Oral Language Task Cards for ELLs
What is Oral Language?
Oral Language skills are an important component of language development. It is made up of at least five key components (Moats 2010) including phonological skills, pragmatics, syntax, morphological skills, and vocabulary. Students need opportunities throughout the day to practice their speaking and listening skills. For English Language Learners this is particularly important so that students gain proficiency in speaking and listening in English. Research shows that ELLs need a low-anxiety environment, repeated practice, comprehensible input, and drama (McCauley and McCauley) in order to learn English.
Oral Language Task Cards
I developed sets of task cards to help students practice academic vocabulary and other oral language skills. It is part of my Oral Language Task Card Bundle . In addition these task cards help them learn sentence structure (syntax) and social rules of conversation (pragmatics). To develop oral language skills I suggest having students work with a partner where one partner asks the question and the other partner responds. Partner one then replies either agreeing with the response of partner two or giving their own opinion and building on the first response. Working with a partner is a low stress way for students to practice academic vocabulary and increase their oral language skills.
These task cards all have general topics and everyday vocabulary. This is so that they can be used be students with a range of language levels. The student are able to focus on practicing the vocabulary along with everyday vocabulary.
Learn More about Using Task Cards
There are many benefits of using task cards with ELLs. One of the benefits is student engagement. Read about 5 ways to use task cards to keep your ELLs engaged.
References
McCauley, J.K. & McCauley, D.S. (1992). Using choral reading to promote language learning for ESL students. The Reading Teacher, 45, 526-533.
Moats, L. (2010). Speech to print (2nd ed). Baltimore, MD: Brookes Publishing Company
5 thoughts on “Oral Language Task Cards for ELLs”
Truly appreciate your time and creatively choice for my student to express your thoughts
These are great materials. Thank you for sharing them! What a great way to get students talking in the classroom.
These are very interesting activities task cards for students as second language or in any level to encourage or motivate them to think while talking. Thank you for sharing these resources.
Hi,
Thank you so much for offering the cards. I signed up, but didn’t receive them.
Thanks again!
Indiana
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