Thankfully, the significance of oracy in education is finally beginning to gain traction, with a recognition of the importance of developing effective communication skills for all learners. Leaders also now understand that we need to embed oracy skills into our curriculum so that students’ voices are truly heard.
What is oracy?
Oracy can be considered as both a process in which learning can take place and a measurable learning outcome. In younger children, oracy is more typically an outcome of a child’s spoken language and communication skills, which can be used to gauge their level of development. Once children have acquired the language skills they need to communicate, we can focus on oracy as a process of learning.
The first step to developing oracy skills is to eliminate the misconception that oracy is just about speaking. Communication comes in various forms, as Oracy Cambridge and Voice 21 outlined in their oracy framework:
- Physical attributes – includes pace, tone and clarity of speech as well as body language (gesture, posture, facial expressions and eye contact).
- Linguistic skills – includes appropriate vocabulary, grammar and register choices.
- Cognitive skills – includes the structure and organisation of talk, as well as the ability to clarify, summarise and give reasons to support views.
- Social and emotional skills – includes speaking with assurance and liveliness, working with others, taking turns, listening, and considering the audience.
Choosing the right oracy-rich approach
It is our collective responsibility as inclusive practitioners to encourage students to value their own voice. When we embark on an oracy-rich approach to learning, there are three key elements to consider:
1. Review the benefits of different approaches and teaching styles, based on your school’s context and demographics. Will dialogic or facilitator approaches work best, or a monologic or instructor style of delivery?
2. Consider how oracy can be used to support learning. Retrieval strategies and metacognitive approaches might be more suited to oral responses and can also help to build students’ confidence in their own ability, while also promoting more critical thinking in the classroom.
3. Identify any barriers and factors that impede effective communication.
How can you embed oracy skills in the classroom?
Reading communication signs and emotions
How you embed oracy skills in your school doesn’t necessarily have to change based on the age of your students. In all learning environments, one of the key principles for encouraging oracy comes from an understanding of how we interpret messages, and some of the barriers which can impede communication.
As we learn how to read students’ communication signs, we can teach students to read them too by encouraging them to consider other students’ body language and tone, and consider these questions:
- Are students busying themselves or avoiding eye contact? Are their movements more animated and progressively louder? Does their response appear rehearsed?
- What do these signs tell you?
- How would you react in a similar circumstance? How might that person feel?
If students can recognise these signs in others, they will be able to reflect on these features in their own communication.
We can also encourage students to recognise and articulate different emotions. By expanding their emotional vocabulary, we can help students to recognise emotions in others, and reflect on their own, hopefully preventing breakdowns in communication from taking place in the future.
Peer interaction
Students also benefit from the opportunity to develop their learning through peer-to-peer interaction. More often than not, a reluctance to write or complete an assessment comes from an inability to articulate their thoughts, which might lead to a confrontation if the student then feels threatened by their teacher’s encouragement. Quick strategies such as think, pair, share can help students talk through their thought processes and to formulate their responses, leaving them better prepared for a written task.
Ultimately, it is every teacher’s responsibility to implement a range of oracy strategies into the classroom, to nurture and develop learners to use their voices to succeed, and to transform them into effective communicators.
Oracy resources for the classroom you might like:
Getting the best out of groupwork
Accelerating vocabulary development at secondary school
20 ideas for closing the word gap and developing oracy skills in tutor time
This article was first published as a Teacher's talk newsletter in 2022.
