Oracy – More than words.

Coming over the brow of the edu hill is the unexpectedly contentious conversation around oracy.

Oracy is clattering into the educational discourse and unsettling the usually quiet pedagogical topic of what our pupils should be saying.

With the recent focus on curriculum content and design, the subject of oracy has been relatively muted. Many schools and teachers have always had a sharp focus on its development and inclusion, but oracy itself in recent years has been temporarily quietened by the louder conversation of its curricular content cousin.

The focus on speech and language is nothing new. Some of the very earliest schooling included a sharp focus on the development of oracy. I have written quite frequently about the Ancient Roman educator Marcus Fabius Quintilianus, “Quintilian”who said,”Speaking well and writing well are one and the same thing” (Ibid., p. 309, Book XII) and, “By practising one’s speech along with writing in one’s own hand is important in our studies and is the only way to ensure real, deep-rooted progress” (Ibid., p. 79, Book I). It is well established that being able to speak well about the curricular content studied is an effective way to interrogate, explore and cement the understanding of its concepts and associated narratives.

A focus on oracy can also help to develop many aspects of pupils’ development. It can enable them to speak with confidence, clarity and creativity. It provides opportunities to explore our curriculum with precision, purpose and passion. It also allows children to focus on understanding and being able to describe the depth and detail of both their curricular and lived experiences. Speaking is a vehicle like no other. It provides an insight into the hidden and private worlds inside our children’s heads, and, as spoken word is swifter to produce than written outcomes, it offers a remarkable immediacy in terms of assessment both in terms of speed and detail.

But oracy, like all things in education, is not a silver bullet. Like all things it is hard won, takes meticulous planning, and is never, ever a one size fits all.

Oracy first requires the culture and conditions in which to thrive. Oracy can easily be suffocated or its potential crushed by chaotic environments or cultures in which the responses of all are not valued. Oracy is a powerful but delicate tool and needs positive conditions in which to grow and flourish. This means that it needs to be introduced in the right way, in the right time, in the right settings.

It then needs careful understanding of what we mean by oracy. Like all things in education that carry weight, it also carries multiple different potential meanings and interpretations. If we look to the end goal of oracy, we can potentially reach a broad, shared understanding of what we mean by it and its associated components. One element of oracy is therefore being fluent in the languages of our academic disciplines. We want to ensure that children can not only experience the curriculum by hearing it with their ears through the words of the teacher, nor only feel with their hands through the movement of their pen on paper, but also to feel it in their mouths. To become fluent in any language requires speaking it and an ability to communicate effectively in it both in written and spoken form. To become fluent in our curriculum contents therefore means triangulating the taught word with the spoken word and the written word.

We also want children to become proficient in integrating the language of their curriculum experience into shaping their thoughts, reflections and understanding of its taught content. A curriculum which is silent, save for the scratch of pen or tap or individual keyboards is missing a trick in terms of analysing misconceptions, misapplications or shallow understanding of a concept or specific content. Talk provides opportunities to illuminate early misunderstanding of our curriculum contents and ideas, before the time taken to commit to paper. It also provides opportunities then to frame alternative viewpoints, challenge confirmation bias and to sometimes, simply be heard, which sadly for many children is not a common occurrence.

In a well established classroom culture, talk provides a safe platform to explore initial thoughts and learning, to explore misconceptions and also to find common ground, celebrate success and challenge the ideas of others. It can provide opportunities for exploring the multi faceted reasons for speaking, including to persuade, to explain, to reflect and to entertain. It is an  opportunity to experiment with new vocabulary, to play with the emerging proficiencies in that  new vocabulary and grammar and an opportunity to listen to and compare the ideas and thoughts of others. Children’s written work in books often only has an audience of one, but their spoken words have much broader reach in classrooms and can serve as springboard, learning point and model for the learning of others.

But if children are going to speak about our curriculum, let us be clear that they first need to have something to talk about. If I asked you to suddenly speak in my family’s first language of Estonian, you would likely struggle unless you have learnt its grammar and vocabulary. It is the same with our curriculum contents. The children first need to know the grammar and vocabulary of our academic subjects if they are to be able to speak with confidence and any associated utility. Oracy is not anti knowledge or a knowledge alternative. It is the way in which we can help children to make sense of newly taught and acquired knowledge, and that knowledge will still need teaching first.

Oracy also means we want children who are confident to express their own ideas, or to speak to represent issues that are important to themselves or others. We want to ensure that they are capable of supporting not only their academic viewpoints but providing guidance, support and comfort to others through their careful choice of compassionate or empathetic language. We want to equip children with the knowledge and abilities to be vehement yet measured, bold but not impudent, thoughtful, reflective, analytical and technically astute in their use of language.

This means we have to equip children with the opportunities to acquire not only the technical language of our academic disciplines but also a broad range of contexts in which to share and develop their thinking and associated speaking.

In EYFS, communication and language is one of the three prime areas of learning. It is prime because it recognises the importance of effective communication not only for academic success but for success in life too. Being able to communicate well is a fundamental part of the human experience. It is how we share what we know, not just about the academic disciplines but also to share how we feel, think, and what we need. This need to communicate effectively does not diminish as children move through their schooling. The need not only to develop the language necessary to communicate but also the social conventions of listening, turn taking, agreeing, challenging, and functioning as part of a harmonious group all rely on effective communication. Without language development and opportunities to use language in context in the classroom, these elements of communication can languish as assumed competencies or implied skills without having had the precision planned opportunities to specifically develop them. We would likely never leave the progression in reading, mathematics or history to chance, yet we can easily blithely assume that the development of oracy is trotting to heel alongside our curriculum delivery without the deliberate and planned opportunities for their integration in our curriculum design and enactment.

That is not to say that every lesson plan or observation or school development review now needs to shift its gaze to oracy development. Schools need to do what is right for their context and their current areas of focus. The potential for oracy’s lethal mutation is high, as is the potential for performative aspects of oracy based “activities” where oracy is apparently seen, heard and ticked off. It could easily actually not be embedded in the overall culture of the approach and therefore earn its very own edu-fad badge on the clipboard of failed strategies and initiatives. Sadly any aspect of teaching can be reduced to the faddy or the gimmicky and there is no doubt that oracy will receive its fair share of deafening howlers in that department but, just because it can be done badly, doesn’t mean that we don’t engage with the potential power it has. There will always be shallow application of approaches, where another approach is added to the wobbling snake oiled tower of poorly implemented or rushed and faddy pedagogy. But this does not mean that oracy should be silenced.

Instead we can see it as a reminder. A reminder that a curriculum’s legacy will live on in not only what our children write or do but in every word they ever speak. Oracy is not a single subject or approach to be crudely shoehorned into the awkward shaped holes in lesson design or gaps in enactment. It is the very centre of the lived human experience and central to our understanding of our curriculum, ourselves and others. To be able to speak with confidence, clarity, and coherence about the academic, with care, compassion and consideration about the lives of ourselves, of others and of our past and futures is surely oracy’s bigger aim. Oracy underpins every interaction our students will have in their lives, and, just as with reading, is a curriculum currency and legacy like no other.

I like to think Quintilian rather had it nailed.

“By practising one’s speech along with writing in one’s own hand is important in our studies and is the only way to ensure real, deep-rooted progress” (Ibid., p. 79, Book I).