Re-framing Oracy in English Language Education

This chapter addresses a gap in the conceptualisation of oracy in the context of English language education (ELE). While the importance of developing learners’ competences in oral communication and interaction has been widely acknowledged, the implications of teaching and learning these competences have remained undertheorised in that there is no comprehensive, holistic concept of oracy specific to foreign language (FL) education to this day. Applying the Oracy Skills Framework (OSF; Mercer & Dawes, 2018; Mercer et al., 2019) to this context, this chapter will suggest a framework for teaching and learning oracy in ELE. It will follow the four strands of the original framework and shed light on the (1) linguistic, (2) cognitive, (3) physical, (4) social, cultural, and emotional strands of oracy in English as a foreign language. The aim of adapting the framework is to provide guidance to both practitioners and researchers.