This section consists of seven subsections focusing on various aspects of oral language development and oral communication skills. It includes consideration of the disparate skills involved in this area, best instructional strategies, and how to best support oral language development. It also includes consideration of different types of students in both management and the created learning environment.

The first area asks you to show that you know how to do three things in helping young learners: help students’ oral language skills evolve, improve their listening and speaking skills, and increase their listening and speaking vocabularies. In preparing for this criterion, consider what types of teaching methods are best suited to helping students evolve in the areas of oral language, speaking and listening, and speaking and listening vocabulary. As part of this consideration, which methods are poorly suited for these tasks, and why?

The second subsection focuses on oral communication skill development. It calls for you to identify strategies of instruction that will help improve students’ oral communication skills. Further, you should know how to use instruction to help learners use oral language for different purposes and to facilitate critical thinking and creative expression through oral language use.