Oracy Is as Important as Literacy: Interview with Christine C. M. Goh

Q What made you interested in oracy?

A It began 30 years ago – that’s also how long I’ve been involved in language education! I was a beginning secondary English Language teacher in Malaysia. I noticed that my weaker students from non-English speaking homes became more motivated to improve their English when they had opportunities to use spoken English successfully in class skits, class debates and school concerts. These opportunities allowed them to use spoken English more confidently because they could prepare and rehearse for these ‘performances’. Their self-image as English learners changed for the better. They were more willing to work at improving in class because they had experienced small successes which made them see themselves truly as speakers of English. My interest deepened during my Masters and Doctoral studies in the UK when I had opportunities to study and research various aspects of oracy such as spoken discourse analysis, phonology, psychology of language communication, and cognitive and strategic processes in L2 listening comprehension. My work in Singapore in the last 20-odd years further motivated me to devote my energy into helping teachers develop their pedagogical content knowledge to teach oracy. My involvements which included English for Academic Purposes (EAP), English-knowing bilingualism, as well as English language teacher education in bilingual and English as a Second/Foreign Language (ESL/EFL) contexts gave me different lenses to examine and understand oracy and generate new ideas for researching and teaching it.

Q What are some common misconceptions about the teaching of oracy?

A Compared with ‘literacy’, ‘oracy’ is a lesser-known term – spellcheckers don’t even recognize it! Nevertheless, it is an important term coined by British education professor, Andrew Wilkinson, to refer to an individual’s general ability in using the oral skills of speaking and listening to engage through speech with their world. Prof. Wilkinson argued that just as ‘literacy’ and ‘numeracy’ were important skills to be acquired by school children, oracy learning should underpin the notion of being educated. This concept of oracy is relevant not just to teaching and learning a first language. I see it to be just as important for second/foreign language learning contexts because many children and youths learn English today not just to communicate with speakers of English, but also to learn academic subjects taught in English in schools and tertiary institutions. Oracy therefore becomes an important thinking and learning tool. Some teachers may have a narrower understanding of what oracy entails and they think of oracy only as speaking and pronunciation, forgetting that listening is just as important. Teachers may also subscribe to a communicative and functional view of oracy and overlook the importance of the use of spoken language as a means of strengthening the students’ language and literacy development. Overall, I think it’s important that English teachers have a bigger aim in mind, and that is to help learners use spoken language to improve their thinking and learning, and to create new ideas and knowledge through talking with others such as their peers and teachers.

Q How has the teaching and learning of oracy changed over the years?

A Let me first talk about teaching speaking and listening separately. In speaking, we have mainly seen two approaches: one that focuses on developing isolated speaking skills (the direct approach) and the other that emphasizes spontaneous speaking in communicative activities (the indirect approach). The first is concerned with accuracy and repeated practice of language forms, such as pronunciation and grammatical structures. In recent years, the direct approach has also focused on raising learners’ awareness about grammar in context and the structures of various spoken genres or text types. An indirect approach is concerned with fluency development as learners engage in functional language use in pairs or small groups. The outcome hoped for is that learners will transfer the speaking skills developed through communicative activities to real-life situations. Today, we still see both approaches in teaching materials but the emphasis on practising language forms has been greatly reduced while that on communication activities remain popular. Listening is also practised in such an indirect/transfer approach to speaking instruction because clearly you can’t have one without the other in face-to-face communication.

The teaching of listening has seen shifts in instructional focus, from decoding of sounds, answering comprehension questions from written passages read aloud, extracting and responding to information in (transactional or interactional) spoken texts to using listening strategies for enhancing comprehension and coping with problems. These reflect what I’d call the three types of orientation in listening instruction – text, communication and learner – and Larry Vandergrift and I had proposed that the learner-oriented instruction be expanded to take on a more comprehensive metacognitive approach. These phases in the evolution of L2 listening instruction reflect increased understanding of the construct of learner listening as a cognitive and communication skill. In reality, however, the phases in these shifts are not distinct as old ideas did not automatically disappear overnight to make way for new ones. Moreover, recommended practices do not always make their way into every classroom. Techniques used in the 1960s (for example, answering comprehension questions from long passages meant for silent reading) may still be found in classrooms even though the communicative teaching methodology is popular in many places. A survey of some current course books will show that comprehension-based techniques are still common to this day, probably a result of the washback effects of listening examinations.

In general language learning, listening and speaking are commonly taught in an integrated manner while in EAP contexts we may see listening taught as a skill in its own right. This is the oracy-as-competence view but if we are teaching learners in formal education, we need to also adopt the view of oracy-for-learning and look into situations where spoken English is used for teaching and learning across subjects in the school or university curriculum. This is also referred to as disciplinary or subject literacies. Students in schools develop ways of thinking and expressing themselves in speech and writing that are expected of the respective subjects or disciplines. The important role of oracy, however, can sometimes be overlooked as it is subsumed under this broad heading of ‘literacies’. I think there is room for English language teachers and subject teachers to collaborate in the development of students’ disciplinary oracy in their schools or institutions. We should recognize that language learning activities are not always good substitutes for engaging in talk in the academic world beyond the language classroom. Nevertheless, thoughtfully planned oracy tasks can help make students’ learning applicable if these tasks are similar to the various uses of spoken language and genres found in specialist subjects. Overall, we can’t run away from the fact that oracy is important to students in every aspect of their education and all teachers, not just English teachers, have a joint responsibility in helping students to become better at it.

Q How would you describe the general attitude of English teachers towards the teaching of oracy?

A Overall, I think language teachers everywhere believe that oracy is very important. Some of them, however, may feel they do not have the luxury of time to teach listening and speaking in their classes. My colleagues and I conducted a large scale study on Singapore English teachers some time ago and found that teachers were often in a dilemma because in spite of oracy being important for their students’ education, they often had to put oracy instruction further down in their list of teaching priorities, as examinations required greater attention to literacy skills. Teachers also felt that they needed more professional development in oracy pedagogy. I believe the situation in Singapore has improved greatly since our study was conducted because of the work of Master Teachers in the English Language Institute of Singapore (ELIS). Beyond Singapore, I’ve also observed a similar need among some EFL teachers in China who reported that they lacked adequate knowledge and skills for teaching speaking.

Q How would you describe teachers’ awareness of the role of metacognition in oracy instruction?

A It is difficult to generalize but I would say that many teachers today would have encountered the term ‘metacognition’ through their teacher education programmes, professional development or personal reading. ESL/EFL teachers may have also been exposed to the role of learning strategies, which are one aspect of metacognition. Because of the prominence of strategy research in the past three decades, teachers may also have heard of or used terms such as self-directed learning, self-regulation and thinking about thinking. Over the years, I’ve had many email enquiries by teachers from many countries seeking greater clarity on what metacognition is. They have read or heard about its important role in oracy instruction, but they still have many questions about what it is and what it isn’t. Some frequent questions I have been asked include what is metacognitive awareness, what are metacognitive strategies, does metacognition include strategy use, how do you develop metacognition, and so on. I have proposed a form of metacognitive instruction for L2 listening and speaking development that is based on John Flavell’s original definition of metacognition which consists of metacognitive knowledge and strategy use. Besides emphasizing the importance of declarative knowledge in learning, his definition also accounts for the current understanding about the executive functions of human cognition. This definition has continued to find support within current scholarly efforts at developing a unified understanding of the concept of metacognition. Overall, I think teachers may still need to develop a better understanding of this concept and learn about its role in language learning, and specifically for those interested in oracy instruction, to find out more about how to incorporate metacognitive processes in their teaching.

Q What are the benefits of incorporating metacognitive processes in teaching and learning oracy?

A Metacognition has been shown to be a reliable predictor of learning and many education scholars consider it central to the learning process and a key to its success. Specifically, we have also seen positive outcomes of different kinds of metacognitive interventions for listening and speaking. One of the problems of oracy is that a lot of the teaching and learning is implicit. I have argued for the need to include explicit instruction for oracy in both of my recent books and elsewhere. Including metacognitive processes will help learners increase their awareness not just about themselves as listeners and speakers, but also pay attention to the language and discourse features that they need to support these skills. At the same time they approach their learning strategically, taking control of their learning as they decide how to go about planning, monitoring and evaluating their progress. Listening research has increasingly shown that metacognitive instruction combined with well-constructed listening tasks can improve comprehension performance and learner self-efficacy.

Q What inspires or motivates you to continue your work and research?

A On one level, it is my own continual learning that has sustained my interest in oracy. Over the past 30 years my own understanding of oracy has evolved and this explains my current interest in oracy not just as communicative competence (that is, the ability to produce and understand spoken language appropriately) but also as a thinking tool and cognitive process for bilingual and second language learners to strengthen their academic learning. As a result, my research, teaching and publication efforts have both broadened and deepened. My work now encompasses examining cognitive and metacognitive processes in listening and speaking, teacher cognition and practices in oracy teaching and assessment, as well as the impact of classroom oracy on thinking and academic learning.

On another level, I am often motivated by the encouragement I get from the people who are interested in my work. I get emails from people I have never met before telling me how they have become interested in teaching and researching listening and speaking because they came across my work. As academics we share our ideas and research because it is what we do, but whenever I hear how my publications or conference presentations have made a difference to someone’s thinking and practice, I’m grateful that that my work is meaningful. This gives me the reason to persist in what I do in spite of the challenges I face, and there are many, to be honest! I also derive a lot of pleasure and inspiration working with my graduate students. They are teachers in my classes and novice researchers whose work I supervise. They bring with them so much enthusiasm and creativity as well as so many fresh insights that I feel energized just by interacting with them. They really inspire me and keep me going!

Q What areas of research would you like to pursue in the future?

A I would want to continue to research the areas I have mentioned above, either on my own or through collaboration with others. I have just completed some research on the relationship between thinking and the quality of students’ talk during small group discussions in English lessons. I also examined the impact of their teacher’s instructions on the quality of their talk. I hope to continue to deepen this area of research work as I think we do not know enough about it. More specifically, we need new insights into how students explore one another’s ideas in language learning activities which involve discussion of open topics. We often assume that because students speak English they are able to discuss. I don’t think we can make that assumption because discussing requires a complex set of speaking, listening and thinking skills, and these should be taught explicitly. My preliminary findings suggest that students do not naturally explore ideas and question one another’s assumptions and assertions. Instead they tend to be too quick to agree with one another. In this regard, I hope that through further research I can refine some of my current ideas on how to teach discussion skills to language learners in different age groups and levels of education. I would also like to include more of these ideas in a book I am currently writing. Naturally, I’m hoping to find more time to do all this!