Teaching Speaking and Listening Skills: The Most Neglected Standards in ELA

Ask most ELA teachers what their speaking and listening instruction looks like, and you'll get one of two answers: "We do Socratic Seminar," or a long pause followed by "I mean, students talk during class."

Speaking and listening are in every state's ELA standards. They're assessed on standardized tests in some states. They're critical for college and career readiness. And they get less deliberate instructional attention than almost any other strand. Here's how to change that.

Why Speaking and Listening Get Neglected

It starts with the structure of most English classrooms. Reading and writing are naturally tracked — there's a text to read, a draft to collect, a paper to grade. Speaking and listening are ephemeral. If you don't build in explicit structures to capture and assess them, they dissolve into "participation," which is only loosely connected to actual communication skill.

There's also the assessment problem: speaking and listening are harder to assess than writing. You can't collect a voice and reread it. Rubrics for oral communication feel less precise than rubrics for written arguments. So teachers default to "being present and contributing" as their proxy for communication skill, which isn't the same thing.

What Speaking Standards Actually Ask For

Most ELA speaking standards ask students to:

• Prepare for and participate effectively in collaborative discussions
• Build on others' ideas and express their own clearly
• Present information clearly and appropriately for audience and purpose
• Evaluate and respond to the reasoning and evidence in others' presentations
• Adapt speech to context

These are not "raise your hand and say something" skills. They're complex communication competencies that require explicit instruction, modeling, and practice over time.

Teach the Components Explicitly

Break speaking and listening into teachable components and address each one deliberately.

Active listening: Most students have never been taught what active listening looks like beyond "don't talk when someone else is talking." Teach them to track the speaker's main claim, notice supporting evidence, and formulate a response before the speaker finishes. Academic listening frames help: "The speaker's main point is... I agree/disagree because... I want to add..."

Building on others' ideas: Students in discussions often proceed as if they're giving parallel speeches rather than having a conversation. Teach explicit transition language: "What you said made me think about..." "I want to complicate what [name] said..." "I see it differently because..." These are not empty sentence starters — they're moves that produce real intellectual conversation.

Adjusting for audience: This is a metacognitive skill. What language is appropriate for a formal presentation versus a small-group discussion? How do you modify your explanation when you can tell a listener isn't following? These adjustments don't happen automatically — they need to be named and practiced.

Structures That Develop Communication Skills

A few structures that go beyond "everyone gets a turn":

Fishbowl discussion: A small group discusses in the center while the rest of the class observes and takes structured notes on what they hear. Then groups switch. Observers are specifically tasked with noting claims, evidence, and moments where speakers built on each other's ideas. This makes active listening observable and assessable.

Academic conversation stems: Give students a set of sentence frames designed to produce substantive discussion — not to scaffold what to think, but how to engage: "I noticed that..." "Can you say more about..." "This connects to what we read because..." Practice using them until they become natural.

One-pager presentations: Students present a concise, single-focused argument or explanation in 3-4 minutes. Classmates complete a structured listening guide: What was the main claim? What evidence was offered? One question I have. This builds both speaking preparation and listening accountability simultaneously.

Assess Speaking and Listening with Actual Criteria

If you want students to take speaking and listening seriously, you have to assess it with the same rigor as writing. This means:

• A rubric with observable criteria, not just "participation" or "effort"
• Regular, structured opportunities where speaking and listening are the explicit skill being developed
• Feedback that names specific communication moves — not just "great point" but "you built directly on what your partner said, which moved the conversation forward"

One practical approach: designate one discussion per week as an assessed speaking and listening task. Students know it's coming, can prepare, and receive specific feedback. Over time, the skills transfer to less structured contexts.

The Connection to Academic Achievement

Students who can speak and listen well are better readers and writers — not incidentally, but causally. Talk about text builds comprehension. Articulating ideas aloud before writing them often produces clearer prose. Responding to oral argument develops the same analytical muscles as responding to written argument.

Speaking and listening aren't supplementary to the core work of ELA. They're part of the same intellectual enterprise.

Your Next Step

Choose one upcoming discussion activity and add one explicit speaking or listening component to it. Give students a specific listening task (track the speaker's claim and one piece of evidence), or teach one discussion move (building on someone else's idea) and require students to use it at least once. Then debrief: what did they notice about their own communication?