Oracy: What & How

Have you ever read a student’s writing and thought, they write the way they talk? As educators, we know that written language more closely matches academic speech, with sophisticated vocabulary and structures, than everyday speech. We teach students to say it before they write it, so we need to teach our students how to say things in an academic manner before we expect them to use sophisticated language in their writing. To be precise, we need to help our students develop oracy.

The Context: Oracy is a term that I come across often in recent research on multilingual learners. What is oracy? Oracy is part of oral language. Think of oral language as the big umbrella that covers all sorts of skills like talking to friends, expressing emotions, asking for information, telling jokes, and more. Oracy is a “subset of oral language skills that students need to meet academic and content objectives” (Butvilofsky et al., 2023, 23). It is all the vocabulary and language structures that allow our students to comprehend academic texts and express themselves in academic situations. Oracy development is important for all students, but it is especially important for our multilingual learners. 

Oracy, like writing, is an expressive language skill, meaning that it is something that students actively produce (rather than take in like the receptive language skills of listening and reading). To develop oracy, teachers must teach it explicitly and–this is important–provide time for students to practice through oral rehearsal. 

How it works: To develop oracy that supports writing, focus on vocabulary and language structures.

Vocabulary is the bricks of oracy. Students need to know a lot of bricks (words) related to a topic in order to talk (then write) about it. There are two types of vocabulary.  The first is genre-specific vocabulary such as transition words, dialogue tags, and synonyms. These are words that anyone expressing themselves in that genre would be likely to use. The second type of vocabulary is content-specific words. These are the words related to the specific topic that a student is writing about, so can vary from student to student.

• Have students repeat new vocabulary aloud. One of the most common phrases I use when teaching is “say that with me.”
• Create and post charts with important vocabulary. Avoid slides because they are not always available for students to reference when they need them.
• Give students a personal word bank of the vocabulary they need for their topic. This can be as simple as a sticky note stuck on their notebook or folder.
• Use mentor texts to point out vocabulary you have already learned in context. When you find new, related words, add them to the vocabulary charts.
• Use chants to teach vocabulary related to the genre and/or content students are writing about.

Language structures are the mortar of oracy. It is what holds the bricks (vocabulary) together and allows students to express themselves fully. Students need to learn to use language structures when speaking before they can transfer those structures into their writing. Examples of language structures include complete sentences (for our primary students and beginner multilingual learners), compound and complex sentences, varied verb tenses, and structures of dialogue. 

• Explicitly teach language structures as a minilesson objective.
• Use sentences from mentor texts for examples of sophisticated language structures. Have students read the sentence(s) aloud with you to become familiar with saying the structure.
• Provide sentence frames for students to reference as they practice saying the structure.
• Include time for students to regularly “turn and talk” to their writing partner during the minilesson, midworkshop teach, and share.

Go Deeper with these related posts about teaching and using:

• Sentence expansion
• Sentence patterning charts
• Compound and complex sentence construction
• Oral language
• Chants

References

Butvilofsky, S., Escamilla, K., & Hopewell, S. (2023). Biliterate Writing From the Start: The Literacy Squared Approach to Asset-Based Writing Instruction. Brookes Publishing Co.