Chapter 4 Reading Response
Oral Language Development in Second Language Acquisition
- In real life reading, writing, listening, and speaking are all integrated - so too should they be in the classroom.
- Practice in any one area adds to the knowledge pool for a 2nd language
- Language forms: choice of words, grammar, and pronunciation
- Language functions: communicative intentions or purposes of the speaker's words
- See Halliday's functional categories
Support your students!
- Games
- Podcasts - provide the opportunity to edit
- Songs - allow students to illustrate
- Drama - props, self-expression process, improv scenarios
- Dramatizing poetry
- Show and tell - put object in a bag, make students describe and guess
- One looks, one doesn't - one person looks at the picture and describes, the other one draws what they're hearing
- Choral reading - allows for mistakes, can be combined with dramatization
Helpful links
- Games: http://www.englishclub.com/esl-games/
- Podcasts: http://www.esl.about.com/od/englishlistening/a/intropodcasts.htm
- Songs: http://tefltunes.com/whyusesongs.aspx
- Drama: http://teachers.net/lessons/
- Dramatizing Poetry: http://mset.rst2.edu/portfolios/s/stringham_1/thesis/34poetry.htm
- Choral Reading: http://www.readingrockets.org/strategies/choral_reading/, http://myweb.stedwards.edu/mikekb/ReadStrong/choralreading.html
- Riddles and Jokes: http://iteslj.org/c/jokes.html
Content Area Instruction
Math
- Use objects to demonstrate concepts
- Embed them in real-life situations
- Mathematical language is specific, precise, and logical
- Primary language support for conceptual understanding may be helpful
- Students need to learn the language associate with each action - addition can be signaled by, add, plus, combine, and, sum, increased by
- Pair work, small group problem solving
Science
- Process-oriented inquiry approach - students work in pairs/groups to work through the scientific method process
- Success of this process attributed to three factors: (1) students investigate real science problems, (2) students are actively involved in investigation, (3) students carry out investigations in groups which promotes talking, thinking, planning
- Higher level thinking which leads to language and content learning
- Identify students' prior knowledge to work through 'sociocognitive conflicts'
- Oral discussions will helps students conceptually organize their results
Social Studies
- Use visuals - films, pictures, videotapes, museum visits
- Students can learn through inquiry methods - survey, interview, and observation
- Present simulations/reenactments of historical/political events
SOLOM - Student Oral Language Observation Matrix
- Comprehension, fluency, vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation
- Teacher assessments are of more natural and educationally relevant situations
- Observe the student during a classroom activity that involves oral language use such as group work
- These settings should not be test settings, but more informal so the student is relaxed
- Ratings can be influenced by the extent to which raters are accustomed to the non-native speech patterns of English learners