Oracy

Several secondary practitioners say
that, for them, oracy is more about the
presentation of ideas and use of
rhetorical techniques:
“Oracy is, for me, about effective communication at
its base.... Whether it be speaking to instruct, or to be
speaking to persuade, [oracy] should be an awareness
that there is a difference between those different things,
an awareness of different audiences, and the capacity to
speak in different ways for those different audiences”
Andrew Fitch, Head of English & Director of Spoken Literacy,
Highbury Grove School
Other interviewees argue that a
mixture of exploratory and more
formal, presentational activities is
important depending on what it is the
teacher wants the pupils to achieve:
“If you’re doing some sort of talk for ideas, exploratory
talk, you’re not going to be expecting pupils to be using
fully formed sentences necessarily, you might expect
hesitations and people changing their mind and going
back and thinking about different things. Whereas if
they’re giving a presentation on something then you’re
going to be expecting different things out of it”
Amy Gaunt, Head of Oracy Primary, School 21
How should oracy be taught?
Whether embedded across the curriculum or
taught discretely, teachers tend to feel ‘day-to-day’
strategies rather than more ‘one-off’ activities are
important for teaching oracy. Classroom teachers
consistently emphasise the importance of strategies
such as modelling, setting clear expectations,
encouraging pupils to interact with one another,
and providing regular feedback on what pupils say
and how they say it for teaching oracy. vi,vii Of course,
such views do not necessarily translate into actual
classroom practice and, as Sections 4 and 5 show,
although teachers believe oracy is important there
are many factors that hinder its uptake in schools.
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