Oral communication struggles to assess

Learners may:

• Add, substitute, or rearrange sounds in words, as in phemomenon for phenomenon or Pacific for specific
• Have difficulty pronouncing multisyllabic words, such as statistics or anonymity
• Exhibit articulations problems, use a similar-sounding word, like generic instead of genetic
• Have difficulty speaking in sentences
• Have difficulty conveying ideas and expressing ideas coherently, as if the words needed are on the tip of the tongue but won't come out (i.e. using unspecific vocabulary, such as "thing" or "stuff" to replace words that cannot be remembered)
• Have limited vocabulary - they use the same words over and over in giving information and explaining ideas and use mostly simple sentence construction
• Tend to overuse and to connect thoughts
• Have difficulty maintaining a topic and may interject irrelevant information into a story; they may start out discussing one thing and then goes off in another direction without making the connection
• Omit or use grammar incorrectly, such as tense, number, and possession
• Confuse the meaning of words that sound the same
• Have difficulty listening to the information in a room with other activity
• Struggle to remember information that is given - they will ask you to repeat it several times (i.e. telephone number, address, or the spelling of a person's name)
• Confuse a message or instructions in a complex sentence (i.e. Get your credit card after you pump the gas - they may get the card first).³⁵

Practitioners need to be alert to these kinds of errors in learners' oral communication because such challenges will be exhibited in written language, particularly spelling.