Recent studies indicate that enhancing oral language skills from an early age significantly improves literacy and overall academic performance. In Catalunya, the latest oral assessments for sixth-grade primary and fourth-year secondary students revealed disparities of nearly 20 points favoring Spanish over Catalan in certain indicators. This finding reinforces existing scientific evidence and emphasizes the ongoing efforts of educators to prioritize oral language teaching throughout schooling.
Pilar Prieto, a researcher at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra (UPF) and coordinator of the Prosody and Gesture Studies Group, argues for a paradigm shift in language education. She cites research demonstrating that fostering oral discourse enhances literacy, as it serves as the foundation of language development. Prieto advocates for integrating oral language activities during early childhood and primary education, noting that narrative interventions can enhance linguistic learning.
A study conducted by Prieto”s research team with secondary school students learning English showed that oral skills bolster writing abilities. “We must recognize that improving oral skills also enhances written expression; the development of complex oral narratives directly impacts academic performance, which in turn is linked to reduced rates of early school dropout,” she asserts. Prieto emphasizes the importance of guided interactions with adults, which help children advance both their discourse and vocabulary levels.
Research from UPF illustrates that oral language should be developed through what they term “multimodal language,” emphasizing the significance of voice and body language in communication. Prieto recalls that ten years ago, they began investigating how to improve oral language through multimodal approaches, incorporating gestures, which yielded positive results. This research has been integrated into educational programs employing multimodal narrative interventions entirely in Catalan, aimed at fostering language acquisition in multilingual contexts.
Prieto highlights the development of programs tailored for early childhood and welcoming classrooms across Catalunya, co-created with educators and experts from the Department of Education. Júlia Florit-Pons, a researcher within the same group, based her thesis on a project applied in early childhood classrooms in L”Hospitalet, where many students do not regularly speak Catalan. “In addition to observing improvements in narrative structure, we found effects on language usage. After participating in the nine-session program, the children”s narratives utilized more Catalan than Spanish, which was not the case initially. Their vocabulary was also richer and more diverse,” she explains.
These encouraging results led to the creation of a new version specifically designed for welcoming classrooms, which is still in the implementation phase but has already shown positive preliminary outcomes. This program is being developed in 20 schools across Catalunya, involving 176 children, with both teachers and students reporting systematic improvements in oral and written comprehension as well as social language use, according to Ingrid Vilà-Giménez, a researcher from the Comparative Minds research group at the Universitat de Girona.
Preliminary results also suggest an increase in confidence and linguistic fluency among these newly arrived students. “They themselves feel that they understand and speak Catalan better. This is very encouraging news,” Vilà-Giménez adds.
In light of these findings, the researchers stress the necessity of incorporating relevant and contextualized communicative activities across all subjects, not just language classes. They highlight the importance of ensuring that students are exposed to high-quality language models through rich, natural, and expressive oral language from teachers. “In our programs, we work to make teachers aware of their role as linguistic role models and provide them with tools to enhance oral language in the classroom,” they assert.
Furthermore, they emphasize the need to create opportunities for students to express themselves orally in class, allowing children to reflect on these high-quality linguistic models and generate their own narratives, while consistently using Catalan as the cohesive language of reference.
