Oral language and listening skills in children lead to writing and reading skills, which build the pathways for all other learning. Oral language skills are critical in later academic success. At middle school, students who had poor oral language skills in kindergarten lag five years behind their peers who had strong oral language skills in kindergarten, according to the Rhode Island Department of Education. When a child learns to read, the word decoded cannot be comprehended if it is not already a part of the child's vocabulary. Those early deficits, unless addressed and corrected, will cause a student to fall further and further behind.
Oral language impacts literacy skills directly in that a child will speak the letter sounds creating the phonological awareness of words, then apply decoding skills and letter recognition skills in coordination, leading to reading comprehension. Oral language cannot be taken out of the reading process. It's an essential part of learning to read. Students will enter school at a higher readiness level if they have been exposed to more language in their home. Children who haven't been talked to or encouraged to talk a lot will most likely struggle to read.
To build a child's oral language skills, one should be aware of all the ways oral language can be used in the classroom, particularly in leading to literacy success. Some examples include reading aloud, shared reading with students, puppetry, storytelling by both student and teacher, retelling lessons by student, dramatic play, music and rhythm activities, and word play such as riddles, tongue twisters and rhymes.
To be certain a child has adequate oral language skills, assessment is necessary. The curriculum should support goals such as the student communicating needs, desires and questions in the classroom to peers and the teacher. The students should be able to retell events or lessons in their own words and sequence events. Students should be able to categorize and identify elements of their environment and summarize connections between objects. Students should be giving narratives of stories read in class or events that occur in the classroom or home whether formally in oral reports or informally as part of conversations.
Because the critical nature of building oral language skills begins in the first years of life, before a child enters a formal education setting, it is imperative that parents be educated on the importance of talk in the home. Parents build a child's vocabulary by talking to and around children. Simply narrating what they are doing in the child's presence, asking and answering questions and modeling appropriate conversational skills are tremendous oral language building activities. Fun activities are not difficult to do as parents, either. Borrow books of riddles, nursery rhymes and fingerplays from the library and read with children. Let children put on little plays at home using homemade puppets, or simply listen to a child relate what they have done or seen that day and give feedback to build oral language skills.