| T: | Can you think of any other words that rhyme with fast, past and last? What does a boat have? | |
| L: | Haste? | |
| T: | What’s this thing here? [drawing a boat] | |
| L: | Boat | |
| T: | A boat has a ...? Have you heard of the word mast? | |
| L: | Mast. | |
| T: | The mast on a boat. | |
| L: | Mast. | |
| T: | Mast. That holds the sail up. Right, there’s your sail, that’s the mast, mast. | |
| L: | Fast, past. | |
| T: | l … | |
| L: | Last. | |
| T: | m … | |
| L: | Mast. | |
| T: | Very good. When, when one of your children breaks their arm, they have to go to hospital, what do they put on the arm, it’s called a plaster c, c … | |
| L: | Booster, gast? | |
| T: | It’s this [writing the word], c, cast. | |
| L: | Gast. | |
| T: | It’s called a plaster cast, to keep the bones together. |
There were certainly numerous references to cultural differences in many of the sessions. One teacher for example made conscious efforts to learn and incorporate vocabulary from the learners’ first languages – as reflected in stickies with words written on them posted around the teaching room and in this interchange:
| T: | Yeah I know, it’s getting harder for you. You say that very confident, too hard, you can go, ‘o ya way’, ‘o ya way’ - is that how you say it? | |
| L: | Yeah, ‘o ya way’. | |
| T: | ‘O ya way,’ too hard. | |
| L: | Too hard. | |
| T: | That’s why I say to [name], ‘oh ya way.’ So hard. | |
| L: | So hard. | |
| T: | Yeah. |
We observed six sessions that involved explicit teaching of oracy skills (predominantly about speaking, but three also involved listening exercises). Like writing and spelling, teachers tended to intersperse the teaching of oracy throughout their other teaching, but they still saw it was an important part of literacy, numeracy and language teaching, especially in relation to improving learners’ self-confidence. This teacher said that she found role-plays particularly useful for developing learners’ speaking skills.