Literacy Matters - Vol 21 - Winter 2021

For instance, one elementary school in Colorado with 90 percent of students on free, reduced lunch implemented versions of the strategies shared in this article school-wide in whole classrooms to bridge their significant achievement gaps. Within four years, the school achieved a 20-point gap reduction compared to only a four-point gap reduction at the state level. Additionally, ELs’ reading comprehension proficiency levels increased from 15 percent to 70 percent (Lindamood-Bell Learning Processes, 2015). Neurological research findings also confirm comprehension increases when different brain parts are activated through mental imaging and verbalizations in comprehension processes (Crosson et al., 2010; Krafnik et al., 2011; Sadoski & Paivio, 2013). The Krafnik (2011) study provided evidence of significant improvement after only eight weeks of mental imaging instruction and verbalizing (MI &V) practices to elementary students. The previously mentioned research warrants a focus on specific strategies that enhance students’mental imaging and verbalization skills. Additionally, general education teachers must support the increased demands required to meet diverse learner needs; these strategies purposefully expand commonly used reading comprehension strategies. Strategies such as building and activating background knowledge, modeling and encouraging think-alouds, building story grammar knowledge to enable students to locate information, teaching self-monitoring, corrective decoding strategies when a words does not make sense, and/or figuring out the meaning of vocabulary in context or morphology (Meyers et al., 2019; Ness, 2011; Ness & Kenny, 2016; Serravallo, 2015). They also add to common listening comprehension strategies such as focusing students’ listening through pre-during- and post-read-aloud questions, pre-teaching vocabulary, raising curiosity for a topic, and building background knowledge before any engagement oral listening tasks (Zwiers & Hamerla, 2018). Next, characteristics of comprehension and academic speaking skills are introduced. A brief background on MI &V strategies is provided, along with an explanation of how they apply research-evidenced principles of multisensory, structured, and metacognitive language (MSML) instruction (Birsh & Carraker, 2018). Based on this background information, MI &V strategies are shared in four increasingly complex practice phases so teachers can select those that strengthen their students’ comprehension and academic speaking skills best. Characteristics of Comprehension and Academic Speaking Skills In this article’s context, language comprehension refers to readers’ or listeners’ abilities to process information by connecting to it and interpreting it in the context of the situation’s socio- linguistic, cultural, and linguistic characteristics. It entails the ability to store, recall and predict information, identify main facts, draw inferences and conclusions, and evaluate and reflect on learned information based on background knowledge in varying cultural and linguistic contexts. Thus comprehension is a complex, cognitively reflective act of making sense of visual and auditory input (Duke & Pearson, 2002). Academic speaking refers to one’s abilities to express

ideas with clear and comprehensible enunciation and proper supporting evidence for shared information. It also includes the ability to ask and respond to questions, clarify information, and elicit more information from a conversation partner as needed. Additionally, effective communication requires the appropriate use of verbal and nonverbal cues such as gestures, eye contact, and facial expressions to be comprehensible to the audience. Effective oral dialogue also requires consistent reflective thinking about the impact of what has been said and how to respond to received comments. Thus listening is also a complex, cognitively reflective act (Zwiers & Hamerla, 2018). These multifaceted literacy skills consist of a complex system of interrelated sub-skills that need to be taught explicitly, especially to students from lower socio-economic backgrounds and ELs (Pace et al., 2017; Whelan et al., 2018). For instance, effective reading and listening comprehension skills and academic speaking skills depend on various sub-skills. Among them are students’ (a) background knowledge; (b) their command of common, figurative, and subject-specific vocabulary and their knowledge of how words are formed to express meaning (morphology); (c) their command of proper/standardized pronunciation of words (phonology) and their reading and spelling skills (phonics). Effective reading and listening comprehension and academic speaking skills also require a sufficient understanding of (d) essential grammatical structures of oral and written language; (e) how all so far mentioned components are used in exchange with others (discourse); (f) basic understanding of how to use verbal and non-verbal language features (i.e., intonation, pausing, gestures, facial images) to achieve a communication goal (pragmatics) is another component. Lastly, especially related to the content of this article, (g) the ability to visualize and then verbalize what is read or heard is important for constructing meaning (Bell, 2007; Foorman et al., 2015; Lindamood-Bell Learning Processes, 2015; White, et al., 2017). Furthermore, efficient academic speaking skills require students to be able to confidently (a) clarify and support ideas with examples and other evidence; (b) express critically reflective ideas (i.e., compare, contrast, evaluate) using appropriate academic vocabulary and sentence structures; (c) elicit more information from communication partners as needed (Beck et al., 2000 Zwiers & Hamerla, 2018). These oral practices then provide the foundation for successful academic writing (Jennings & Haynes, 2018). The following background information on MI &V strategies provides the pedagogical framework for improving students’ comprehension and speaking skills. Background on Mental Imaging and Verbalization (MI &V) Strategies Starting in the 1970s, psychologist Allan Paivio (Sadoski & Paivio, 2013) identified in his Dual Coding Theory that concrete mental imagery and verbalization strengthens comprehension because the mental and the verbal code are processed differently in the brain and allow multi-modal processing of information into meaning. This aids in storing and retrieving information essential for learning, memorizing, and recalling read or heard information. The ability to create mental imagery describes the

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