It's good to talk: Speaking up for oracy in the management classroom

Abstract

Oracy refers to the ability to speak well. Speaking well is essential to education, to the workplace and to social democracy, where informed, reflective and critical citizens play a role in creating and influencing public discourse. It is one of the most important communication skills that management graduates should seek to master, yet oracy is rarely taught in management education.This paper describes a teaching and assessment initiative, introduced to a postgraduate class in a UK Business School, which developed students’ speaking competence by combining the critical exploration of the course content with the explicit teaching of oracy skills. Influenced by the philosophy of critical pedagogy with its emphasis on dialogue, the initiative demonstrates that dialogic teaching combined with oracy skills training encourages students to engage in purposeful talk around course content which extends their repertoire of spoken communication skills relevant to the workplace and beyond.The paper brings oracy to the attention of management educators as a means of better preparing graduates for management roles. It demonstrates how an oracy framework can be used to inform course content and to provide a guide to assessing spoken communication. Practical advice is provided for tutors integrating oracy into current teaching practices.