Oracy across the curriculum

 

Here are some thoughts on Oracy. It's not about MFL. I may write something in the future on Oracy in MFL. But that would be something much bigger and more complex than whole school Oracy. It’s not a definitive, organised, thorough, well-structured formal piece of writing. It’s some first thoughts that may trigger more thoughts, including contrary arguments. That’s one of the things Oracy is about…

The Oracy Education Commission defined Oracy as, “Articulating ideas, developing understanding, and engaging with others through speaking, listening and communication.”

Oracy is closely related to Literacy. In fact they are probably twins, even if Literacy fancies itself as the older sibling. While there may be some sibling rivalry between Literacy and Oracy, there are strong bonds and shared energies. The current National Curriculum may have reinforced Literacy’s position, with a focus on narrowly traditional learning, “standard” English, SPAG, and the downgrading of the speaking and listening component of GCSE English. The Oracy push could be seen as being in order to balance this out. It will be important in all these potential clashes, not to sacrifice one element over another. A successful approach will recognise that all these aspects can fit into developing pupils’ language, ideas and communication.

On precisely this point, the strengths that a school has in Literacy are often rooted in Oracy. To give one example, our pupils’ love of reading is rooted in a love of story telling. And where pupils are not in love with the mechanics of reading, it is through story telling that we can engage them.

In the days of “Specialist Status”, where schools were designated as (for example) Science or Arts or Language Colleges, sometimes this could unfortunately privilege one subject over others. In our school, we had a unique specialist status. It was badged as “Humanities”, but it was essentially Art, Drama, Literacy. Which worked very successfully across all subjects. What subject doesn’t ask pupils to engage with expressing themselves through images, speech, writing? I would suggest that the very real strengths of this are very much still alive in our ethos today.

The Oracy Education Commission divide Oracy into three separate but overlapping areas:

Learning to Talk.

Learning through Talk.

Learning about Talk.

In the spirit of Oracy being about developing personal expression, rather than following formulaic strictures, I am going to start with the second: Learning through Talk.

Learning through Talk.

I am lucky that my school has always found a middle way, staying up to date but resisting fads. So we aren’t a school where teachers follow a script or where pupils are required to recall verbatim whole sentence answers in choral repetition or in response to questions. On the other hand, we have a maths department who are willing to experiment with chanting when it makes sense. And who focus explicitly on pupils being able to use the vocabulary and language of maths. This is the balance that an Oracy approach wants to develop.

From an Oracy perspective, rote responses and even the demand that pupils give whole sentence verbatim answers has a veneer of articulacy, but is actually the complete opposite. Oracy is about how pupils put thoughts and concepts into their own words. This is part of the process of them developing greater articulacy. But it’s also a vital glimpse into their emerging grasp and conceptualisation of ideas.

Questioning is a huge part of this. Partly the mechanics of how to engage with all pupils through the nature and pitching of questions and selecting who is called upon to answer. But the fundamental thing is that the teacher is interested in the pupils’ answers. And interested in pupils’ thinking. A wrong answer or a partial answer can reveal pupils’ thinking. And that is what we have to engage with.

Do our pupils see it this way? Or do they think that a teacher asks a question to see if the pupil knows the correct answer? In a French lesson, when one of my pupils volunteers, “I don’t know the answer but…” and tells me the things they think are going to be important, then I think we’re getting it right. They have the confidence to participate despite not being sure of the answer. And those things the pupil contributed will take us collectively towards the right answer and greater understanding.

In a science lesson, teachers know that telling the pupils “An object remains at rest or in uniform motion unless acted upon by an external force” and getting them to memorise it, does not mean they have learned Newton’s First Law of Motion. They anticipate that actually, pupils may say that things move if you push them and if you stop pushing them, they stop moving. It’s the science teacher’s job to engage with that thinking and explore it further, to show pupils that there’s a better way of thinking about it. Oracy is engaging with ideas through listening and communication.

One of the controversial sides of Oracy is the question of register of language. Some of this falls into the topic of “Learning to Talk” and even “Learning about Talk”. But in subjects like History or Geography, it is deeply embedded in Learning through Talk. In a History lesson, the teacher often talks through events as if they were a story, making the pupils think about the motives and even feelings of historical or political figures and the situation they are in. There is a constant back and forth between the concision and precision of subject terminology, and using plain speaking for clarity and engagement. In geography, we see the same alternation between expressing ideas in familiar language such as “water the crops” and the technical vocabulary, “irrigation”. This is deliberately and carefully managed by the teacher. Oracy covers both of these aspects: expressing ideas in pupils’ own language, and extending their vocabulary into technical terms. And managing the transition so that what we are hearing is pupils’ developing expression of their conceptualisation, not rote learned barely understood answers.

In these examples we see the close links between Oracy and Literacy. Oracy is a powerful building block in approaching writing. Thrashing out ideas, rehearsing language, developing expression.

At my school, we have addressed aspects such as disciplinary literacy, metalanguage and metacognition through developments in Teaching and Learning, Literacy, and Laboratory Schools. They are all actually probably even more fundamental to Oracy. And I would add Pupil Voice to that list. When we survey or interview pupils, we are looking for their feedback, but we are also engaging them in a process of becoming more articulate in what they say and how they think about their learning. In French we can see a slow shift from thinking of language as a collection of things you can say, to focusing more on transferable concepts. So in Year 7, pupils will typically comment on topics such as “I can say what pets I have”, but by Year 9 they may have become more focused on knowledge they can apply, such as, “I can use my knowledge of phonics to pronounce unknown words.”

This development of pupils’ ability to express their ideas about their learning is also linked to citizenship. The subject Citizenship, of course, but also their active role as citizens. These issues belong in “Learning to Talk”, but it’s worth mentioning the importance of pupils being able to express themselves, explore ideas, listen to others, disagree agreeably. With particular concern for pupils who may have difficulties in this or be vulnerable because of their lack of confidence in rejecting ideas or asserting themselves. The Oracy Education Commission emphasise the importance of this in a world full of polarisiation, disinformation, manipulation and… AI.

There is also a hint of conflict between Oracy and Literacy. Do we give them equal respect? Do pupils consider speaking and listening to be “work” in the same way as reading and writing? Do we encourage pupils to copy a date and a title as soon as they start the lesson, as if a lesson is always going to be something that happens on paper?

What are the mechanics of speaking and listening that as a school we want to see in place? Teaching French, sometimes I wonder if pupils take a lesson seriously if we never put pen to paper. On the other hand, seeing pupils in a drama lesson, even when they have been moved last minute into a geography classroom, sitting in groups, taking charge of their interaction independently, restores my confidence! What are the ground rules, and what is pupils’ understanding of what a lesson is, what learning is, in different subjects?

 

Learning to Talk

 Learning to Talk, we have seen, involves two potentially conflicting approaches. Pupils learning to express themselves in their own voice. Pupils learning to express themselves “better”. We need to not worry about these being in conflict. They may be different. But they are different parts of the same thing: Oracy.

It is important for learning that we listen to pupils expressing ideas in their own language. Because this is the window we have onto their thinking. But it is also important for the sake of creativity, identity, confidence, plurality of cultures, and having a voice.

Learning to Talk includes dialogic teaching in the classroom. But it also can include debating, presenting, acting, performance, recitation, rhetoric, argument, persuasion, poetry, song, culture… In all of these, there will be interesting and complex interplay between pupils’ own voices, and hearing a variety of voices, including more formal modes of expression.

From Learning through Talk, I think we have seen that we should bear in mind that Oracy focuses us on the whole process leading up to a performance or presentation, not just the event itself. This is a learning process that in itself involves listening and communication, exploration and progress.

I can immediately think of strengths in Drama and Music, English, Citizenship and RE, the pastoral programme and other subjects, where we have huge strengths in Learning to Talk.

Learning about Talk

We have touched upon one of the major aspects the Oracy Education Commission are concerned about in Learning about Talk. That is, the idea that some talk is “better” than other talk. We all know powerful speakers who have their own voice and who don’t speak in “standard” English. And at the same time, we have all been told that it’s important for pupils to learn to speak “properly”. Learning about Talk equips pupils to understand these clashing social and political ideas. And maybe equips them to see language as a tool that they can learn to use in different ways. Learning about Talk also includes showing pupils examples of how language is used in the world outside school and reflecting on how what they learn in school will enable them to thrive as citizens.

That seems a good a place as any to stop.