Nicole Berg’s deeper learning episode aims at improving learners’ ability to orally explain geography. To do that, learners will listen to podcasts on global warming to analyse expert explanations. This way, they will learn about the nature and structure of scientific explanations in context. In addition, learners will decode, analyse and practise prosodic features of spoken language (in terms of intonation, stress, pausing and phonological chunking). This will support storage and retrieval of academic language elements from long-term-memory. Ultimately, learners will structure and formulate their own oral explanations of subject-specific content. This highly innovative approach to promoting oral language skills uses insights into the mechanics of language acquisition and speech production to facilitate subject learning.

Part I of the book explores literature as a vehicle for developing awareness of spoken language. Byrne and Jones examine dialogues from a literature corpus in comparison with a spoken corpus to understand the extent to which literary dialogues offer a plausible model of conversation. Tomlinson then examines how literature can be used as part of a text-driven approach in order to develop an awareness of pragmatic uses of spoken language. Jones and Cleary examine the effects on input enhancement when using televised literature to develop students’ awareness of features of spoken language. Iida focuses on students’ composed haiku poems and the features of spoken language they contain. Zhao and Liu report on a classroom-based action research study which employed screenplays. Part II explores the use of literature as a means of developing speaking skills. McIlroy examines the effects of discussing poetry at different levels of familiarity with learners Shelton-Strong analyses group discussion from Literature Circles, whereby learners discuss texts they have read. Finally, Fogal and Pinner measure changes in lexical complexity on the speech of learners as they discussed literature.