Primary ESOL

Professional Readings: Speaking

On ESOL Online

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On Other Websites

• Bringing Europe's Lingua Franca into the Classroom

  Jennifer Jenkins gathered data from interactions among non-native speakers of English in order to establish which aspects of pronunciation cause intelligibility problems. This enabled her to draw up a pronunciation core, crucial for intelligibility (The Guardian Weekly article).

• Developing Classroom Speaking Activities: From Theory to Practice

  Article by Jack Richards written for classroom teachers (PDF).

• Global English and the Teaching of Pronunciation

  Jennifer Jenkin's article identifies which pronunciation features are crucial for mutual understanding when a non-native speaker of English talks to another non-native speaker and which features are not at all important (British Council).

• Teacher-student Conversations that Promote Learning

  MOE online workshop (PPt).

• Teaching Speaking Skills 1

  Suggestions for the classroom to prepare students for real interaction (British Council).

• Teaching Speaking: Suggestions for the Classroom

  1997 article by Brown and Nation. Students need to be exposed to three key items: form-focused instruction; meaning-focused instruction; and opportunities to improve fluency.

• Assessing Interactive Oral Skills in EFL Contexts

  Jason Beale write about the principles underlying assessment of oral language skills.

• Assessing Listening and Speaking Skills.

  Mead and Rubin discuss factors to be considered when assessing oral language (ERIC Digest).

• Bringing Europe's Lingua Franca into the Classroom

  Jennifer Jenkins and Barbara Seidlhofer suggest how the results of new research into how 'non-native' speakers of English use the language must change the way it is taught (Guardian Weekly, 2001).

• Global English and Pronunciation

  Jennifer Jenkins discusses the use of native speaker pronunciation models in the teaching of English (British Council).

• Helen Fraser

  Links to Helen Fraser's articles on pronunciation and her Teaching Pronunciation Handbook that you can download.

• The Importance of Oral Language in the School Curriculum

  Gillian Bertram discusses the role of the teacher in facilitating growth in students' oral language.

• Oral Language

  Discusses the literacy challenges for English language learners and identifies effective teaching strategies for scaffolding oral language (The Education Alliance, Brown University).

• Questions and Questioning: The Most Powerful Technologies of All

  From Jamie McKenzie.

• Rating Instructional Conversations: A Guide

  From Rueda, Goldenberg and Gallimore (NCELA).

• Rhymes, Stories and Songs in the ESL Classroom

  This article argues the case for including traditional songs, stories and nursery rhymes in the ESOL classroom (The Internet TESL Journal).

• Spoken Language

  2003 article by Martin Bygate explains the lack of specific attention to speaking, and why this needs to be addressed.

• Storytelling in Young Learner Classes

  Why and how (British Council).

• Storytelling: A Foundational Pillar of Literacy

  Telling family stories develops student literacy - as Margaret Attwood describes.

• Teaching Speaking Skills 2

  This article is written for teachers with large classes of students who have encountered problems during speaking activities in their classroom (British Council).

• Using "Think-Time" and "Wait-Time" Skillfully in the Classroom

  Stahl writes about the benefits of the 3 second wait to allow for information processing (ERIC Digest).

• We Can Talk: Cooperative Learning in the Elementary ESL Classroom

  The role of co-operative learning in facilitating language acquisition (CAL Digest).