Oral Instruction for Young Struggling ELLs
How Teachers Can Reinforce Language Skills in an ESL Program
Nov 14, 2008
Many teachers rely on oral instruction as a consistent method for teaching vocabulary and early reading skills. But as soon as teachers see evidence that ELLs can read, then the oral level of instruction mysteriously disappears.
But for struggling ELLs in a general education or ESL group, oral instruction is crucial for reinforcing sound elements in decoding, reinforcing vocabulary learning and later, vocabulary in context. Oral instruction bridges word and text based skills, which is the main obstacle for struggling ELLs.
How to Teach Words and Sentences Orally
This young group of English language learners needs extensive use of oral instruction to engage them in deeper areas of meaning and connecting ideas together. Nowadays, the push is for teachers to use a balanced reading and oral approach, which reinforces areas of vocabulary acquisition and early reading skills with bits of oral instruction that are introduced graduallly and at critical areas of development.
Here are some suggestions how general education and ESL teachers/specialists can reinforce oral instruction using the following four step approach:
Note: these steps are intended for ELLs who are at the stage of acquiring decoding or have early reading skills.
Four Step Oral Instruction Plan for Young Struggling ELLs
Stage 1 –Teachers use an appealing form of oral instruction (i.e.chants, songs, dialogues) to reinforce sound patterns and blends, then later dialogues. Chants are a fun and musically effective way of introduce chunks of language including sound repetition, blends, cognates and phrases. By hearing the sounds in a unique sound framework, struggling ELLs have a greater chance of remembering them.
Stages 2 – Teachers connect both oral and written forms of the words using sentence strips for examples.
Stage 3 – Teachers can cover part(s) of the word and or sentence and or provide just one syllable and/or sound as a trigger for students to produce the word/sound/sentence.
Students make a list of their favorite sentences and/or words (or both)
Stage 4 – ELLs then do a shared repeated reading where each student gets one list or words and/or sentences and the other students gets an entirely different list. In turns, each one says the words while the other numbers the words/sentence. They then have to relay the words/sentences in order while the other one checks for accuracy.
Individual Work on Oral Instruction for ELLs
In order to check for deeper reading understanding, each student can number a set of pictures in order and/or match the sentences or words to a picture. He/she can tell share his/her version of the story with his partner and then share with another pair. Teacher can then gather all the responses on the board and provide the class with the "right" story version.This is just one way a teacher can introduce communicative methodology techniques that are both fun and appealing, especially to struggling ELLs.
The Teacher's Role During Paired Oral Instruction Activities
During paired reading, the teacher should circiulate around each pair and make note of any decoding problem and level of understanding The teacher can also take short mini-assessments while the others are engaged using a list of targeted words and their sounds/sound blends. After "intake" s/he will be better informed on how to customized his/her lessons using further continued opportunities for reinforcing oral instruction.
Oral instruction can be an engaging way to differentiate literacy instruction for struggling ELLs, who often get lost alongside their English native speaking peers. By reinforcing oral instruction, a general education and/or ESL teacher has greater chances of closing the reading gaps before young English language learners struggle even more.
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