are often expected to give up their L1 in favor of their L2
L1 is not viewed as an asset, lack of L2 viewed as a deficit
Transfer benefits of L L2 not recognized

10. Second Language Acquisition Research
Input hypothesis
Krashen: comprehensible input = (i+1); Credits the learner’s subconscious processes
Interactional hypothesis
Long: active communicative efforts to understand and be understood
Output hypothesis
Swain: attempts at output allow learners to test hypotheses about L2 and progressively produce more accurate, coherent, conventionalized language

11. Second Language Acquisition Research
Classroom-Based Research on Oral Communication Development
Feedback: consider quantity, complexity, timing, learner understanding of its present or future need

12. Second Language Acquisition Research
Input Theories
Learnability theories - examine what kinds of learning in classroom settings best facilitate acquisition. They identify stages in learner development and types of tasks and interactions
Processability theory – learner can only be taught a structure when he can manage its processing demands

13. Second Language Acquisition Research
Output Theories
There are varied preferences in learning styles that help students process, store and retrieve information. Learning styles are affected by:
affective levels
modes of processing information
types of cognition

14. Second Language Acquisition Research
Output Theories
Teachers should:
Offer a variety of activities geared towards different learning styles and multiple intelligences
Teach learning strategies (Chamot/O’Malley)

15. Fluency and Proficiency vs. Identity and Agency
Planned Oral Communication
Incorporate monologic communication – reading aloud, speeches, rehearsals; communication for a purpose
Students focus on organization, cohesion, performance
Promote interaction where the cognitive processes used in the classroom setting will be comparable to the natural setting

16. Fluency Building: Error Correction
Only correct features that can be reasonably managed at the learner’s level of proficiency
Tailor error correction to the learner (checklists)
Remember that the development of an internalized grammar system does not follow a linear path

17. Identity and Agency Building
Genre Is Greater Than Its Parts
Encourage learners to observe/collect information about L2 community and formulate questions about the culture/language use through:
consciousness raising
problem posing

18. Identity and Agency Building
Genre Is Greater Than Its Parts
To help students gain the “big picture”, assign projects which:
involve students affectively
promote cognitive activities such as problem solving
relate to subject matter in other classes

19. Identity and Agency Building
Teacher’s Feedback
Teacher talk includes modifications teachers use to be comprehended by their students:
repetition of instructions
speaking at a slower rate
pausing
changing pronunciation
modifying vocabulary, grammar or discourse

20. Identity and Agency Building
Teacher’s Feedback
Respectfully scaffold student’s oral communication with:
modeling
restatement
clarification
questioning

21. Identity and Agency Building
Shifting between fluency & accuracy
Know the students strengths to move from:
Silent participation with comprehension
Production of chunks of oral language
Complex oral exchanges and presentations

22. Identity and Agency Building
Shifting between fluency & accuracy
To build confidence in fluency, lessons need to foreground activities for negotiating meaning and shift to foregrounding accuracy by focusing on forms of expression.

23. Identity and Agency Building
Shifting between fluency & accuracy
Ice-breakers allows students to use an oral routine or expression with their classmates under low-risk conditions. Use them:
To get to know each other
To review previous material
To preview new material
To introduce new material inductively or deductively

24. Differences Between Second and Foreign Language Learners
Social and Academic Consequences of Sounding Like the “Other”
Challenges of second language learners:
Lack of social acceptance due to an L1 that is stigmatized by the mainstream
Alienation from their culturally distinct heritage group

25. Differences Between Second and Foreign Language Learners
Discontinuities in Schooling
Limited communication between schools results in lack of continuity in learning (“repeat beginners”)
Heritage language learners sometimes:
have little formal study in their L1
must strive for academic success by adopting cultural practices at odds with their home/community environment
have been in programs where memorization is stressed, rather than application and performance

26. Going Beyond the National Standards
Basic TESOL standards:
presentational
interpersonal
interpretive
Critical Language Awareness – build up the learner’s awareness of the significant role language plays in social/school life.
Build connections between classwork and the wider social/political world.