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Why?

Make it your Own!

Students with limited verbal skills can be supported with the strategies featured in Easy Guides: Oral language for beginners. The following methods for promoting oral language for students at the beginning stages include: Description/Self-talk, Narration/Parallel talk, Modeling language, Repetition, and Extension.

Teachers can create opportunities to build beginning oral language skills by incorporating self talk, parallel talk, language modeling, repetition, and extension into the daily routine. The Easy Guide: Oral language for beginners can be used as a reminder to use these strategies on a daily basis, especially with students who need support in the beginning stages of language learning.

The language that children learn depends on the language learning opportunities provided. Speaking and listening skills learned in the preschool years are essential to future reading and writing achievement and school success. By providing and modeling rich language input for students, labeling words and actions in natural contexts, conveying a message of interest through narration of the child’s actions and repetitions and extensions of the student’s limited language, teachers pave the way for more advanced language learning.

For teachers

Building on your student’s interests forms the basis of strategies like parallel talk, repetition, and extension. Remember that you are most likely to build a child’s language when focusing on a topic that is meaningful to that student. You may choose to use gestures or point to objects that represent words to aid understanding. If you are using these strategies with a student, consider sharing the corresponding ‘Easy Guide for Families’ with that student’s family.

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Simplified StrategiesCommunication ToolkitOral language for beginners

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Simplified Strategies,LLC - www.simplifiedstrategies.org Strategies

Repetition Extension

Description/Self-talk Narration/Parallel talk

In repetition, the teacher listens to what the student says then restates the child’s words more completely. For example, if a student is pushing a car and says “car fast,” a teacher might restate: “Yes, your car is going fast.” Repetition is a way to use the student’s interest as a basis for introducing more advanced vocabulary and sentence more advanced vocabulary and sentence structures.

In extension, the teacher restates the student’s comment then adds to the topic in an effort to extend the conversation. In the “car fast” example, a teacher might extend: “Yes, your car is going fast. It seems like your car is racing.” Extension, like repetition, is a way to expose students to new vocabulary and sentence to new vocabulary and sentence structures. Extension is also a non-threatening method for initiating and extending conversations.

Describe what you are doing. In this way, you are providing the words to describe the student’s actions. Self-talk may be used when leading an activity like cooking. For example: “I see that the water is boiling now, so I am adding the pasta to the water.” Self-talk can build language for all students, especially language for all students, especially those with limited language.

Describe, or narrate, what the student is doing or seeing. Observe the student’s action or focus and make comments that do not require a response. For example, if you observe a student building with blocks, you might use the following parallel talk: “You are putting the small blue block on top of the big yellow block. Your building is getting big yellow block. Your building is getting taller.” Parallel-talk can build language for all students, especially those with limited language.

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