What is Educational technology? The role of educational technologies in progressing oral

The ways of enhancing student’s oral speech at vocational colleges.

Understanding the fundamentals of oral communication:
Before you step into the reality and advance your oral communication skills, it is quite essential to understand the basics of communication skills.
Do not refrain from practicing oral basic communication in English in the fear of making mistakes and getting embarrassed. Mistakes are the basic part of any learning process.
Listen to learn:
Listening is another practice that will help you to train yourself for oral communication. Initially, you will be diverted from the listening as most of the words will appear to be unfamiliar and you might not be able to comprehend everything in one go.
Also, the accent of a native English speaker might also be non-understandable as you might find difficulty in understanding the tone and accent of the spoken words and sentences.
However, gradually you will learn, but for that you need to have lot of patience and perseverance. Listening to slow English songs, speech, presentations, news, debate or watching movies will help you a lot.
Dedication will take you far in improving oral communication skills!
Writing the necessary points:
While you read, you generally come across some specific words that are tough to spell out. Writing makes it easier to recognize and spell such words properly.
Also, writing helps you to become familiar with sentence construction, which will later help you in conversation.

Read Out Loud:

Reading is indeed a good habit and you need to keep it up. However, murmuring will certainly not help you in getting over your oral communication lags.
Read loud so that you can clearly hear your own voice and make out the mistakes while reading. The golden tips for making your communication skills better are to pronounce each and every word clearly and loudly.
This is the best way to improve English speaking skills. Read whatever you get in your hand, whether a torn out page from old book or a column from newspapers.
Look out for Online Dictionary
Other than Google Translator, you can take the assistance of Oxford online dictionary or other renowned dictionaries. These dictionaries, not only have wide range of words and their meanings, but there is an audio version available.
You can listen to the audio version for every word and can practice on your own.
Moreover, you would find the phonetic transcription of each and every word which will give you a clear idea of the accent and intonation of the given word.
Enhance your vocabulary skills:
A good orator has new words in his or her vocabulary and uses them intelligently while speaking.
So, when you are on the way to becoming a good oral communicator, you should augment your vocabulary skills as well. Learn at least one word every day and try to implement or use it the next day.
Watch movies for learning more:
If watching English movies during leisure is your favorite pass time, then you are a lucky one. Your hobby will help you in advancing your communication skills.
Good quality movies can help you in improving your accent and sentence construction. Also, this effective way enhances your self-confidence. The sub-title part helps one to make out the accent.
Attend English-activities going around you
How about spending an evening in debate or discussion sessions in your locality?
You may find many activities going on especially during the weekends in local community halls or auditoriums. Surely attend them, just not for the sake of attending, but to learn something.
Enroll yourself in conversation clubs:
You may find ample of conversation clubs all around the city, where special classes for improving oral communications skills are held.
Local newspaper or internet will give you proper idea about such classes. Enroll yourself and enjoy the perks of conversing in English.
Engaging in debates and discussions:
If you have few willing friends who also want to boost up their English oral communication skills, then plan a debate or discussion session with them. Contribute your ideas, your thoughts and ask them about their perspectives.
A healthy and interactive session once or twice a week will definitely help you in learning and sharing.
Find out helping materials from the market:
Better to avoid books quoting ‘learn to speak English in five days’ or similar to this! These are nothing, but some bluff that will not help you much.
There are some inspirational English learning books available in the market that will empower your oral communication skills. There are also few best books to
improve English communication skills.
Inquisitiveness- the pillar to success:
How inquisitiveness helps in improving English speaking skills or oral communication skills is not new to anyone.
Curiosity brings in the urge to learn new words, accept the challenges and develop smooth communication skills.
Unless you are curious to learn new, you will never develop confidence and knowledge.
Encourage conversation.
Every social interaction gives students a new opportunity to practice language. Some of your students might need a little guidance from you to engage in conversations, so spark interactions whenever you can. Ask questions, rephrase the student’s answers, and give prompts that encourage oral conversations to continue.
Model syntactic structure.
Students may not use complete oral syntax in informal speech, but encourage them to do so when they’re in the classroom. When a student uses fragmented syntax, model complete syntax back to them. This builds oral language skills and gives students practice in a skill necessary for mastering written language.
Maintain eye contact.
Engage in eye contact with students during instruction and encourage them to do the same. Maintaining eye contact will help learners gauge their audi­ence’s attention and adjust their language, their volume, or the organization of their speech. This will help them be better under­stood, communicate more clearly, and successfully interpret nonverbal cues about their clarity.
Remind students to speak loudly and articulate clearly.
Ask students to feel the muscles used for speech while they’re talk­ing and monitor their volume and articulation. Remind them that clear and loud-enough speech is essential for holding the attention of the group and communicating their information and opinions effectively.
Have students summarize heard information.
Encourage students to verbally summarize or otherwise discuss the information they hear. This should begin in kindergarten and continue with increasingly difficult questions, as students grow older. Teach students to ask for clarification when they don’t understand something, and emphasize that they can ask you directly or query fellow students.
Model and guide sentence construction.
Some students have trouble getting started with the wording of a sentence. Saying the beginning word or phrase for the student can help the student structure their response. Give students time for thinking and formulating an oral or written response. Students’ explicit experience in both producing their own oral language and processing others’ language will help facilitate their comprehension of reading material.
Explain the subtleties of tone.
Your students have probably experienced playground arguments related to tone; misunderstandings are common when students are using loud outdoor voices. Remind your students how tone of voice-which includes pitch, volume, speed, and rhythm—can change the meaning of what a speaker says. Often, it’s not what they say, it’s how they say it that can lead to misunderstanding of motives and attitudes. Ask your students to be mindful of tone when they’re trying to get a message across, and adjust their volume and pitch accordingly.¹³
Attend to listening skills.
Ensure that your students are listening by using consistent cues to get their attention. You might use a phrase like “It’s listening time” to give students a reminder. Some students might also benefit from written reminders posted prominently on your wall.
Incorporate a “question of the day.”
During each school day’s opening activities, ask a question to encourage talk. (You can even write one on the board so your students can read it and start thinking about their answer as soon as they come in.) Start with simple one-part questions like “What is your favorite animal?” If a student doesn’t answer in a complete sentence, model a complete sentence and ask the student to repeat your model. Once your students are successfully answering these simple questions in com­plete sentences, move to two-part questions that require more complex answers: “What is your favorite animal? Why?”
Compile a class booklet of students’ phrases.
Give your students a sentence to finish, such as “When my dog got lost I looked…” Have each student contribute a prepositional phrase to com­plete the sentence (e.g., at the grocery store, in the park, under the bed). Then have your students create a class booklet by writing and illustrating their phrases. When all the phrase pages are assembled into a booklet, students can practice reading the very long sentence with all the places they looked for the dog. Encourage them to come up with a conclusion to the story.
Teach concept words.
Some students may have difficulty with abstract concepts such as before, after, or following, and with sequences such as days of the week or months of the year. To help students learn and retain these concepts, you may need to present and review them many times and in multiple ways. For example:
You might ask stu­dents to identify which holiday comes in each month and then review holidays for other months in sequence: “Groundhog Day is in February. What holiday is in March? In April?”
Have students identify the month before or after a given month. “May is before June and after April.” “May is between April and June.”
Question to boost comprehension.
Asking questions before and after a reading assignment not only helps sharpen oral language skills, it also helps students think about what they’re read­ing and absorb information from the words. You might try the following strategies to facilitate reading comprehension:
If there’s an introduction to the story or passage, ask students to read it and answer purpose-setting questions: “Where does the story begin? “What kind of story or article is this? Why do you think so?”
Ask students to predict outcomes: “What will happen? How do you know?”
After the reading, ask students to reveal whether their predictions were correct and identify where the ending or conclusion begins.
Have students summarize the passage: “Who were the characters?” “What was the plot?” “What was the outcome?” “What was the main idea?” “What were the supporting details?”
Teach for oral reading fluency.
Oral reading fluency refers to how rapidly, smoothly, effortlessly, and automatically students read text. The goal is accurate and fluid reading with adequate speed, appropriate phrasing, and correct intonation. Here are a few activities that aid fluency:
Sentence completion: Read a phrase and signal for a student to complete the sentence. Then read another phrase and signal another student to complete the next sentence. This activity provides good modeling of rhythm and inflection and builds reading group skills.¹⁴
Round-robin repeated reading: Each student reads a sentence, paragraph, or page, and then the next student gets a turn. Prompt each student to read with rhythm and fluency.
Partner reading: Paired readers choose a quiet, cozy spot to practice reading to one another. This activity provides additional practice after reading in small groups.
Monitored reading: Ask an aide or parent volunteer to listen to a student’s oral reading and watch for good phrasing and rhythm.¹⁵