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This resource is adapted from an Initiatl Teacher Education - English resource available<nowiki>:</nowiki> [http://www.ite.org.uk/ite_topics/speaking_listening/001.html http://www.ite.org.uk/ite_topics/speaking_listening/001.html]

'''Section 1.1 - Children need direct guidance and structured practice in speaking and listening.'''

'''<center>For the research findings which underpin these claims, see:</center>'''

Mercer, N., Dawes, L., Wegerif, R., & Sams, C. (2004). Reasoning as a scientist: ways of helping children to use language to learn science. ''British Educational Research Journal'', 30, 3, 367-385.

While many realise that children need instruction in literacy and numeracy, student teachers may not realise that spoken language skills can, and should, be directly taught to children. Despite references to the development of children's language skills, National Curriculum guidance does not make it clear that such direct teaching may often be required. There seems to be an implicit belief that the subtle skills of active listening and reasoned speaking will develop simply through children's involvement in whole class and small group dialogues. To some degree, the children will develop their language use through practice. But all children can benefit from exposure to good models for speaking and listening. They also gain from guidance about how to communicate effectively and from taking part in structured activities for practising communicating (including, crucially, group interactions with light supervision from a teacher). It is therefore very important that student teachers become aware of this and learn how to guide children's spoken language development. This will include learning how to:

Beginning teachers need guidance, focused activities and discussion in order to recognise key features of children's talk. They need to learn to evaluate talk and subsequently use their decisions to inform planning of further speaking and listening activities.  

A main concern for assessment is to consider how well the talk suits the kind of event in which children are participating. Criteria are likely to be different, depending on whether they are talking in a group, making a presentation to the class, engaged in a drama-related activity, discussing ideas in citizenship, and so on. Helping any child improve their current competence requires some sort of assessment. Talk is difficult to assess because it is context dependent and ephemeral, but good opportunities for assessment occur regularly, especially in 'talk-focused' classrooms where both teacher and children are aware of the importance of speaking and listening for learning. This is the situation students need to be able to both recognise and create.

There are of course some aspects of evaluating children's talk where great sensitivity is needed. The ways people talk can be closely related to their identities, and student teachers may rightly worry about making evaluations of some aspects of a child's way of speaking such as their accent. Student teachers will need to appreciate the distinction between on the one hand using an assessment to help a child to become more involved in learning conversations, or to develop their presentation skills, and on the other trying to alter a child's accent or to ban the use of dialect in the classroom simply because it 'sounds wrong'.  

'''Section 3.2 - Teachers should learn how to assess the quality of children's talk'''

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By analysing the impact of talk on learning in the core subject of mathematics, Andrea Raiker emphasises the fundamental nature of good oral language development for children. Andrea Raiker shows how a mismatch between what a teacher says ( e.g. 'cuboid' , 'repeated addition') and what a child thinks can create barriers to learning. Similarly, children expected to work together in mathematics may be baffled by lack of vocabulary and, more importantly, lack of the speaking and listening skills which can help them to articulate their difficulty. Students reading this paper can be asked to analyse their own teaching of mathematics in a whole class or small group context, perhaps tape recording part of their session then attending carefully to what the children actually say. By foregrounding talk, it becomes possible to evaluate at what point mathematical concepts are understood – or not.