Improve Literacy Skills by Focusing on Speaking

I love this speaker series by AERA that features mini-lectures by education researchers.  In this video, Dr. Young-Suk Kim makes the case for why teaching orality systematically is essential to developing reading and writing skills.  As schools struggle to meet the demands of high-stakes tests–exams that overwhelmingly privilege written word–it’s not uncommon for teachers and principals to view teaching orality as an “inefficient” use of time.  Dr. Kim vehemently disagrees.  And so do I. It’s another one of those education paradoxes: in order to improve children’s literacy, you have to first ignore it and focus on orality.