Authentic Oral Communication

Hi everyone! Thank you for coming back to my language blog! In my first blog post, I told you all that I would be writing a blog for each of the four strands in the Ontario Language curriculum and since I have already made three posts… you guessed it! This is my final blog post! ☹ This blog will cover oral communication as its topic of focus, but I must say I am very sad for these blogs to end. They have allowed me to reflect on critical issues and explore resources to help teach each of the four language strands, and I believe they truly helped deepen my understanding of what it means to teach language. Without further ado; however, let’s get started!

The important issue in oral communication that I would like to talk about with you all today is providing authentic and engaging contexts for students to participate in speaking, and just as importantly, listening. The Ontario language curriculum states that students will listen, respond, use speaking skills and strategies in a variety of situations and for a variety of purposes (p. 9). Teachers in a classroom can address each of these overall expectations independently and I am sure that most of them do a great job. However, it is difficult to create real, authentic situations for students to listen and speak in a classroom setting. Presentations are a great way to assess oral communication, but they only cover one type of oral communication where a script is prepared and then read or memorized and regurgitated in front of a group of people. Most authentic interaction outside of school is now scripted and that is why we need to provide our students with alternative ways of assessing oral communication. I will discuss two ideas to create authentic speaking and listening situations: podcasts and GooseChase.

Lisa Lumos. The Two Princes is a podcast that we have incorporated into our coursework! Gimlet. Accessed November 28, 2019. https://gimletmedia.com/shows/the-two-princes

Podcasts are growing ever more popular in today’s society as a way for the general public to explore new topics and listen to information from a variety of sources. Podcasts usually do not have visuals to accompany them, so they are a true listening experience. By introducing podcasts into the classroom for students to listen to, teachers are providing them with real-life content and contexts for them to listen to and interpret. Students can listen to podcasts about specific topics or they can select their own and being some of their interests into the classroom. To add a speaking component, teachers can have students record their own podcasts where they talk about a topic they have learned about in school, or it could even be added to a student-centred project like Genius Hour where students then play their podcast to share information about their Genius Hour project with the class. Podcasts can be recorded by students on any device with a recorder app which makes them easy to incorporate!

GooseChase. The GooseChase app logo. GooseChase. Accessed November 28, 2019. https://www.goosechase.com/

GooseChase is an app that lets you create a scavenger hunt with specific missions and point totals. We incorporated this game in our oral communication class in the language course and it showed me exactly how it could be implemented in the classroom with students. I will suggest that GooseChase be used with older (intermediate) or very mature students because it requires a lot of trust from the teacher. How I see GooseChase working with oral communication, is giving students missions within the game that require them to speak and listen to various members of the school community with each mission having a different theme/topic. Students will need to talk differently to the principal or another teacher than one of their peers, and a grade 8 student will sound very different than a kindergartener, etc. This app would be a very fun way to get students engaging in authentic communication situations.

Thank you so much for following along with my language blogs! I hope you learned a thing or two, I know I certainly did!! All the best in all that you do! Goodbye!