Why do you think it is important for learners to listen and speak when learning a language?

Why Listening Is Vital for Language Learners

Many language learners focus a lot on speaking. They don’t spend as mucheffort onquietly listening.

Listening seems like it should be simple, or secondary to other more active language skills. To the surprise of many new learners, listening to a foreign language is difficult. If you’ve ever had to sit for a second language test, you’ll know that the listening section is almost always the hardest.

But, listening is a vital skill for language learning.

Researchshows that when we communicate, we spend around 40-50% of our time listening, 25-30% speaking, 11-16% reading and only 9% writing [although that last one might have changed in recent years due to the rise in social media].

That means we spend about half the time listening!

The question is: Do you spend half your language learning time on listening exercises?

… if you’re anything like me, you probably don’t.

5 Reasons Why Listening Is Important for Foreign Language Learning

The solution is to spend more time listening in our second language. However, it’s vital that we learn to listen effectively.

Often, we’ve not been specifically taught how to listen in a foreign language, or if we have we’ve not been taught properly.

Let’s delve into the research to find why listening is important and how we can improve our foreign language listening skills.

1. Listening Is an Active Process

If you’ve ever sat in a group of people speaking in a foreign language, you’ll be familiar with the uncomfortable feeling that you should be joining in. You feel like, if you’re not saying something, you’re not really engaging in the conversation.

Nothing could be further from the truth. The problem is thatyou’re confusing a silent process with a passive process.

Listening is a very active process, despite the fact you’re not saying anything. That’s why you’re so tired when you go home after a social event in another language.

Getting over the feeling that we are “doing nothing” is a key step towards listening effectively.

One solution is to employ active listening techniques, to remind yourself and others that you’re involved in the conversation even if you don’t speak so much.

Here are some tips to show that you are actively listening:

• Make eye contact with the person who’s talking.

• Lean forward slightly to show interest. If you’re actually listening this should be natural.

• Nod your head slightly to show you’re understanding.

• Make agreeing noises and nod your head if you agree with something they’ve said.

• Don’t look distracted by fidgeting, playing with your phone or looking off into the distance.

2. The “Silent Period” Is Golden

Children who learn a second language often go through a“silent period”where they don’t say anything. Language teachers and researchershaven’t totally agreed whether it’s a necessary stage of language learning, or how long it should be. But, they do agree that many children experience it.

It’s fair to say that most adults don’t go through any silent period at all. We often try to jump straight into speaking.

The problem with trying to speak from the beginning is that a period of silent listening can actually be hugely beneficial.

One big reason is that speaking can be quite a nerve-racking experience. I find it as stressful as performing on stage. As new learners, we’re thinking so much about what we should say next that we don’t fully experience what the other person has said. We suffer from “task overload.”

Allowing yourself to be silent lets you get the most from listening.

However, speaking successfully in a foreign language can also be very rewarding. Speaking motivates us to continue learning. And we wouldn’t want to lose our motivation, would we?

The answer isn’t to give up speaking altogether. It’s to give ourselves permission to be silent, and not beat ourselves up if we don’t say much. Speak when you can, but you don’t have to force it.

We can benefit both from the motivation of speaking and the listening benefits of a silent period.

3. Your Brain Is a Foreign Language Goldfish

Would it surprise you to learn that your short-term memory is even shorter in a foreign language?

When you think about it, it makes sense.How often have you forgotten what someone has just said in your target language?For me, at least, it happens a lot more than in my native tongue.

Listening is a vital step in overcoming this problem.

But, why does it happen?

Not to get into too much detail, although it is fascinating, this effect might be due to how our short-term memory works. When we listen to someone talking, our brain starts processing the information by “segmenting” it into small chunks to store in our short-term memory. It splits them up based on our knowledge of the “rules” for how the language is spoken. Instead of storing the actual words “a green goldfish,” our brain would maybe convert those words into an image of a green goldfish for storage.

In a foreign language, we aren’t familiar with the “segmentation rules” for how the language is spoken. Our short-term memory has to store all the words individually.

One reason why listening is so important in a foreign language is that it helps us become familiar with those segmentation rules.

Not only will it boost your understanding, it will improve your speaking in the language too.

Learning segmentation rules is usually an unconscious process, so the easiest way to learn them is to get lots of listening practice.

Here are some ways to become more familiar with a language’s segmentation rules:

• Watch films in your target language.

• Read a book while also listening along to the audio book version.

• Attend social events with natives and spend time just listening.

• Listen to the radio in your target language.

• Watch videos online in your target language.

If you enjoy listening to authentic media in your target language, there are ways you can build your language learning around that.

For example, FluentU is an app that teaches you a language using web videos, immersing you in authentic content from native speakers.

FluentU provides interactive subtitles to go with the videos, so you can hear how the spoken sounds relate to the written phrases.

This helps you get a lot of valuable practice listening to the language while also comprehending it, increasing your confidence in your listening skills. The app also reinforces what you learn with flashcards and personalized quizzes.

4. Our Listening Strategies Are Upside-down

If you learned a language in school, what listening strategy were you taught?

Myself, I remember that a listening exam went like this: listen to a tape [Yes. It was all tapes in those days] and then translate what we’d heard. The specifics were important, the difference between a pass and a fail. You would lose marks if you messed up the gender of a word, for example. As far as I can see, that’s still how listening is still taught in my home country.

Language researchers call this abottom-up listening strategy.

Bottom-up listening is an okay strategy to use in the classroom. It means carefully listening to each word, pronoun and sentence structure to work out what has been said. Unfortunately, it’s not a complete listening strategy for use in the real world.

In the real world, you can’t spend all your listening energy focusing on specific grammar while people speak. They’ll keep talking and you’ll be lost.

Top-down listening, on the other hand, is a great strategy to add more understanding of what’s being said.

Top-down listening strategies focus on concepts. Bottom-up listening strategies focus on words. Both are necessary to be an effective listener.

It basically means that you learn a little about the spoken topic beforehand. Here are a few suggestions for implementing a top-down listening strategy for some common activities:

• If you’re going to see a movie or theater play in a foreign language, read the story first.

• Read up on the topic before going to see a presentation.

• Try reading about or predicting the content of an audio passage before you listen to it. This will get your brain focusing on concepts and not just specific words.

• Hang about with a friend who repeats the same anecdote when with different people. You already know the story, so your comprehension will go up dramatically. It’s also a great way to make a potentially annoying situation into a useful learning exercise.

5. The Gist Is Only Half the Story [or Less]

Finally, one thing that we often neglect when listening in another language is to check exactly how much we have understood.

Beyond a certain level of language ability, we often “get the gist” of what was said. However, sometimes we haven’t understood as much as we think.

Next time you listen to something in your target language, try these six short, easy exercises to prove to yourself that you’ve understood what was said:

• Try drawing a picture of what was said.

• Ask yourself some questions about it and try to answer them.

• Provide a summary of what was said.

• Suggest what might come next in the “story.”

• Translate what was said into another language.

• “Talk back” to the speaker to engage in imaginary conversation [I do this when listening to the radio].

Balancing Speaking and Listening for Language Learning

Tags:

• Cognitive Psychology
• Foreign Language
• Language
• Learning
• Memory
• Psychological Science
• Students
• Teaching

In foreign language classrooms, students often do more listening than speaking—they hear a native speaker, either the teacher or a recording, speak phrases and test their comprehension via paper-and-pencil activities such as matching games. This type of training gives students the correct language input, but research is increasingly showing the value of having students speak the language as a way of learning it.

In a study published in Psychological Science, Elise W. M. Hopman and Maryellen C. MacDonald of the University of Wisconsin-Madison compared the effects of comprehension practice and production practice on foreign language learning. Their research stems from a discrepancy between memory research and advice for foreign language classrooms:

“We saw several hints in the memory literature that producing language provides a strong learning experience,” the researchers explained in a university press release, “whereas the second language learning literature is overwhelmingly focused on the importance of comprehension rather than production for learning a language.”

They propose that production practice, using speaking exercises and immediate feedback, may boost students’ ability to speak the language and to understand others speaking it.

“It’s not surprising that practicing talking can make you better at talking,” says Hopman. “But we wanted to see whether practice with talking could make you better at understanding the language as well.”

This research is novel, the researchers note, because it relates production-practice learning to second language grammatical skills.

In the study, the researchers divided participants into two groups and taught them an artificial language. The comprehension-practice group used typical listening exercises, while individuals in the production-practice group spoke and received immediate feedback on their vocabulary, grammar, and punctuation. All participants then completed vocabulary tests and tests measuring their grammatical skills.

The results suggested that the production-practice group outperformed the comprehension-practice group on both grammatical and vocabulary tests, even after the researchers controlled for individual differences in learning.

The pattern of findings was robust across accuracy and speed of comprehension, vocabulary learning, simple grammar relationships, and complex grammatical relationships. The group that practiced speaking even outperformed the listening group on tasks that were almost identical to those the listening group had been given during training.

Speaking requires individuals to integrate multiple cognitive functions at once and the authors suggest that reliance on working memory during speaking could increase the “binding” between grammar, punctuation, and vocabulary, increasing connections among these linguistic elements as the speaker forms a sentence. Comprehension practice, on the other hand, may not integrate linguistic elements in the same way because learners are given the language, and learners may be able to use native speaker cues as shortcuts, the authors note.

The results have implications for language learning in a variety of contexts:

“Under the right circumstances,” the authors explain, “producing language is an incredibly strong learning experience [when the production involves generating the language yourself and you are provided with feedback].”

They suggest that current teaching practices may underestimate the value of having students produce the language themselves, and advocate for classrooms to balance the focus on production and comprehension practice.

Finding that balance will continue in future studies. Hopman and MacDonald plan to implement a similar research design with a first-year German course, in collaboration with the German department at Penn State University. In addition, they are interested in examining the effect of production practice on novel words that a student has not already encountered.

They explain, “In our field that is the gold standard of showing that learners can generalize.”

Reference

Hopman, E. W. M., & MacDonald, M. C. [2018]. Production practice during language learning improves comprehension. Psychological Science. //doi.org/10.1177/0956797618754486

Publications> Observer> Observations> Balancing Speaking and Listening for Language Learning

Key principles of language learning

The Basics:

First, let’s talk about the basics. Research in this area [called “second language acquisition” in academia] suggests that there are three key elements to learning a new language.

• The first is comprehensible input, which is a fancy way of saying being exposed to [hearing or reading] something in the new language and learning to understand it.
• Comprehensible output is the second element, and unsurprisingly it means learning to produce [speak or write] something in the new language.
• The third element is review or feedback, which basically means identifying errors and making changes in response.[1]

Fancy terms aside, these are actually pretty straightforward ideas.

These three elements are the building blocks of your language practice, and an effective study plan will maximize all three. The more you listen and read [input], the more you speak and write [output], the more you go back over what you’ve done and learn from your errors [review & feedback], the more your language skills will grow.

DO: Create a study plan that maximizes the three dimensions of language learning: understanding [input], producing [output], and identifying and correcting errors [review/feedback].

Seek balance

Learning a new language involves listening, speaking, reading, writing, sometimes even a new alphabet and writing format. If you focus exclusively on just one activity, the others fall behind.

This is actually a common pitfall for language learners. For example, it’s easy to focus on reading comprehension when studying, in part because written language is often readily accessible—for one thing, you have a whole textbook full of it. This is also true of the three key elements: it’s comparatively easy to find input sources [like your textbook] and practice understanding them. But neglecting the other two key principles [output and feedback/review] can slow down language growth.

Instead, what you need is a balanced study plan: a mix of study activities that target both spoken and written language, and gives attention to all three key principles.

DO: Focus on balance: practice both spoken and written language, and make sure to include all of the three key principles—input, output, and feedback/review.

Errors are important

Sometimes, the biggest challenge to language learning is overcoming our own fears: fear of making a mistake, of saying the wrong thing, of embarrassing yourself, of not being able to find the right word, and so on. This is all perfectly rational: anyone learning a language is going to make mistakes, and sometimes those mistakes will be very public.

The thing is, you NEED to make those mistakes. One of the key principles of language learning is all about making errors and then learning from them: this is what review & feedback means. Plus, if you’re not willing to make errors, then the amount of language you produce [your output] goes way down. In other words, being afraid of making a mistake negatively affects two of the three key principles of language learning!

So what do you do? In part, you may need to push yourself to get comfortable with making errors. However, you should also look for ways to get low-stakes practice: create situations in which you feel more comfortable trying out your new language and making those inevitable mistakes.

For example, consider finding a study partner who is at your level of language skill. This is often more comfortable than practicing with an advanced student or a native speaker, and they’re usually easier to find—you’ve got a whole class full of potential partners!

DO: Learn to appreciate mistakes, and push yourself to become more comfortable with making errors.

DO: Create opportunities for ‘low-stakes’ practice, where you’ll feel comfortable practicing and making mistakes.

Spread it out

Studying a new language involves learning a LOT of material, so you’ll want to use your study time as effectively as possible. According to research in educational and cognitive psychology, one of the most effective learning strategies is distributed practice. This concept has two main components: spacing, which is breaking study time up into multiple small sessions, and separation, which means spreading those sessions out over time.[2]

For example, let’s imagine you have a list of vocabulary words to learn. Today is Sunday, and the vocab quiz is on Friday. If you can only spend a total of 30 minutes studying this vocab, which study plan will be the most effective?

[A] Study for 30 minutes on Thursday.
[B] Study for 10 minutes at a time on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday.
[C] Study for 10 minutes at a time on Sunday, Tuesday, and Thursday.
[D] Study for 30 minutes on Sunday.

If you look at the total time spent studying, all four options are exactly the same. But research suggests that option C is the most effective way to manage your time: instead of studying the vocabulary all at once, you’ve spread out the time into several shorter sessions, and you’ve also increased the amount of time between study sessions. [And yes, this is also why “cramming” isn’t a good study plan!]

DO: Break up your study time into shorter chunks and spread those sessions out over time.

Bump up your memory

Memory is a critical part of any kind of studying, and effective memorization is strongly correlated with success in foreign language classes.[3] But if you’re not “good at” memorizing things, don’t despair! Although people often think of memory as a fixed quality, it’s actually a skill that you can improve through deliberate practice.

There’s a considerable amount of research on how memory works, as well as a wide range of strategies for improving memory. For example, scientific experiments show that our short-term memory can only hold about 7 pieces of new information at once. So if you’re working on a long list of new vocabulary words, start by breaking it up into smaller chunks, and study one shorter section at a time. Additionally, research also suggests that recall-based study methods are most effective. This means that actively trying to recall information is more effective than simply reviewing information; essentially, self-testing will help you more than re-reading your notes will.[4]

The best way to start working on your memory is to build on the techniques that you already know work for you. For example, if associating a word with a picture is effective for you, then you should incorporate images into your vocabulary practice. However, if you’re not sure where to start, here’s a “beginner” formula for memorizing a new word: use the word at least five times the first day that you learn it, then multiple times over the week, at least once every day.

If you’re interested in more tips for improving your memory, check out our resource on memorization strategies.

In addition to figuring out which memorization techniques work best for you, it’s also important to actively protect your memory. For example, experiencing a strong emotion has been shown to sharply decrease the ability to memorize unrelated content. [So if you’ve just watched a horror movie, it’s probably not a great time for vocabulary review!]

To get the most out of your study time, here’s a list of common “memory killers” to avoid:

Stress and anxiety: Just like other strong emotions, stress and anxiety drastically reduce your ability to make new memories and recall information.

Information overload: Studying for hours at a time might seem like a great idea, but it’s actually a really ineffective use of time. In fact, taking a short break every 30 minutes helps improve focus, and after 2 hours you should consider switching topics.

Fatigue: The more tired you are, the less effective your memory is. Chronic sleep deprivation is particularly detrimental, so those late-night study sessions might actually do more harm than good!

Multitasking: As you may have noticed, all of these “memory killers” are also things that disrupt focus. Multi-tasking is probably the most common source of distraction. In fact, here’s a great rule of thumb for protecting your memory: if you’re not supposed to do it while driving, then you shouldn’t do it while studying. [Yes, that means drinking, texting, and watching Netflix “in the background” are all NOs.]

DO: Increase memorization by breaking information into small chunks and studying the chunks one at a time, and by using recall-based strategies like self-testing.

DO: Focus on protecting and improving your memorization skills, and build the memory techniques that work best for you into your study plan.

Vocab is king

Want to know a secret? Vocabulary is more important than grammar.
DISCLAIMER: This does NOT mean that grammar is unimportant. Without grammar, you won’t know how to use your vocabulary, since grammar tells you how to combine words into sentences. And obviously, if you’re in a foreign language class, you’re going to need to study ALL the material to do well, and that will definitely include grammar.
The more vocabulary you know, the more quickly you can grow your language skills. The reason is simple: understanding more words directly translates into more input, producing more words means more output, and more output means more opportunity for feedback. Additionally, when you’re interacting with native speakers, vocabulary is more beneficial to communication than grammar is. Being able to produce words will help get your meaning across, even if what you say is not perfectly grammatical.[5]

Of course, in order to become fully fluent in your new language, eventually you will need strong grammar skills. But once again, this is something that having a strong, well-developed vocabulary will help with. Since grammar dictates relationships between words and phrases, understanding those smaller components [aka vocabulary] will help improve your understanding of how those grammatical relationships work.

DO: Design a study plan that emphasizes vocabulary.

The Importance of Speaking and Listening

From OER in Education

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ORBITreading

• Aspects Of Engagement
• Assessment Overview
• Assessment for Learning Introduction
• Assessment for Learning Research Summary
• Building Capacity in School
• Classroom Management - Thinking Point
• Creating Engagement
• Developing Higher Order Scientific Enquiry Skills
• Developing Your Teaching
• Factors Affecting Lesson Design
• Fibonacci Project
• Group Talk - Benefits for Science Teaching
• Group Work - Practical Considerations
• Group Work - Research Summary
• Improving Reading - Research Summary
• Improving Writing - Research Summary
• Inclusive Teaching in Mathematics
• Inclusive Teaching in Science
• Modelling Introduction
• Purposes and characteristics of whole-class dialogue
• Questioning Research Summary
• Speaking and Listening in Group Work
• TESSA Working With Teachers
• Teaching Learning Developing Approaches to CPD
• Teaching Learning and Whole School Improvement
• The Importance of Speaking and Listening
• The Process of Lesson Design
• The educational value of dialogic talk in whole-class dialogue
• The impact of enquiry-based science teaching on students' attitudes and achievement
• Types Of Question
• Using Digital Video in Professional Development
• Whole Class Work - Research Summary
  

>

This resource is licenced under an Open Government Licence [OGL].

This resource is adapted from an Initiatl Teacher Education - English resource available: //www.ite.org.uk/ite_topics/speaking_listening/001.html

Lyn Dawes Research Associate at the University of Cambridge’s Faculty of Education

Neil Mercer Professor of Education, Fellow of Hughes Hall Editor, International Journal of Educational Research University of Cambridge

Section 1.1 - Children need direct guidance and structured practice in speaking and listening.

Throughout the curriculum there is a strong emphasis on enabling children to use language to work together effectively. One reason for both these developments is that

recent research has shown the importance of the link between spoken language, learning and cognitive development [e.g. Mercer, Wegerif & Dawes, 1999; Mercer, Dawes, Wegerif & Sams, 2004 – see below]. Through using language and hearing how others use it, children become able to describe the world, make sense of life's experiences and get things done. They learn to use language as a tool for thinking, collectively and alone. However, children will not learn how to make the best use of language as a tool for communicating and thinking without guidance from their teachers. School may provide the only opportunity many children have for acquiring some extremely important speaking, listening and thinking skills.

For the research findings which underpin these claims, see:

Mercer, N., Wegerif, R. and Dawes, L. [1999] 'Children's talk and the development of reasoning in the classroom', British Educational Research Journal, 25, 1, 95-111

Mercer, N., Dawes, L., Wegerif, R., & Sams, C. [2004]. Reasoning as a scientist: ways of helping children to use language to learn science. British Educational Research Journal, 30, 3, 367-385.

While many realise that children need instruction in literacy and numeracy, student teachers may not realise that spoken language skills can, and should, be directly taught to children. Despite references to the development of children's language skills, National Curriculum guidance does not make it clear that such direct teaching may often be required. There seems to be an implicit belief that the subtle skills of active listening and reasoned speaking will develop simply through children's involvement in whole class and small group dialogues. To some degree, the children will develop their language use through practice. But all children can benefit from exposure to good models for speaking and listening. They also gain from guidance about how to communicate effectively and from taking part in structured activities for practising communicating [including, crucially, group interactions with light supervision from a teacher]. It is therefore very important that student teachers become aware of this and learn how to guide children's spoken language development. This will include learning how to:

1. assess children's language skills [see below]
2. engage children in dialogues in which they are encouraged to develop and use spoken language skills. This means more than the capacity to provide brief answers to questions in whole class settings. Children need more of the kind of interaction which is generated by what Robin Alexander calls 'dialogic teaching' [see his publication listed below]
3. use varied lessons [in English, the Speaking and Listening curriculum] as a basis for raising children's awareness about how talk can be used most effectively to share ideas, negotiate thinking, challenge and agree, build relationships and generally get things done
4. design pair and group activities based on interesting problem-solving tasks or creative endeavours which will stretch children's communication skills and help them practice what they are learning about language as a tool for communicating.

Section 1.2 - Children need direct guidance and structured practice in speaking and listening.

Use of Ground Rules to establish a clear, constructive, context for talk is important – these rules can provide a structure of mutual respect, and encourage Thinking Together, and Exploratory Talk, as opposed to dismissive disputational, or ‘cumulative’ talk which just restates the already known. Teachers should explore the resources on the [freely available] Thinking Together website www.thinkingtogether.educ.cam.ac.uk/resources/

Section 1.3 - Children need direct guidance and structured practice in speaking and listening.

An activity: What makes a good discussion?

A useful awareness-raising activity is to ask the following question: if you were in a classroom and overheard a group of children who were working together having what you would consider a good, productive discussion, what exactly would they be doing, and what would you hear? [That is, describe the observable features of the children's talk, such as 'asking each other questions'.].

Write down all their responses on a flip chart and try to establish some agreement about which features are most crucial, the extent to which features might vary with particular kinds of task, and so on. Then ask:

1. if 'good discussions' are common in classrooms [research has shown they are not]
2. if they are effective users of language in such situations
3. if they were ever taught how to engage in such discussions in school
4. how they think children might best be helped to develop good discussion skills; and
5. you might also compare their list of the features of a good discussion with the definition of Exploratory Talk [see above].

Section 2.1 - Raising student teachers' awareness of the structure of teacher-pupil talk in classrooms and how to assess its quality.

A striking insight provided by classroom research is that much talk between teachers and their pupils has the following pattern: a teacher's question, a pupil's response, and then an evaluative comment by the teacher. This is described as an Initiation-Response-Feedback exchange, or IRF. Here's an example

I Teacher - What's the capital city of Argentina?R Pupil - Buenos AiresF Teacher - Yes, well done

This pattern was first pointed out in the 1970s by the British researchers Sinclair and Coulthard. Their original research was reported in

Sinclair, J. and Coulthard, M. [1975] Towards an Analysis of Discourse: the English used by Teachers and Pupils. London: Oxford University Press.

Sinclair and Coulthard's research has been the basis for extended debates about whether or not teachers should ask so many questions to which they already know the answer; and further debate about the range of uses and purposes of IRF in working classrooms. Despite all this, it seems that many teachers [even those who have qualified in recent decades] have not heard of it. Is this because their training did not include any examination of the structures of classroom talk – or because even if it did, the practical value of such an examination was not made clear?

A teacher's professional development [and, indeed, the development of members of any profession] should involve the gaining of critical insights into professional practice – to learn to see behind the ordinary, the taken for granted, and to question the effectiveness of what is normally done. Recognizing the inherent structure of teacher-pupil talk is a valuable step in that direction. Student teachers need to see how they almost inevitably converge on other teachers' style and generate the conventional patterns of classroom talk. By noting this, they can begin to consider what effects this has on pupil participation in class. There is nothing wrong with the use of IRFs by teachers, but question-and-answer routines can be used both productively and unproductively. By understanding and questioning what generally happens, students can begin to construct the kind of dialogues that they can feel confident have most educational value.

Section 2.2 - Raising awareness of the structure of teacher-pupil talk in classrooms and how to assess its quality.

We have found the following resources useful for working with student teachers on this topic:

[a]	Alexander, R.[2004] Towards Dialogic Teaching. Cambridge: Dialogos.

It can be obtained from: Dialogos UK Ltd, Rose Hill, Osgoodby, Thirsk, North Yorkshire YO7 2 AP [Currently £6 inc p&p.]

The subtitle of this text is 'Rethinking classroom talk'. It provides an introduction to the idea of 'learning to talk, talking to learn' and a philosophy of dialogic teaching. This is teaching and learning which is essentially based on the thoughtful questions, negotiation and discussion which generate reasoned debate amongst teachers and learners. The text provides food for thought. It also gives a range of further reading and practical suggestions for encouraging dialogic teaching. It will encourage students to identify dialogue when they encounter it, and to ensure that they organise their classrooms so that dialogue is how learning proceeds.

Readers could also refer to the page Dialogic Teaching for further links and description.

[b]	Chapters 3 and 4 of The Guided Construction of Knowledge: talk amongst teachers and learners by N. Mercer, 1995. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.

The first of these chapters describes and exemplify the different ways teachers talk to pupils: 'direct elicitations', 'cued elicitations', 'reformulations' and so on. Student teachers can be encouraged to record and transcribe their own dialogues with pupils and consider which of these teaching techniques they have used and to what purpose. The second chapter focuses more on how pupils participate in classroom talk.

[c]	For a useful discussion of the educational functions of IRF exchanges, see Chapter 5 of: Wells, G. [1999] Dialogic Inquiry: towards a sociocultural practice and theory of education. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Section 3.1 - Teachers should learn how to assess the quality of children's talk

If teachers are to be able to help children develop their skills in speaking and listening, they will have to assess the ways that children talk, for example when they are working together in a group. In English, the Speaking and Listening component of the National Curriculum highlights some aspects of the quality of children's talk as below. However, across all subject areas, requirements for the ability to talk, and write effectively in the genre of that subject is highlighted.

'Pupils learn to change the way they speak and write to suit different situations, purposes and audiences. They read a range of texts and respond to different layers of meaning in them. They explore the use of language in literary and nonliterary texts and learn how language works.'

'Pupils learn how to speak in a range of contexts, adapting what they say and how they say it to the purpose and the audience. Taking varied roles in groups gives them opportunities to contribute to situations with different demands. They also learn to respond appropriately to others, thinking about what has been said and the language used.'

Beginning teachers need guidance, focused activities and discussion in order to recognise key features of children's talk. They need to learn to evaluate talk and subsequently use their decisions to inform planning of further speaking and listening activities.

A main concern for assessment is to consider how well the talk suits the kind of event in which children are participating. Criteria are likely to be different, depending on whether they are talking in a group, making a presentation to the class, engaged in a drama-related activity, discussing ideas in citizenship, and so on. Helping any child improve their current competence requires some sort of assessment. Talk is difficult to assess because it is context dependent and ephemeral, but good opportunities for assessment occur regularly, especially in 'talk-focused' classrooms where both teacher and children are aware of the importance of speaking and listening for learning. This is the situation students need to be able to both recognise and create.

There are of course some aspects of evaluating children's talk where great sensitivity is needed. The ways people talk can be closely related to their identities, and student teachers may rightly worry about making evaluations of some aspects of a child's way of speaking such as their accent. Student teachers will need to appreciate the distinction between on the one hand using an assessment to help a child to become more involved in learning conversations, or to develop their presentation skills, and on the other trying to alter a child's accent or to ban the use of dialect in the classroom simply because it 'sounds wrong'.

Section 3.2 - Teachers should learn how to assess the quality of children's talk

One of the practical difficulties in teaching talk is gaining access to good models to enable investigation, analysis and reflection. Teachers may find it useful to explore some of the ORBIT resources including

• Modeling Scientific Writing
• Group Talk and Argument
• Use of Video to Support Professional Development
• Changing KS3 Questions for Engaging Assessment

Section 4.1 - Teachers need the confidence to teach speaking and listening

Teacher-led dialogue and group-based activities with minimal teacher intervention are both very important for children's learning. Students will be faced with many competing priorities during their course, and need to be completely sure that they are right to be 'on a mission' to teach speaking and listening. It is important to help them see that by giving direct attention to the development of children's spoken language skills, they will help the process of teaching and learning become more effective throughout the curriculum. Once a collaborative, articulate atmosphere is established, learning objectives for speaking and listening can [and should] inform work in curriculum area. The striving for effective dialogue and learning through talk should be a continuous feature of classroom life.

Section 4.2 - Teachers need the confidence to teach speaking and listening

We have also found the following resources useful for working with student teachers on this topic:

[a]	Dawes, L [2004] Talk and Learning in Classroom Science. International Journal of Science Education 26, 6, 677 – 695. [The same research is also described in the Research Digest Reasoning as a Scientist on the DfES website].

This journal article discusses the issue of using speaking and listening in science, to elicit and address children's misconceptions, to help them articulate their ideas. Students reading this article can be asked to discuss the nature and purpose of IRF sequences; the importance of sensitive dialogue between teacher and pupil; the child's use of talk for thinking aloud with others, and what the teacher can find out from hearing such talk.

[b]

Mercer, N. [2003] The Educational Value of 'dialogic talk' in 'whole class dialogue': New Perspectives on Spoken English in the Classroom: Discussion Papers, pp 73- 76[London: QCA: Available from QCA Publications 01787 884444 ref QCA/03/0170 //dera.ioe.ac.uk/6062/1/6111_new_perspec_in_spoken_eng_class_room.pdf

All the papers in this publication merit discussion with students. Neil Mercer's contribution clarifies the importance of talk for thinking, making clear the link between learning new, rational ways to talk and developing a more rational approach to problems and new ideas. That contribution is available on the wiki: The educational value of dialogic talk in whole-class dialogue

[c]	Andrea Raiker [2003] Spoken language and mathematics, Cambridge Journal of Education, Vol. 32, No1.

By analysing the impact of talk on learning in the core subject of mathematics, Andrea Raiker emphasises the fundamental nature of good oral language development for children. Andrea Raiker shows how a mismatch between what a teacher says [ e.g. 'cuboid' , 'repeated addition'] and what a child thinks can create barriers to learning. Similarly, children expected to work together in mathematics may be baffled by lack of vocabulary and, more importantly, lack of the speaking and listening skills which can help them to articulate their difficulty. Students reading this paper can be asked to analyse their own teaching of mathematics in a whole class or small group context, perhaps tape recording part of their session then attending carefully to what the children actually say. By foregrounding talk, it becomes possible to evaluate at what point mathematical concepts are understood – or not.

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Speaking, and listening, to other people in English helps to boost the faith you have in your own abilities and banish the doubts that are inside your head. So it’s definitely a confidence booster, but there are many more ways in which speaking the language can improve your English skills, fast.

Improve fluency

When you’re talking to an English speaker, all that you’ve learned in your language studies so far need to be on call at a moment’s notice. Essentially, speaking a language helps to move your knowledge of grammar, vocabulary, and pronunciation from the back of your mind to the front, or from your ‘slow memory’ to your ‘quick memory.’ Given time, this will improve your fluency and memory too.

Try to think of it as ‘muscle memory’, which is so important to athletes and musicians too. When you’re learning guitar, it’s all very well sitting down and memorizing every possible chord, but until you start strumming those strings and putting the chords into practice it’s very hard for you to play fluently. The more you play, the more you build up your ‘muscle memory’ and your fingers automatically know where to go without you having to think about it – this is what begins to happen with your language skills when you start to speak the language out loud.