Because they play a fundamental role in the calculation of bound electron stopping-powers, photon mean free paths and electron impact-excitation cross-sections, there is a need for a convenient method to calculate oscillator strengths for highly charged ions. In this paper we describe a simple semiclassical approximation for electron matrix-elements and oscillator strengths. The method is tested by detailed comparison with known exact results for the Coulomb potential and proves to be numerically robust and reasonably accurate for all transitions examined.