Literacy Professional Learning Resource – Teaching Strategies

English home | Literacy Resource home | Overview | Assessment | Key Concepts | Teaching Strategies

Literacy teaching strategies: VELS 1 & 2 | VELS 3 | VELS 4 | VELS 5 & 6

VELS level 4 – Speaking and listening strategies for all VELS domains

Speaking and listening strategies can be found in the English Continuum.

These strategies will support students to build their speaking and listening, reading and writing knowledge and skills to support their learning in all domains of the Victorian Essential Learning Standards (VELS).

Following are some examples that can be adapted to a single VELS domain or for programs that have multiple domains to support students in meeting the literacy demands of their learning.

The examples provide a structure for supporting students to focus on the literacy demands to learn and to communicate in all domains of the VELS.

• Strategies for listening to learn
• Strategies for communicating learning
• Conventions of language
• Speaking and listening plan
• Professional learning

Strategies for listening to learn

When students are required to listen to spoken texts to support their learning, they need to establish procedures for analysing and evaluating spoken texts.

They need to plan and organise the subject matter for spoken texts, and prepare the background information on the topic so that they take account of its context, purpose and audience. Students also analyse and discuss:

• how they identify and analyse linguistic structures and features of a text
• the ways in which they use voice
• a range of visual cues and actions to suit a chosen text
• the needs of a specified audience
• how knowing about them helps them to identify and use them in spoken texts.

Students also use various listening strategies such as sentence-level strategies, for example, predicting, clarifying, analysing and paraphrasing, and text-level strategies, such as sequencing the ideas to present a description or a point of view.

They use various strategies to enhance listening to presentations, for example, they take notes, paraphrase and summarise.

Other strategies for listening to learn mean students perform various functions in a group discussion and use discussion strategies for participating effectively in groups to collate ideas and enhance their knowledge. They are able to identify, analyse and evaluate:

• a speaker’s topic, purpose and perspective
• how speakers effectively present points of view through their use of language and gestures
• the main idea and supporting details of spoken texts and summarise them for others
• variations in language use in several presentations that target a particular issue
• the forms and features of the texts and how they have been constructed to present particular views
• opinions offered by others, propose other relevant viewpoints and extend ideas in a constructive manner.

Strategies for communicating learning

When students are required to speak to others about their learning they need to think about how to prepare, produce and present:

• oral performances, such as poetry and commentaries
• a point of view about an issue and support it with evidence or arguments
• debates using the conventions and language of debate, including procedures for inviting and responding to questions and issues raised by the audience, including those that confront the speaker’s position.

Students use various graphic idea organisers such as mind maps, network maps, flow diagrams or free recall diagrams to prepare their outline of a spoken presentation.

They adopt an appropriate verbal style, including word choice to suit the text, and multimedia support to improve the quality and meet the needs of a specified audience.

Students then comprehend and stay on the topic when presenting, recounting a narrative, discussing an explanation, describing a phenomenon, presenting theirs or another person’s point of view or opinion.

They are able to adjust what they say to suit context, purpose and audience when discussing unfamiliar topics and phenomena, and judge what others might know and modify their oral presentations to cater for different audiences. For example, they may use physical gestures and modulate their voice.

Students also rehearse their performances and verbal presentations and respond constructively and modify presentations to account for the purpose and audience after they receive feedback from the audience that identifies their viewpoints and alternative interpretations.

They perform various functions in a group discussion and use some of the conventions for working in a small group discussion context. For example, the student may listen constructively and support others, take turns to alternate between taking the lead and being a team member and work together to collate a group outcome or a report and understand and use various ways of maintaining a discussion.

Strategies for maintaining a discussion may include constructive ways of responding to criticism, seeking clarification, offering ideas and suggesting a change in the style of the presentation.

Conventions of language

In their oral presentations students comprehend:

• how some words refer to concepts that are more general or more specific than others
• that word meanings can be linked by inclusive relationships
• generalisations when they refer to less familiar real life relationships
• the grammatical differences between a command, a request and a promise. They distinguish between I told him to leave, I asked him to leave and I promised him I would leave. They can also distinguish between ask and tell
• connectives used to position or relate sentences such as however or in addition
• and use generalisations in sentences when they refer to concepts in everyday contexts
• and use more complex idioms
• and use more complex relative clauses.

They also show:

• more complex grammatical agreement within sentences, including, verb tense agreement and subject–verb agreement including, noun–pronoun agreement
• more complex grammatical agreement between sentences, including verb tense agreement, subject and verb agreement and noun and pronoun agreement. For example, they are less likely to use ‘who’, ‘what’, ‘whom’ and ‘that’ for ‘what’.

Speaking and listening plan

The following example has been adapted from the English Continuum, Speaking and Listening. It can be used in any context to support students to prepare themselves for the literacy demands of their learning.

Students explain how they will listen to and analyse spoken texts and the actions they will use to talk about their new ideas.

Getting ready for listening

What will I do to help me keep track of what I hear while I am listening?

• visualise what I hear
• note down key words I hear
• draw an ideas network while listening
• repeat to myself what I hear that I don’t want to forget
• guess how the story/information might unfold
• ask questions to clarify what I hear
• every so often summarise what I have heard.

Getting ready to communicate

What can I do to help me to talk about what I have learnt?

• visualise what I want to say
• think of the key words I will use to be persuasive and/or convincing
• make sure that what I say follows logically from what other people say
• think of how I will link the ideas.

The English Developmental Continuum has a more detailed outline of indicators of progress that can be used to further expand opportunities for more structured speaking and listening to be incorporated into any learning and teaching program for one or more domains.

Read the English Developmental Continuum P-10

Professional learning

Which of these speaking and listening strategies have you explicitly taught to your students? Which strategies could you teach or re-visit with your students?

Ask a colleague to observe your class as you engage in a speaking and listening activity. How effectively were your students making use of speaking and listening strategies?