Oral Language: The Overlooked Foundation of Reading
- DocHolbrook
- Jun 8
- 4 min read
Recently, I’ve been thinking a lot about oral language and its critical, but often misunderstood role in reading development. In many classrooms, we focus on decoding and comprehension, but we often miss what underpins both: students’ ability to understand and use language.
Understanding Oral Language and Its Role in Reading
Oral language is more than just speaking—it’s the foundation upon which reading and writing are built. As Moats (2020) explains, oral language encompasses listening comprehension, vocabulary, syntax, discourse, and pragmatics. These interconnected components are not only critical for learning to read, but also for effective communication throughout life.
At its core, oral language involves our ability to listen, speak, and understand spoken language. It is made up of several key elements:
Phonology – the sound structure of language
Morphology – the structure and formation of words
Syntax – the rules that govern sentence structure
Semantics – the meaning of words and sentences
Pragmatics – the social and functional use of language in context
Each of these elements plays a vital role in literacy development. When students experience difficulties in oral language, such as limited vocabulary, trouble forming complex sentences, or challenges understanding narrative structure, they are more likely to struggle with decoding and comprehension, even if their spoken language appears fluent on the surface
Why Oral Language Matters for Reading
Students with oral language difficulties may be able to decode text but not comprehend it. They may struggle with vocabulary, making inferences, or understanding narrative structure. Importantly, students classified as Speech-Language Impaired (SLI) are not just those with articulation difficulties. Many have underlying challenges with grammar, word retrieval, or language comprehension, all of which can significantly impact reading acquisition and performance.
Language skills influence:
Decoding (via phonological processing)
Fluency (through automatic word retrieval)
Comprehension (through syntax, vocabulary, and reasoning)
How to Assess Oral Language
While standardized tools such as the CELF-5, DIAL, and Brigance are useful for diagnostic purposes, classroom educators can also use free, evidence-based tools to assess language more frequently and instructionally.
Two highly recommended resources:
CUBED (Narrative Language Measures): https://www.cubedassessment.org
SLAM (School-age Language Assessment Measures): https://www.leadersproject.org/category/screeners/slam/
These tools provide insight into students’ vocabulary use, sentence complexity, and narrative structure—all of which are essential to literacy.
When Students Struggle: What Teachers Can Do
The CUBED assessment breaks oral language into specific components: story grammar, sentence complexity, and vocabulary complexity. When students receive low scores in any of these areas, educators can use targeted interventions.
If Students struggle with sentence complexity
Basic Story Grammar: Provide explicit instruction in small or large groups, two to three times a week. Use simple stories that include a clear problem, attempt, and consequence.
Advanced Story Grammar: Use moderate intensity (30-minute small-group lessons once or twice a week) focused on narratives with more than one problem, attempts, and outcomes. Second grade and up should be able to retell these more complex structures using selected children's literature. Provide consistent opportunities to model and encourage complex sentences during storytelling and explanation. Focus on causal and temporal conjunctions (e.g., because, so that, when, after) and introduce relative clauses (who, that, which). Use narrative and expository texts from children’s literature or curriculum-aligned reading materials. Students don't necessarily need to know the classifying terms of the words (temporal conjunctions) but they do need to understand how these words impact the meaning of the sentence and the story.
If students struggle with vocabulary
Explicitly teach less common, academic words during oral language activities. Encourage students to define and use new vocabulary while retelling or generating stories. Use children’s literature, and informational texts tied to classroom content to build vocabulary within meaningful contexts. It is always important to start with words the students know. This provides an anchor for learning new words. Semantic gradients are a great way to build upon words that students already know. Semantic gradients are a vocabulary development strategy that helps students understand the subtle differences in word meanings by arranging related words along a continuum from weakest to strongest (or least to most intense, positive to negative, etc.). This supports nuanced understanding and improves word choice in writing.
Let’s use a continuum for words related to "cold":
Cool → Chilly → Cold → Freezing → Frigid
Students might:
Discuss where to place words.
Compare meanings.
Use more precise words in their writing depending on the context (e.g., "The air was frigid" instead of just cold).
English Language Learners and Oral Language
For English Language Learners (ELLs), oral language acquisition is both foundational and ongoing. These students are often navigating a new language while simultaneously learning to read. It’s essential to distinguish between language acquisition and a true language impairment, and to support ELLs through structured oral language practice, vocabulary scaffolds, and language-rich experiences.
Next week, we’ll explore specific strategies for supporting multilingual learners as they develop oral language and literacy together.
Conclusion
Oral language is the engine behind strong reading. It's not just about speaking, it’s about building the structures that support thinking, understanding, and communicating. When students struggle with comprehension or expression, it often stems from gaps in these foundational skills. By understanding the components of oral language, like vocabulary, syntax, narrative ability, and listening comprehension, and using tools like CUBED and SLAM, we can go beyond surface-level support and truly meet our students where they are. These tools help us deliver meaningful, research-based instruction that not only improves reading, but gives kids the confidence to express themselves and connect with the world around them.
Thanks so much for spending part of your Sunday with me—see you next Sunday!
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References
Dynamic Measurement Group. (n.d.). CUBED assessment. https://www.cubedassessment.org
Leaders Project. (n.d.). SLAM: School-age Language Assessment Measures. https://www.leadersproject.org/category/screeners/slam/
Moats, L. C. (2020). Speech to print: Language essentials for teachers (3rd ed.). Paul H. Brookes Publishing Co.
I haven’t heard of those assessment yet! I am excited to try them. Are there any progress monitoring that goes along with these skills or would you recommend using the MAZE passages you previously mentioned? Thanks!