Mastering Oral Expression: Classroom Strategies

Posted on Jun 10, 2025 in Other civil servant exams

Teaching Oral Expression: Core Principles and Practices

Oral Expression Microskills

These microskills are tailored to the age and level of the students:

  1. Planning the Discourse: Analyze the situation and use written media to prepare the intervention, anticipating and preparing for the discussion and the overall presentation.
  2. Guiding the Speech: Manage the subject (e.g., selecting appropriate topics, initiating a topic, developing it) and guide the intervention (e.g., choosing the right time, utilizing the speech effectively, delivering the speech).
  3. Negotiating Meaning: Adapt the level of detail in the text, evaluate the listener’s comprehension, and use circumlocution to fill lexical gaps.
  4. Producing the Text: Facilitate production, refine the output, and correct any errors in the production process.
  5. Nonverbal Aspects: Control voice modulation, use appropriate nonverbal codes (gestures and movements), and manage gaze (directing it towards interlocutors).

Teaching Oral Expression: General Principles

General Principles for Effective Oral Expression Instruction

  1. Awareness of Oral Needs: Foster a change in student attitudes towards oral expression, helping them recognize its importance in daily life. Encourage them to identify and discuss grammatical errors for continuous improvement.
  2. Progress in the Medium and Long Term: Skill development is a long and complex process. Students may learn new words, discover concepts, or realize unknown facts quickly, but it will take months or even years to see substantial improvements in their expressive ability. The process of changing attitudes and opinions is even slower.
  3. Correctness and Fluency: In the classroom, there is often a greater emphasis on correctness and less on fluency in oral expression. However, correctness and fluidity form an inseparable union, like a set of scales that become unbalanced when one side weighs more.
    • Correction: Focuses on lexical precision, grammatical accuracy, clear rules, and pronunciation.
    • Fluency: Encompasses speed, rhythm, ease, confidence, and coherence of discourse.
  4. Classroom Management and Order: Sometimes teachers are hesitant about oral expression exercises, fearing they might break the classroom silence, cause commotion, or disrupt established discipline. It’s common for students to be more boisterous than expected the first time a role-playing game is introduced, as they are not used to such activities and may not know the rules. As they learn the mechanics of the activity, they must also learn to control themselves, maintain order, respect others’ speech, and avoid shouting. The best way to address this situation is to introduce activities gradually and cautiously with the students.
  5. Planning Oral Expression Activities: The most effective way to conduct an oral expression activity is to plan it meticulously. Often, classroom activities are approached frivolously or spontaneously, merely as a leisure activity to fill a gap. Therefore, the treatment of oral expression must follow a coherent and appropriate didactic approach, considering the circumstances. Every exercise should have clear objectives and content, be integrated into a real context, and be subject to didactic evaluation.

Objectives of Oral Expression Instruction

The overall objective of oral expression instruction is to develop the aforementioned microskills.

Content for Oral Expression Instruction

The content taught comprises the skills, which are process strategies for proper self-expression. This involves procedural content.

Didactic Resources for Oral Expression

Didactic literature offers a wide range of techniques and resources for practicing oral expression in the classroom. These range from expressive reading aloud to impromptu oral presentations, including language games, brainstorming, and simulations. The main types of exercises and resources, grouped according to simple and practical criteria, are:

  • 1. Techniques: Dramatization, role-plays, simulations, written dialogue, language games, teamwork, and technical studies.
  • 2. Interactive Activities: Repetition, fill-in-the-blanks, giving instructions, problem-solving, and brainstorming.
  • 3. Material Resources: Stories, sounds, images, tests, quizzes, and articles.
  • 4. Specific Communication Activities: Exhibitions, improvisation, talking on the phone, reading aloud, video and audiotape exercises, and debates and discussions.

This categorization is not exclusive; the same exercise may belong to different groups, and some exercises might not fit neatly into any single group.