Developing Oral Language Skills For Children's Literacy Essay.

Importance of Oral Language Skills

Oral language skills are the foundations for a children's literacy development. Polishing oral language skills is assistance for the children in properly reading, writing, and communicating. The more the children can communicate orally, the more enhanced is their self-confidence. Oral language consists of practical activities in reading, writing, speaking, and active listening, where teachers guide the children up to 8 years within the early childhood education settings (Hill, 2021). Along with this, exposure of the children to the activities of classes on phonemic awareness, phonics, spelling, syntax, and sentence construction helps the children in achieving skills development in literacy from the budding stage. If the teachers assess the performance of the children in the classes on word reading and comprehension, then they could assess their development in literacy development.

It is the oral language, which provides a clear understanding to the children regarding the words and their use in forming a sentence, their meaning, and their usage in communication. It is through the classes on language classes, that children gradually oral communication, and gain perfection. Play-based learning activities on reading and writing generate interest among the children in learning reading and communicating (Thomas & Thomas, 2022). A typical example could be cited as reading stories, which enhances the reading skills of the children. Pre-service teachers ensure that the children get enough opportunities to talk in-class activities and group discussions. It is also ensured that the children listen to the stories read out to them. An example could also be cited in the peer-to-peer group discussions and conversation activities, which promote oral language between the children in their early childhood education settings.

The importance of oral language skills also lies in the preparedness for the assessments done in academic and standard English Language. Keeping this assessment in mind, it is the responsibility of the preservice teachers to ensure that the children, in their early education settings are exposed to oral language activities, which contributes to their literacy development. The educational settings also foster a curriculum involving the development of language experiences at home, which maps the socialization skill development of the children along with literacy development (Lervåg, Hulme & Melby?Lervåg, 2018). Selection of the proper sources like books, also adds to oral language development in the children. The books with pictures and communication are effective for the children in terms of their language development. The preservice teachers encourage children to read comic books, and storybooks with pictures, which helps them learn the language, which they could use in communicating with others. The parents read out the stories and comics to children, which helps to learn the words and their usage in forming sentences. The activities on testing the memory of the children, regarding remembering words and sentences from the stories and comics. The more they remember, the they are closer to their literacy development (Suggate et al., 2018).

The theme of the story, Wombat Stew, is friendship, which could be taught to the children by exposing them to the repetition of words in the sentences, story structures. Reading through the lines of the story, the children get to understand that there is a rhythmic structure, which, if they repeatedly practice by reading aloud with the teachers, parents, helps them to learn better. The story of the wombat gives a clear picture of the actions of animals, their lifestyles. Pictures make learning interesting for the children. The verb tenses like snapping, ambling, develop oral language skills, which are especially helpful for expressing ideas (Vaughan, Lofts & Bridges, 1984). The dialogues between wombat and platypus make the children aware of how to interact with others through words selection, questions, statements. Activities of enacting the dialogues would help the children in learning the words, which would further enhance their oral communication skills.

Activities for Oral Language Skill Development

The compositional meaning of the storybook, Wombat Stew would be suitable for children up to 5 years to improve their oral language skills. This is because of the pause with which the teacher pronounces the words, helping the children to learn the words better by repeating them as a part of reading aloud. the lines of the story have been composed rhythmically so that the preservice teachers could pronounce them rhythmically for generating interest among the children while they read the story. The picture of Wombat Stew is prominent, which could help the children in recognizing the animal when they next see it (Bryant, 2021).  Enacting and voice modulation by the teachers could help the children to understand the dialogue, which is taking place and has been animated as the animals could not talk. An example could be cited as the "toothy grin" where Dingo has been picturized with a grin showing its teeth. This relates the image with the language. Another example could be the image of dancing and singing Dingo, where the rhythmic lines are again repeated. The teachers could involve the children in repeating these lines after them for developing a clear pronunciation. The teachers could also involve the children in activities where they draw the animals by seeing the words from the story written on paper.

Hello, children. How are you? Hope you are keeping well. Today, we are going to enact a story from a book called the Wombat Stew, where you will get to meet wombat stew, Dingo, platypus, and others. I know that you will like to read the story, as it is very interesting. We will sing, and dance to the rhythms. You will get to see many pictures of the animals, trees, plants, which would be interesting. You all must have heard the sounds of animals, so we would copy them while reading their conversations. So, I would distribute the books among all of you. Once you get it, open to the first page and see the image. What do you think the animal looks like? One by one, tell me. To some of you, it might look like a dog, and others might feel that it is a fox. It is a dog, which you have seen in the place surrounding you. So, before starting, I would like to tell you in short what happens in the story. The dog wants to eat the wombat, that is, a marsupial as a stew. All of you repeat with me. Mar-su-pi-al. See this is a marsupial. Besides the picture, I want all of you to write this word, "marsupial" so that you can remember it. As you read between the lines of the story, you will find how the animals live together in the forest, as we live in houses along with the neighbors.

• What did Dingo plan to make out of a wombat?

A stew for his dinner

• What did Platypus ask Dingo?

“What is all that water for?” 

• What other foods could have Dingo prepare?
• What other places Dingo could have caught the Wombat?

The questions are interpretive, as the words "billabong", "stew" could raise the creativity and imagination of the children, where they could imagine and infer answers to the questions. Activities could be organized where the preservice teachers ask the children these questions. There would be diversified answers, as the imagination and creativity of the children till 5 years are very strong. The preservice teachers could involve the children in quizzes, which would help them to see the extent to which the children interpret the excerpts read from the story.

• By seeing the image of these animals, what do you think they do?
  • Hide in shelters
  • Find and eat food

How do you think the animals come and help Dingo in making the stew?

• Dancing
• Singing
• Hopping
• Flying

The ways in which the students respond to the questions, would help the teachers in assessing their thought processes while reading or inferring the answers to the questions. 

References

Bryant, K. (2021). Try this: An animal tale. Metaphor, (4), 24-25.

[https://search.informit.org/doi/abs/10.3316/Informit.127704717440021]

Hill, S. (2021). Developing early literacy: Assessment and teaching. Eleanor Curtain Publishing. [ISBN: 9781761073021]

Lervåg, A., Hulme, C., & Melby?Lervåg, M. (2018). Unpicking the developmental relationship between oral language skills and reading comprehension: It's simple but complex. Child Development, 89(5), 1821-1838.

[https://srcd.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/cdev.12861]

Suggate, S., Schaughency, E., McAnally, H., & Reese, E. (2018). From infancy to adolescence: The longitudinal links between vocabulary, early literacy skills, oral narrative, and reading comprehension. Cognitive Development, 47, 82-95.

[https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cogdev.2018.04.005]

Thomas, D. & Thomas, A. (Eds.) (2022). Teaching and learning primary English. Melbourne, Vic: Oxford University Press. [ISBN: 9780190325725]

Vaughan, M. K., Lofts, P., & Bridges, D. (1984). Wombat stew. Ashton Scholastic.

[https://resource.scholastic.com.au/resourceFiles/Teacher_Notes/8294630_36659.pdf]