It's August and the Oral exams are rolling round the corner. Your child will soon be taking the stand. How best do you prepare him or her for it? Here are 5 effective ways to groom that eloquent speaker:
1. Know the components
Each level has its own specific spoken aspect, but in essence, they are really looking for two things. The ability to narrate in a clear manner, and the ability to communicate with another person constructively.
- PSLE: Reading aloud, stimulus-based conversation
- O levels: Reading aloud, spoken interaction
2. Read aloud together
This targets the reading component. While it's the easier bit, doing well involves surpassing a personal comfort level of speaking and hearing one's voice aloud. Your child needs to feel familiar speaking with people around, and hearing her voice amidst the crowd. She also needs to hear how others narrate. The astute listener will measure her intonations against others, and in so doing, improve her own.
Use whatever you can find to facilitate such moments. Books, social sharings, magazines; they all work. Just keep at it, and you'll find her narration improve.
3. Listen attentively
What you hear is how you speak. Expose your child to good orators. Turn the television on, bring her to the movies, listen to podcasts together. Let her familiar herself with proper pace and intonation and pronunciation, and in due time, she'll mimic them too.
4. Encourage reviews
This point targets the spoken interaction component. Both at the primary and secondary level, this aspect requires your child to display calmness and confidence when expressing her thoughts to others.
An extremely easy way to kickstart such stimulus based conversations is to ask how he or she feels about issues that matters to them. It could be something as simple as a movie review or a book they enjoyed. Or could go to higher levels issues like discussing his or her stand on trending controversial topics in the news (if your child is older). Such moments allow your child to verbally express his inner thoughts and feelings, and beckons a proper structuring of their thoughts as they learn to present it to others.
What an absolutely vital skill. The coherence and confidence in sharing goes a long way beyond the oral exam. Start this one today.
5. Encourage improv conversations
Sometimes, a question posed during the oral session may throw your child off balance. She may not know enough to adequately respond or even how to begin. This is a real thing. Even adults face questions that stumped them occasionally.
In such instances, the key is help them develop wit and think quick on their feet. Use basic improv exercises to help with this. Such exercises taps into your child's spontaneity, flexibility, and attentiveness. Engaging in such exercises over and over not only allows her to react well under pressure, she'll become a better listener and feel more comfortable even in alien situations.
At the same time, regularly ask them to consider people and places and objects and past situations that resonate and struck a chord with them. Being consistent on this builds a repository of examples that they can later organically pull out at will.
Conclusion
The oral exams can be daunting. But for those who recognize what the test components aim for, early and consistent practice on these 5 tips will go a long way for your child. Invest the little, and she'll reap the harvest of speaking eloquently.
