BUILDING ORAL COMPETENCY IN THE L1:
LAYING THE FOUNDATION
Ellen Errington
SIL Asia Area
PO Box 12962, Ortigas PO
1605 Ortigas Center, Pasig City, Philippines
ellen_errington@wycliffe.net
ABSTRACT
The child entering school already possesses a growing vocabulary
and knowledge base in their home language. They have learned
skills by listening, observing and experimenting. These oral skills
are a solid foundation for school-based learning.
Oral competency continues to develop until about age 12. This
competency has a direct connection to the child’s future success
as a reader and writer. Even as the child has learned in the home
by listening, observing and approximating behaviours, these same
techniques are transferable to the classroom as children develop
their competencies in the home language and then transfer those
skills to learning and using other languages.
already know, including the use of their own language, learning
can be an interesting and rewarding activity.
Oral skills in the home language are also an important bridge to
second languages throughout the elementary grades. Research has
shown that skills and knowledge transfer freely from one
language to another; skills gained in the home language will be
accessible to children in other languages, once those languages are
learned.
2. WHY THE EMPHASIS ON ORAL
COMPETENCY IN THE HOME
LANGUAGE?
The use of the home language in the classroom encourages
connections with the community. In the early grades, the
children’s oral skills are built by listening to stories and sharing
their own experiences. Games and activities are fun ways of
building skills while employing traditional learning styles.
It might be assumed that children entering grade one have no need
for further instruction in speaking their home language. They are
able to communicate their needs and respond to spoken messages
appropriately. So why continue to emphasize developing these
skills in the classroom?
In later grades, children can use listening and speaking activities
to support both higher level cognitive skills and second language
learning. This session will provide many practical ideas for
building oral skills in the classroom.
What many educators have failed to take into account is that oral
competency continues to develop in the home language until
about age 12 [5]. Children need this time to increase their
vocabulary (including technical terms) and to develop higher level
cognitive skills such as abstract reasoning and discourse features.
Language skills develop quite naturally in an environment where
they are nurtured [3]. So even when the school day does not
include ‘oral competency’ as a subject, appropriate oral activities
can support all other academic learning. At the same time, using
the home language in academic learning provides a supportive
context for further developing the home language to its full
capacity.
Keywords
Oral competency; Scaffolding instruction.
1. INTRODUCTION
A sound educational program for children involves every
dimension of the communication task – listening, speaking,
reading and writing. While reading and writing receive more
attention in most schools, the foundation for success in these areas
is building competency in listening and speaking.
Children entering school already possess a growing vocabulary
and knowledge base in their home language. They usually have an
innate desire for social interaction. They have heard adults use
language in meaningful ways and observed the outcomes and
pleasure that meaningful communication brings. They have
learned practical skills by listening and observing what others do.
They also have experimented with words and actions. Culturally,
direct instruction or explanations of what someone is doing may
be limited, but still the child has developed a knowledge base
around the familiar aspects of his ‘world’ through listening,
observing and experimenting.
Oral skills developed in the home form a solid foundation for
school-based learning. When children can build on what they
Oral competency also has a direct connection to the child’s future
success as a reader and writer. Gabriele [2] notes that numerous
studies have shown a correlation between home language (L1)
literacy development and school language (L2) development; her
research further points to the important role that L1 syntactic
awareness plays in L2 reading comprehension and skill
development. [2] The study indeed points to the fact that skills
developed in one language become resources for learning in other
languages.
Even as the child has learned in the home by listening, observing
and approximating behaviours, these same techniques are
transferable to the classroom as children develop reading and
writing skills. Children with weak listening and speaking skills
will struggle to read and write meaningfully, regardless of the
language issue.
Malone [4] illustrates the progression of skills development in this
way:
Continue building oral and written L1
and L2; use both languages for
instruction at least through primary
school
Continue building oral and written L1 and
oral L2
Introduce reading and writing in L2
Continue building oral and written L1
Introduce oral L2
INTRODUCE READING AND WRITING IN L1
1
Figure 1. Progression of skills development
This diagram highlights how oral skills are foundational to
literacy skills. Reading with meaning naturally grows out of what
is heard; writing is an extension of communicating one’s thoughts
meaningfully. But note that the chart above is not framed in terms
of grade levels; the process is sequential but the time frames at
each step may vary.
Furthermore, oral skills in the home language form the basis for
learning and using other languages meaningfully. In fact, “the
level of development of children’s mother tongue is a strong
predictor of their second language development [1].” Skills and
knowledge are transferable; the home language and other school
languages are interdependent and can eventually enrich each other
once the second language is learned sufficiently to gain
information through it. It stands to reason, then, that the school
should help children both develop home language skills and also
teach other school languages well. “By contrast, when children
are encouraged to reject their mother tongue and, consequently, its
development stagnates, their personal and conceptual foundation
for learning is undermined [1].” When the home language is not
nurtured in the classroom, oral competency will not fully develop.
The child will not have the full range of communication skills in
the home language and this may have a detrimental impact on
learning in other school languages.
Cummins further reminds us that,
To reject a child's language in the school is to reject the
child. When the message, implicit or explicit,
communicated to children in the school is "Leave your
language and culture at the schoolhouse door", children
also leave a central part of who they are-their identitiesat the schoolhouse door. When they feel this rejection,
they are much less likely to participate actively and
confidently in classroom instruction. [1]
1
3. WHAT ELEMENTS SHOULD BE
TAUGHT FOR ORAL COMPETENCY?
When teaching in the home language, it is not necessary to focus
extensively on rules of the language. Language rules are largely
sub-conscious and are learned through hearing the language
spoken and by experimentation.
Continue building oral L1
Build small children’s fluency and confidence in oral L1
Building oral skills in the classroom is also a useful way to
encourage connections with the community and build the
confidence of both the children and the community. This is
especially true when older community members are not fully
literate themselves. In the early grades, the children’s oral skills
can be built by listening to stories from the community and
sharing their own experiences. Employing learning styles from the
oral tradition (listening, observing, and experimenting) is both
validating and empowering for the children in the classroom.
L1 = the children’s first language, home language, heritage
language. This is the language they know best so they should
use this language to begin their education.
The components of language are the phonological (sounds), the
semantic (meanings), and the syntactic (the glue that holds it
together) [3]. Most children entering school can produce all the
sounds of their home language but may not have an awareness of
them. For example, language awareness games might include
listening for the first or last sound of a word, choosing the word
with a different first or last sound, and thinking of rhyming words.
The ability to define word meanings is another skill that can be
developed through games. Making word chains (chicken  egg
 nest straw, etc), describing an object with as many words as
possible, and explaining a picture or activity are a few ways that
children can build their vocabulary and clarify word meanings.
The syntactic component is again best learned in the context of
stories and games. Children will learn what makes a good story by
listening to good stories and subsequently re-telling them
themselves. As the teacher tells a story, she/he might stop and ask,
‘What do you think will happen next?’ Perhaps a series of pictures
that form a story can be cut into frames and reordered by the
children. Older children may start with a story and retell the story
in the form of a drama, a poem or a song; procedures, such as how
to build a house or cook rice, might be told in the form of
instructions to another student.
Genishi [3] also suggests a fourth component of oral speech:
pragmatics. This is the art of knowing the type of speech which is
acceptable in a given context. “Learning pragmatic rules is as
important as learning the rules of the other components of
language since people are perceived and judged based on both
what they say and how and when they say it.”
The work of developing oral competency does not end in the
grade one classroom. As noted previously, first language
development continues throughout the elementary grades. As
children learn to read in their home language and later in other
school languages, oral strategies continue to play an important
part in supporting all learning activities. Walqui [6] asserts that
“Rather than simplifying the tasks or the language, teaching
subject matter to ELL [English language learners] requires
amplifying and enriching the linguistic and extralinguistic context,
so that students do not get just one opportunity … but may
construct their understanding on the basis of multiple clues and
perspectives” [6, p.169]. She suggests six strategies by which
teachers can support (or scaffold) learning in a second language.
These include:

Modelling – children hear a clear demonstration of
appropriate language use, such as for describing,
comparing, summarizing and evaluating.

Bridging – children build on what they already know by
talking about the topic before attempting new content
and by making the connections to the known.




Contextualizing –the teacher sets a reading text or
lesson in a real context, such as through the use of
pictures, objects or known settings. The teacher makes
the new learning relevant to the lives of the learners.
Schema-building – We organize understandings by
interconnecting clusters of meaning. Prior to reading a
text, the teacher can have children skim the main
headings and help them develop an (oral) overview of
what is ahead. If reading a school language text, the
preview might be done in the home language, including
an explanation of new words in the text (cf. ‘Content
Subjects’ below).
Re-presenting texts – children transform one form of
text into another, for example, change a story into a
drama or poem, change a historical text into an eyewitness account, or change a third person story into a
cartoon.
Develop meta-cognition – children can learn to manage
their own learning by developing strategies for
approaching new tasks and learning from past
experiences.
As can be seen, many of these scaffolding strategies involve oral
language skills, and can employ both the home language and other
school languages. As these strategies are developed first in the
home language, they become a resource to the learner when they
approach school language materials.
However, code-switching within a lesson should be avoided. The
child will develop deeper meanings in each of the school
languages when home language is separated from school
languages. The use of the home language as a supportive language
can precede and follow the school language lesson (i.e., the
sandwich lesson); re-presenting texts in the home language might
be done during a separate class period.

Children follow the Teacher’s instructions, for example,
‘stand up’/ ‘put your hand on your head’/ ‘face the door
and clap twice’/ ‘put your left foot on top of your right
foot and balance.’

Teacher tells a story and Children clap each time a
certain word is said.

Teacher tells a story and Children pantomime the action
of the story.
Speaking skills:

Children tell about an activity they have done or an
object they have brought to class.

Children draw a picture and Teacher circulates in the
room to listen as each one describes the picture.

Teacher reads a story and Children answer who/ what/
where/ when questions or open-ended questions about
the story (such as, “Why did she do that?” “What will
happen next?” “Has this ever happened to you?”).

Each day, Teacher asks older Children to report on news
in the community.
Language awareness/accuracy skills:

One Child selects an object in the room and says the
first sound (ch); other Children will guess what the
object is (chair). (phonology component)

Teacher recites the beginning of a poem and Children
complete it with a rhyming word (“When I jump in the
river, I begin to ______”).

Teacher says a short sentence and Children respond by
clapping for each word or syllable. (syntactic
component)

One older Child says a sentence that would be
appropriate for talking with a friend; a second Child
rephrases the sentence in a way that is appropriate for
talking with a Teacher. (pragmatic component)
Content subjects:

Build a sandwich: Teacher begins by previewing a
content lesson in the home language, explaining new
words and showing the ‘big picture’ ideas. Then the
lesson is presented in the school language. Finally
Children pose questions or respond to the Teacher’s
questions on the lesson in the home language.
Alternatively, Children can complete a project based on
the lesson, but in the home language (for example, if the
lesson is on one of the presidents, the Child will find out
about another of the presidents and report back to the
class).

Children form groups of four; one Child reads a
selection of the lesson text, a second Child summarizes
the content, a third Child poses two or three questions
on the content and the fourth Child answers the
questions.

The Teacher calls a group of 5 to 8 children to the front
of the room. The Teacher presents a math story
problem, which the Children act out and thereby solve.
Through the use of these strategies, the child benefits three-fold;
they increase their home language oral (and written) language
skills, their content subject knowledge, and their second language
skills. Learning in all three areas becomes integrated and
supportive of one another.
4. LEARNING GAMES AND ACTIVITIES
FOR THE CLASSROOM
This section will provide some sample activities that can nurture
oral skills in the classroom and the home. More resources are
listed at the end of this paper.
Listening skills:

Children cover their eyes and listen to sounds around
them for one minute. Then Children describe what they
have heard.

(For example, “Boyet invited four children to play ball
at his house. Two children left early to help their
mothers. How many children were left to play ball?”
Answer is 3.)
6. REFERENCES
Historical comparisons: When reading about something
that happened years ago, Children work together to
prepare a ‘then and now’ chart. The Teacher selects the
categories of comparisons and the Children fill in the
chart. For example, when comparing what it was like in
1900 to today, the categories might be ‘foods’, ‘ways to
get around’, ‘family’, women’s work, and ‘school.’
(based on Walqui’s example)
[2] Gabriele, A., et al. 2009. Emergent literacy skills in bilingual
children: evidence for the role of L1 syntactic
comprehension. International Journal of Bilingual Education
and Bilingualism. 12(5): 533-547, September 2009.
Community Connections:


Invite a village elder to share stories from his/her
childhood. Children can each prepare one question to
ask after the speaker is finished or they can draw a
picture about something they enjoyed in the story.
Older children can interview a grandparent or parent
about an event or memory. The Children can present the
interview content for the class in the form of a story or
drama or first person narrative.

Encourage parents to spend time listening to their
children each day. Some helpful suggestions are
included in the resource list.

Prepare and present a home language recitation, song or
drama at a community event.
5. CONCLUSION
This paper has attempted to show how good oral communication
skills in the home language can form a solid foundation for
academic success, as well as for learning other school languages.
Listening and speaking skills are important components of a
complete school program for all children throughout the
elementary grades. This paper has offered some practical
suggestions for incorporating oral practice into the school
schedule in the context of language awareness and content
learning.
An emphasis on oral home language does not detract from content
learning, but rather forms a foundation for learners. Oral language
at all grade levels forms a scaffold, or support network. It allows
children to gain confidence and competency both as a community
member and as a learner.
[1] Cummins, J. no date. Bilingual Children’s Mother Tongue:
Why is it important for Education?
www.iteachilearn.com/cummins/mother.htm
[3] Genishi, C. Young Children’s Oral Language Development.
www.eric.ed.gov/ERICDocs/data/ericdocs2sql/content_stora
ge_01/0000019b/80/1e/22/96.pdf. Accessed January 18,
2010.
[4] Malone, S. Planning Community-Based Education Programs
in Minority Language Communities, chapter 1. 2006.
Unpublished.
[5] McLaughlin, B. 1992. Myths and Misconceptions about
Second Language Learning: What every teacher needs to
unlearn. Educational Practice Report 5. University of
California, Santa Cruz.
http://people.ucsc.edu/~ktellez/epr5.htm
[6] Walqui, A. 2006. Scaffolding Instruction for English
Language Learners: A Conceptual Framework. International
Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism. 9(2), 159180. 2006
MORE RESOURCES
Behm, Mary and Richard. 2000. Let’s Read! 101 ideas to
help your child learn to read and write. ERIC Clearing house
on Reading, English and Communication.
www.eric.ed.gov/ERICDocs/data/ericdocs2sql/content_stora
ge_01/0000019b/80/16/06/7e.pdf
Malone, S. 2005. Ideas for activities and games for MLE
Bridging Programs. Unpublished.
Prince, A. 2006. Promoting Oral Language Development in
Young Children. Super Duper Publications.
www.superduperinc.com/handouts/pdf/120_oral_language_d
evelopment.pdf
Waters, G. 1998. Local Literacies. SIL: Dallas, chapter 5
especially.