Cultivating Oral Communication Skills in Academic Contexts

Oral communication is complex. It requires developing competences in several language areas and skills such as grammar, pronunciation, fluency, accuracy, and non-verbal communication. This becomes more challenging in English for Academic Purposes (EAP) contexts because, in addition to becoming competent in spoken English, learners need to become competent in further areas specific to academic contexts. For that reason, EAP programs need to go beyond teaching English and provide learners with the opportunities to improve their abilities to engage in academic contexts. This chapter details the complexity of oral communication skills in academic contexts and describes the nature of spoken genres in EAP contexts. This is followed by a discussion on how to design authentic tasks regarding three important issues: raising metacognitive awareness, task preparation, and task repetition. Based on these constructs, an adapted model to teach oral communication in EAP contexts is proposed. Finally, the chapter covers topics related to assessment and feedback with special emphasis on formative assessment as a means to increase learners’ awareness of their needs and areas for improvement.