CEFR

Familiarisation Training
Primary

Rohamizar Ezatie Mohamed

Session 3

Primary Learner Speaking

Competencies and strategies
Speaking Competences and Strategies

Lets watch three video clips

 Spoken Interaction
A1
Can interact in a simple way
but communication is totally
dependent on repetition at
a slower rate of speech,
rephrasing and repair.
Can ask and answer simple
questions, initiate and
respond to simple
statements in areas of
immediate need or on very
familiar topics.
A2
can communicate in simple
and routine tasks requiring
a simple and direct
exchange of information on
familiar topics and
activities.
can handle very short social
exchanges even though I
cant usually understand
enough to keep the
conversation going myself.
 CEFR Spoken Production

A1 A2
Can produce simple mainly Can give a simple
isolated phrases about description or presentation
people and places. of people, living or working
conditions, daily
routines,likes/dislikes, etc.
as a short series of simple
phrases and sentences
linked into a list.
 Speaking construct
Two Way Three-way

What type of talk does neither diagram

accurately represent ?
 Qualitative aspects of spoken language
use

INTERACTION FLUENCY RANGE

ACCURACY COHERENCE
 Generating spoken language in the
Primary classroom : questioning and
eliciting techniques

Matching and ordering

Put it together
Put in the right place
Draw and colour it
Same or different
Odd-one-out
Whats missing?
Whats the question?
 Wait-time with children

Sufficient wait-time is needed after the question for learners to

c _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ the question
f _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ an answer
p _ _ _ _ _ _ language
r _ _ _ _ _ _.

Wait-time before nominating and after the initial response encourages

longer _______
______ from the learners
self-_________
level of learner _______.
 Correction/recasting techniques

Positive reinforcement
Finger correction
Correction images/symbols/spaces
Recasting
Avoid echoing
 Drilling

Energise and focus

Model
Chorus drill
Highlight
Individual drill
Pair/group drill
Chorus repeat
Back-chaining, change emotions, change accents
 Pair and group work
gives learners more speaking time
changes the speed of the lesson
focus off you and onto the learner
mix with everyone in the group
sense of achievement when reaching a team goal
leading and being led by someone [not teacher]
teacher monitors, moves and listens to learners
language
improves sense of challenge, performance and can-do.

Think: seating, change of scene, group dynamics

 Primary teacher toolkit

visuals
gesture
instructional (semantically contingent) language
L1 cognates
songs and rhymes
in school/out of school environment: international
words/names/symbols/shapes/numbers
positive reinforcement (recasts, not corrections/echoes)
easily identifiable formats: gaming, puzzles, riddles, jokes, spot the
difference, odd-one-out.
 Aspects of child spoken output not
necessarily reflected in CEFR
Trade-off between control of learner output and
authenticity of tasks in primary language classrooms
Scaffolding of tasks prevalent in pre-school learning
Learning to learn, enabling skills very prominent in
primary classrooms
Limits to childrens cognition, linguistic progress,
psychological, emotional, social development not
acknowledged in CEFR
In pre-school/early primary learning no task should
tax childrens cognition by requiring them to deal with
multiple perspectives other than their own