Despite all the speaking that students do in class—in informal discussions and formal presentations, when sharing solutions to problems, asking questions, and working in groups—we have to admit that they don't speak all that well.
Typically, our expectations are low. We sit through mediocre book reports and think, "Oh well, that's just how kids speak." We hear poor student explanations of science fair projects and reason, "It's the project that matters, not how well it's presented." We post a video to YouTube with students speaking poorly and kid ourselves by saying, "Hey, that's authentic speech!" Daily, we accept oral communication that's far below what our students are capable of—and far below what we should accept.
Look at it with fresh eyes. How often do most students zone out when their classmates are speaking? Can you blame them? How often do you have a hard time staying focused when listening to poor speakers?
We undercut many of our activities by not teaching effective speaking skills first. Reader's theater is ineffective if students speak poorly. Poetry recitations are death without strong oral communication skills. Book reports bore classmates and ruin interest in the books presented. Formal presentations about a Supreme Court case or health issue waste classmates' time unless the presentations are engaging enough to command interest.
Everything you do in your class would improve if students spoke better. Students would be more engaged and learn more from one another, discussions would be more productive, and groups would function more smoothly because students would be better able to express their ideas.
In an article about writing instruction, Carol Jago (2014) recently wrote,
If we expect students to learn to write, we need to teach them how. This means embedding in our practice daily opportunities for students to write, combined with deliberate instruction about the moves good writers make as they compose.
I'd argue that we need to do the same thing for speaking. Let's revisit Jago's statement, substituting the term speaking for writing:
If we expect students to learn to speak, we need to teach them how. This means embedding in our practice daily opportunities for students to speak, combined with deliberate instruction about the moves good speakers make as they talk.
The fact is, we do expect students to learn to speak—we just don't teach them how.
Why Don't We Teach Speaking?
Let me suggest three reasons that may explain why we fail to teach speaking skills.
It isn't on the test.
We can't deny it. We teach to the test. At my wife's school, the test preparation packet comes out a month before the big test is given in March, and most teachers diligently go through the packet. And, of course, well before that, teachers are thinking about the state assessment. Speaking skills aren't tested.
At a conference at which I was presenting, when I said we should teach speaking skills, one teacher exclaimed, "That's what I don't have time for!" She was angry that I suggested it. Like many other teachers, she struggles daily to get her students proficient in writing and reading because those scores will be recorded and reported.
New assessments may push us to pay attention to oral language. The Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium (SBAC) and the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Career (PARCC) have been considering speaking assessments. We should be more motivated, however, out of concern for our students' future. In life beyond school, oral communication is highly valued. In fact, in the National Association of Colleges and Employers' Job Outlook Survey 2013, the highest rated skill was "the ability to verbally communicate with persons inside and outside the organization" (p. 31).
Students already know how to talk.
When students come into your classroom, they know how to speak. Sometimes we struggle to get them to stop talking. It's easy to assume that they don't need instruction.
But is the ability to utter words the same as effective oral communication? Students come into our classrooms able to read and write, but we don't think, "Oh, they've got those down! I'll just move on to something else." We notice that although they can read and write at some level, we need to help them improve their skills. Similarly, although students can speak at some level, we need to help them hone that skill.
We don't know how to teach speaking.
The truth is, we're not sure we can teach students how to master oral communication. Indeed, many teachers are uncomfortable as speakers themselves and panic at back-to-school nights, award assemblies, job interviews, and retirement dinners. No teacher preparation program offers classes about how to teach speaking, few schools or districts offer training on the topic, and few professional conferences include sessions about oral communication.
This absence is reflected systemwide. Many districts have a reading specialist, a writing specialist, a math specialist, a science specialist, and so on. But I've never worked with a district that had a speaking specialist. (Speech therapists are in a different category entirely.)
Look at your school's curriculum. Almost every school has a scope and sequence for reading, math, writing, and other subjects. Not one has a scope and sequence for developing well-spoken students. In other words, when teachers realize that they've never been trained to educate students in oral communication, they find that their district has neither people nor resources on hand that can help them learn how to teach those skills.
What You Can Do
Commit to developing more effective speakers.
As an organization, commit to valuing oral communication and increasing your expectations of students, and agree to be more purposeful in addressing deficiencies. Develop a districtwide or schoolwide scope and sequence for speaking. Offer workshops to train teachers in how to teach oral communication. Include speaking skills on proficiency reports or report cards.
This is not an unrealistic demand. All teachers have oral activities in their classrooms, so nothing is being added to their already overcrowded plates. We simply need to be more attentive to those activities and to raise our standards for the way students speak.
Most important, let students know that you value oral communication every time they speak. Asking a question in class, working with others, recording the screencast, presenting the report—if students are speaking, they need to know that how they're speaking matters.
Develop a consistent language.
Ask the teachers in your school to bring in all their rubrics that award points for presentation. Make a list of the terms used: neat poster, adequate evidence, posture, inflection, expression, articulation, vocal modulation, eye contact, and so on. Write them all down.
First, note the lack of consistency. The language changes from class to class and from grade to grade. Next, discuss which terms are unclear to students (and to teachers). Indeed, many common terms are bad advice. For example, teachers commonly put "Speak slowly" on rubrics, but many speeches would be enhanced by a fast pace in parts (Palmer, 2014). Finally, agree to develop some consistent language. An effective mnemonic that I've developed—P.V. Legs—has worked for many teachers:
- <EMPH TYPE="4">Poise: Appear calm and confident.
- <EMPH TYPE="4">Voice: Make every word heard.
- <EMPH TYPE="4">Life: Put passion into your voice.
- <EMPH TYPE="4">Eye contact: Visually engage each listener.
- <EMPH TYPE="4">Gestures: Make motions match your words.
- <EMPH TYPE="4">Speed: Adjust your pace for a powerful performance. (Palmer, 2011)
Use P.V. LEGS or develop your own school's version of multiple-trait speaking. Insist that teachers use the same language from grade to grade to enable students to understand what's required every time they open their mouths.
Teach speaking.
We assign speaking, but we don't teach speaking. Ask an English teacher to show you his lessons about topic sentences. He'll be happy to comply. Ask a science teacher to show you her lessons about cell division. She'll show you specific readings, media items, and handouts.
Now ask a teacher to show you his lessons on eye contact—or her lessons on expression. Neither will have any materials on these; neither will have taught these topics. They may think these things can't be taught. Eye contact? You can't teach that; you just have to tell students to do it! The truth is that every part of P.V. LEGS is teachable.
The Basics of Good Speaking
All oral communication has two distinct stages: building the talk and performing the talk. Teachers are quite good at defining for students how they should build the talk—that is, defining the content the talk should include. Also, most rubrics are overweighted in favor of how well-built the talk is.
But great content has no value if it's not delivered well, so here I focus on the performing part of speaking. You can use P.V. LEGS to teach students steps toward mastery in performing (Palmer, 2011).
Poise: Appear calm and confident.
- Explain to students that just as developing writers aren't aware of overusing words like good or interesting, developing speakers are often unaware of odd tics and behaviors as they talk. Give some examples—tugging at sleeves, fidgeting with fingers, rolling and unrolling papers in one's hand. Point out that these behaviors distract listeners and that avoiding them is necessary to allow listeners to focus on the message.
- Ask students to observe other students and teachers talking in class for one week (without commenting on what they see). Have them make a list of any tics they notice.
- Make a master list of tics and post it in the classroom. Anytime students speak in class, let listeners share what they noticed about the speaker: "As Jeremy was presenting the solution at the board, he kept twirling the string of his hoodie." (This assumes, of course, that you've created a safe atmosphere in which mistakes are expected and accepted. In such an environment, students are apt to realize that they're emerging as speakers and are more likely to appreciate advice about how to improve.) Students will begin the process of eliminating these behaviors when they speak.
Voice: Make every word heard.
- Introduce the concept of voice to students:We need to hear every word you say. That means speaking loud enough for all to hear. You don't have to shout. You just have to speak loud enough. Mumbling is not OK because we won't be able to hear all the words.
- Incorporate voice comments into your routine. For example, in a 1st grade class meeting you might say,That was a good question, Trevor.I heard every word, Jude.Thank you for looking at the speaker, Precious.Did Angel demonstrate voice? What should he do?
When you emphasize voice in this way, students see that making every word heard is valued in every situation.
Life: Put passion into your voice.
- Early elementary teachers can add a lesson to their daily read-alouds. Explain to students that we can add feeling to our talks to make them more interesting. Ask them to notice how you used vocal expression during reading: How did I change my voice to sound like the grandmother? How did I show that the grandmother was angry?
- Before a field trip to the zoo, put a silly phrase on the board, such as "I want a peanut." Ask students to say the phrase as different animals might say it: How would the elephant say it? How would a mouse say it? Who can talk like a mouse?
- Once students are used to playing with putting life into their words, put up small passages that require passion in the voice—"800 million people are starving on this planet!" or "It was the greatest show I've ever seen!"—and have students take turns delivering them.
Eye Contact: Visually engage each listener.
- Ask a student to speak for one or two minutes about a familiar topic (for example, a favorite relative or activity). After she speaks, ask classmates to raise their hands if they believe that at some point, the speaker looked directly at them. The student who spoke gets immediate feedback about where she looked and where she didn't.Ask a second student to speak. Most likely, he'll do better with eye contact. Have a few more students speak, again, with classmates raising their hands to indicate whether the speaker made eye contact with them. This gives students a sense of their ability as a speaker to see the members of the audience (Palmer, 2011).
- On a different day, discuss the value of eye contact. Ask, Why is it important? What happens when someone looks directly at you? How do you react? Why? How does making eye contact engage us?
- Assign eye contact homework. Ask students to observe a speaker in person or online—the principal at an assembly, a minister, a speaker at a TED talk, or even their teacher. Ask, How effective was the eye contact? Was everyone in the audience included? If larger audiences are involved, ask, Was every part of the room included, or did the speaker only talk to a section of the audience?
- Insist on eye contact every time students speak. When students are discussing a topic, remind them to look at the other students; when students are showing solutions at the board, insist that they often look back at the class.
Gestures: Make motions match your words.
- Play a scene from a movie and mute the sound. I like the scene in The Princess Bride (1987) in which Vizzini and the Dread Pirate Roberts drink from poisoned goblets. Ask students to pay attention to all hand, body, and facial gestures. Replay the scene with frequent stops. Ask, What is Vizzini showing with his face? What does the hand on the chin mean? Contemplation? Smugness? For homework, ask students to find a high-gesture scene to share with the class.
- Ask for class feedback by way of facial gestures. Instead of a thumbs up/thumbs down vote, ask the students to respond to a question—for example, Should we cancel the quiz for tomorrow?—with only a facial expression.
- Post phrases that lend themselves to incorporating gestures: "Let's get serious for a moment" or "There are three ways to solve this." Have student volunteers repeat these phrases with appropriate gesturing.
Speed: Adjust your pace for a powerful performance.
- Walk into class one day and start speaking extremely slowly: To … day … we … are … going … to … pre … pare … for … our … lab … pre … sent … ta … tion …. When students start to complain, tell them that you read a speaking rubric that listed, "Speak slowly." Ask, Why might that be on a rubric? What should it say instead of "speak slowly"? Why?
- Find a famous speech in which the speaker uses pacing well. I use Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech. Play the first two minutes of the speech. Notice how slow the pace is. Skip to the section that repeatedly uses the phrase "with this faith." Notice how much faster the pace is. Ask students, Why might he have adjusted his pace? How is the crowd reacting? What does increasing the speed of delivery do to enhance speeches? (It creates excitement.) What does slowing down do? (It emphasizes main points.)
- Construct short speeches that have great pacing possibilities and project them onto the screen or whiteboard. (See the <LINK URL="http://www.pvlegs.com">Activities and Ideas</LINK> section for examples.) Have student volunteers take turns reading the speeches with pace variations.
If teachers explicitly teach these skills, when it's time for students to give a big presentation, the students will know what's required and will have had the opportunity to practice good speaking along the way. They will have made steps toward becoming effective oral communicators.
A Perturbing Postscript
Not long ago, I got a call from a university president who wanted me to work with the faculty to show them how to develop better speakers. It seemed that the seniors giving their seminar presentations were so inept at speaking that he felt it made the school look bad.
These students had been speaking in school since kindergarten. Every year for the 15 years that followed, they had engaged in verbal activities in their classrooms—yet they never developed as speakers. Students don't master what isn't taught. We've shortchanged our students. We've failed to give them an effective voice. We need to change this—now.
