In school and in life, students face a diversity of circumst...

Students need to practice varied kinds of writing. Teachers may present general guidelines for all writing, but specific types of writing, such as poems and essays, may require specific lessons. Students can benefit from practice at writing about the results of their own research - on internet, books, newspapers, magazines, for example -, as well as expressing their own feelings and experiences. The writing strategies involved in each form usually require explicit teaching, frequent practice and information given to students about their progress.

Students improve their informal speech when teachers provide insights on how to organize their ideas for presentation. Students can give better speeches when they can organize their presentation in a variety of different ways, including sequentially, chronologically and thematically. They need practice in organizing their speech around problems and solutions, causes and results, and similarities and differences. After deciding about the best means of organization, they can practice speeches with another student or with the whole class. Students may enjoy speaking about their personal experiences. When given this opportunity, they can benefit from instruction in the elements of good story-telling.

Learners need to know how speakers differ from one another and how particular circumstances call for different forms of speech. They can learn how speaking styles affect listeners. Thus, threat at which they speak, the volume and the precision of pronunciation may differ substantially from one situation to another. It is useful for students to know that speech should differ informality, such as when speaking to a judge, a teacher, a parent or a playmate. They may also benefit from learning about the differences among various dialects. Thus, the teacher should provide students with access to various discourses and accents.

Writing is the final product of several separate acts that are hugely challenging to learn simultaneously. Among these separable acts are note-taking, identifying a central idea, outlining, drafting and editing. Both young and old people can encounter the discouraging ‘writer’s block’ if they engage in more than one or two of these activities at once. It is difficult to start writing a report, for example, without a central idea and notes to support it. Often, the more detailed an outline, the easier is the writing.

Working together in twos, threes or larger groups can facilitate more frequent and insightful communications. In a class of thirty, for example, a student might be expected to speak only one-thirtieth of the time. In a group of two students, a student might speak for half of the time and listen for half of the time, and both the speaking and the listening can be concentrated on what the students need to know or desire to investigate.