Scoping academic oracy in higher education: knotting together forgotten connections to equity and academic literacies

ABSTRACT

Although the importance of developing students’ academic literacies has been well-established, academic oracy has been forgotten. There is a paucity of attention to oracy in higher education, despite the key role played by students’ oral communication in academic achievement and graduate employability. This study offers a scoping review of the international scholarly literature that does exist, to explore how oracy has been framed and discussed in higher education, and whether connections have been made with the equity agenda to widen participation to traditionally under-represented groups. Following Arksey and O’Malley’s framework for scoping studies, the 31 papers reviewed suggest that oracy is framed in disparate ways, reflecting disconnected understandings of the range, breadth and possibilities for oracy teaching. An oracy as product perspective prevails in the studies, with oracy predominantly explored through monologic, monoglossic activities, assessments, and graduate attributes. The review has highlighted the need to recognise an oracy for learning perspective; to establish shared understandings of the features of oracy; and to embed the teaching of oracy practices that support all students, regardless of linguistic and educational background, within their disciplinary learning.

KEYWORDS:

• Academic oracy
• higher education
• equity
• scoping review
• widening participation

Introduction

This article takes a sociocultural perspective on learning in which language, particularly talk, is a tool for mediating and co-constructing understanding. As Vygotsky (1986) asserted, ‘Thought is not merely expressed in words; it comes into existence through them. Every thought tends to connect something to something else, to establish a relation between things’ (p. 218). Through articulating our ideas, challenging others, and making our reasoning visible in talk, we co-construct understanding (Mercer, 2019). In higher education, language is key to accessing the curriculum (Bond, 2020), and talk – particularly oracy – is fundamental to students’ development of disciplinary understanding and academic achievement (Mah, 2016).

Generally, research into language competence and speaking proficiency highlight the challenges for international students for whom English is a second language (e.g., Dippold et al., 2022). However, as scholars such as Murray (2013) identify, with the widening participation agenda domestic students also require support to develop academic language, and educators need strategies to support the learning of a diverse cohort. Without targeted support, students from ‘educationally disadvantaged’ cohorts are especially at risk of being left behind because of tacit assumptions about prior educational engagement and the linguistic resources students bring with them (Marey, Baker, Williams, & Tzelios, 2021). Importantly, the literature also highlights the problems of deficit approaches that position some students as ‘lacking’ ‘skills’; rather, we contend that all students benefit from being supported to develop their learning (Gravett, 2019; Wingate, 2006). Whilst considerable attention has been paid to academic writing, academic speaking has largely been ignored.

Oracy has a rich history of research and practice in the school context (Mercer, 2019; Mercer et al., 2017); however, it is a little discussed concept in the higher education literature (notable exceptions being Heron, 2019; Doherty, 2010; Doherty et al., 2011). This omission is significant. Higher education teaching and learning includes interactive approaches where oral participation is valued, and performance is assessed. Students are expected to interact in lectures (Doherty, 2010), take part in oral presentations (Heron, 2019) and engage in group work (Dippold et al., 2019) as part of their studies. As a result, the importance of students’ spoken language becomes more visible when used to assess participation and student engagement (Gourlay, 2015).

Evidence suggests ad hoc pockets of practice around oracy in HE (Heron, 2019; Heron et al., 2021), yet to the best of our knowledge there is no overarching work that sets out a description of oracy in HE. Given the crucial role of talk in developing disciplinary understanding (Mah, 2016), and arguments to focus on language in higher education in general (Bond, 2020), and particularly for equity cohorts (Marey et al., 2021), we believe that this knowledge gap needs to be addressed. This study used a scoping review to provide conceptual and pedagogical clarity on oracy to inform practice and research and to raise issues of equitable participation. In this article, we ask, ‘how is oracy framed, positioned and enacted within higher education, and what are the implications for equity?’.

Background

What is oracy?

The term ‘oracy’ (Wilkinson, 1965) was coined by Wilkinson in 1965 to distinguish speaking and listening as part of academic learning from ‘literacy’, foregrounding its significance in education. The importance of teaching and assessment practices for improving academic achievement, particularly for educationally disadvantaged students, is now well established in the compulsory school sector (Speak for Change, 2020; Mercer, 2019). Indeed, in their 2016 report, Millard and Menzies state that 68% of UK teachers surveyed classified oracy as ‘very important’ for students/ as part of their teaching role (compared with 75% for reading, 73% for writing and 63% for numeracy).

A key outcome of recent research in oracy in the school sector has been the development of the Oracy Skills Framework (OSF; Mercer et al., 2017), which identifies four domains of oracy: physical; linguistic; cognitive; and social and emotional. Proficiency in these domains is fundamental to effective communication. The OSF has been tentatively transferred to higher education settings (Heron, 2019; Heron et al., 2021; Dippold et al., 2019). However, key challenges remain regarding exploring oracy within a higher education context. Firstly, there is a lack of awareness of oracy as a concept. Secondly, speaking is not afforded the same status as writing, meaning speaking is still often viewed as a ‘bolt on’ skill, despite research exposing skills-based conceptions as unhelpful (Lea & Street, 1998; Wingate, 2006). Exclusive focus on skills conceals oracy as situated practice and results in inconsistent approaches to supporting (or not) oracy in HE (Heron, 2019). Thirdly, oracy is often taken for granted, with students assumed to be fluent speakers for the diverse academic contexts in which they study (Murray, 2013). This is particularly problematic given expectations of students’ performative engagement in interactive HE classrooms (Gourlay, 2015) through activities such as seminar discussions, oral presentations, and oral assessments.

The graduate employability agenda and ‘oral communication skills’

Discussion of academic oracy is often couched in terms of ‘oral communication skills’, as one of a suite of attributes that sit under the broad umbrella of graduate employability. The employability agenda is a significant influence on teaching and learning decisions, as university effectiveness is partially measured in terms of employment outcomes for graduates (Bennett & Robertson, 2015). Furthermore, high value is placed on strong workplace communication, particularly oral communication (Heron, 2019; Braun, 2017; Doherty et al., 2011; Harman, 2010). However, despite this imperative, there is a misalignment between the employability agenda and the teaching of communication in disciplinary/ professionally focused contexts. Concern about embedding ‘skills’ – whether literacies/ oracy or graduate attributes – is known to be a key barrier for disciplinary teachers who often report lacking confidence or knowledge in how to do so (e.g., Murray, 2013).

Oracy and educational disadvantage

There are clear and entrenched patterns of inequitable participation in education that can be attributed, at least in part, to a lack of explicit teaching of oracy and the underdevelopment of resources to assist. The UK-based Communication Trust (2017) reports that by the age of five, 75% of children who experience poverty persistently throughout their early years are below average in language development, compared to 35% of children who never experienced poverty. Moreover, up to 50% of children starting school in the most disadvantaged areas in England have speech, language, and communication needs (SLCN), and the likelihood of being identified as having SLCN is 2.3 times greater for children eligible for free school meals and living in areas of disadvantage. These challenges play out in predictable patterns as SLCN go unsupported, with Millard and Menzies’ (2016) review of oracy highlighting the persistent disadvantage that these children face in later life, including poor educational outcomes and overrepresentation in the justice system.

These findings foreground the importance of explicit teaching of oracy throughout the educational experience, especially in early years but also in later education, including university, to respond to the educational disadvantage experienced. A further challenge relates to culturally and linguistically diverse cohorts, whose rich plurilingual repertoire is rarely utilised in monolingual educational contexts, particularly where English is the medium of instruction (Preece, 2009).

Oracy and academic literacies

The teaching of academic literacies has been the subject of sustained scholarly attention for several decades (for example, Lea & Street, 1998). Academic literacies scholarship has emerged from the recognition of the limitations of understandings of language and literacy in a changing higher education landscape: ‘Confronted by deficit framings, many teacher-researchers in higher education … have sought out and engaged in research and theorisations of language use which take account of the complex contexts in which they/we work’ (Lillis & Scott, 2008, p. 8). However, this field of inquiry has predominantly focused on exploring students’ writing and text production. While the challenges faced by students with mastering the conventions and meaning-making written practices of discipline-specific literacies have been well-reported (Lea & Street, 1998), a commensurate focus on other literacies, such as academic reading, has not followed (Baker et al., 2019). Furthermore, there has been little attention to the role of speaking in this body of work, which is a notable omission and, as this article will demonstrate, there has also been no research attending to the intersection of oracy and equity in the higher education.

Methodology

This scoping review will begin to knot together the field of academic oracy. This approach ‘rapidly’ reviews the literature in a specific field to identify research gaps (Arksey & O’Malley, 2005, p. 21). Our aim in this review was not to provide exhaustive coverage of the topic (Baker et al., 2020) but to offer a starting position for discussion and to advocate for a HE oracy practice and research agenda (Heron, 2019). To share our thinking with others, and to communicate our approach of how we conducted the review, we followed the procedures detailed by Arksey and O’Malley (2005) with further guidance from Levac et al. (2010).

Authors’ positioning

Since all four authors were involved in subjective interpretations of the literature through selecting, annotating, and analysing, our positionality and backgrounds need to be explicated (Baker et al., 2020). Author 1 is a higher education researcher and practitioner with a background in applied linguistics and a particular interest in classroom interaction, genre and oracy. Author 2 is a higher education researcher who studies issues relating to academic language and literacies, transition, cultural and linguistic diversity, and equity in higher education. Author 3 is a higher education researcher with interest in staff and students’ experiences of learning and teaching in higher education, academic literacies, and the impact of discourses and narratives in higher education. Author 4 is a sociologist of higher education and former language practitioner with a particular interest in both staff and student equity.

Method

As a group we worked across geographical and time zones through regular collaboration, which was informed by our own diverse experiences and contexts. We outline below how we interpreted the stages and our process of filtering and choosing the papers we report on in this study. The stages are summarised in Appendix 1.

Stage 1: identify the research question(s)

Our Research Questions (RQs) reflect the purpose and intended outcome of our study (Levac et al., 2010), which was to explore how oracy is framed in HE with a view to identifying gaps in practice and research. The following questions guided our review:

• RQ1: How is oracy framed in the higher education literature, and specifically in the literature on academic literacies?

• RQ2: Within which contexts is oracy discussed?

• RQ3: Where does oracy feature in the literacy equity and / or widening participation in higher education literature, if at all?

The key terms used were teaching, higher education OR university, AND oracy OR speaking OR listening OR oral presentations OR communication (AND widening participation).

Stage 2: identify relevant studies

We drew on a breadth of literature from several online sources including bibliographic databases, Google Scholar, as well as hand-searching individual journals. Our choice of journals was based on our knowledge, as well as a snowballing process through article citations. The journals were hand searched using the key terms and resulted in an archive of 69 articles. The sources are listed in Appendix 2.

Stage 3: study selection

Inclusion and exclusion criteria were based on our research questions and refined through an iterative process as we searched. As expected, many papers under the search term ‘oracy’ were set in the compulsory school context but these were excluded due to our focus on HE. Oral communication skills and speaking skills appeared predominantly in HE clinical education (e.g., Medicine) and English for Academic Purposes (EAP) or English as a Foreign Language (EFL) respectively which are already vibrant and established areas of research and pedagogy. Whilst these studies might have yielded insights, we felt that the number would skew the results. However, although we excluded articles on clinical contexts, we included those that spoke to academic speaking contexts. Our inclusion and exclusion criteria are outlined in Table 1.

Table 1. Inclusion and exclusion criteria.

Inclusion criteria	Exclusion criteria
English language Peer-reviewed Focus on oral language (oral presentations, group work discussions) Set in higher education context From 1998–present	Not EAP or EFL Not clinical education Pre-1998

We shared out the different sources and made the initial judgement on the relevance of these to the purpose of the study. We then discussed each paper and made a further selection based on the final set of inclusion and exclusion criteria. We met as a team five times during this period to discuss findings and agree on a strategy. Similar to Baker et al. (2019), we agreed on a final set of 31 papers (highlighted in the bibliography).

Stage 4: charting the data

This stage involves ‘sifting, charting and sorting material according to key issues and themes’ (Arksey & O’Malley, 2005, p. 26). We extracted themes with reference to the research questions and the purpose of the scoping review. All 31 final papers were annotated according to a standardised form developed by the authors to ensure transparency (Levac et al., 2010). The core arguments were then summarised and discussed, and key themes agreed.

Stage 5: collating, summarising and reporting the results

We have chosen to present the findings and implications according to the research questions in keeping with Levac et al.’s (2010) suggestions for transparency and linkages to the purpose of the scoping review.

Stage 6: consultation with experts in the field

Although optional in Arksey and O’Malley’s (2005) process, Levac et al. (2010) recommend consultation with experts to provide additional methodological rigour. Given the paucity of literature on oracy in HE, the consultation stage was essential to providing other perspectives. We invited three experts in the fields of oracy, academic literacies, and equity in higher education to review the first draft of this article. Their recommendations have been incorporated into the article and we believe this consultation process has strengthened our focus and argument and we are grateful for their input.

Findings

Overall, the review identified 31 papers that matched our purpose and inclusion criteria. Of these studies, six were conducted in the US, 10 in the UK, 10 in Australia, one each in Switzerland, Belgium, Hong Kong, China and Spain and one focusing on UK, Turkey and UAE. In terms of disciplinary focus, where identified, the following disciplinary contexts were represented: Dentistry (1), Business / Management (6), Psychology (2), Nursing (1), Law (1), Social Work (1), Education / Teacher Education (2) and second language learning contexts (5) (n = 18). In this section, we present our findings with reference to the research questions.

Research question 1: how is oracy framed in the higher education literature and the literature on academic literacies?

Our first RQ was concerned with the framing of oracy both in terms of its ‘naming’, the metalanguage surrounding the discussions of speaking, and how it is described. As expected, a range of terms are used to describe what is essentially oracy which we present below.

Speaking (skills)

The literature based in the applied linguistics and second language learning contexts used the term ‘speaking’ or spoken language (Dippold et al., 2019; Fraser, 2011; Leung & Lewkowicz, 2013). These studies highlight the linguistic background of students, in terms of whether they are first (L1) or second (L2) language speakers of English. Dippold et al. (2019) focus on the need for both L1 and L2 speakers of English to learn ‘complex speaking skills’ for dialogic speaking events such as group work. ‘Speech’, often associated with monologic activities, was used by Compton (2010) to describe transactional communication, in other words, dialogic activities. Richards and Pilcher (2018) are an exception, in terms of specifically including academic speaking as part of academic literacies, and highlighting its importance for accessing disciplinary content and facilitating student success. In fact, these authors argue for an academic literacies approach which encompasses more than a written text focus.

Oracy (skills)

Papers which utilised the term oracy (n = 8) suggest they consciously made the distinction between oracy and literacy, as originally intended (Wilkinson, 1965). Unlike the term ‘speaking’, ‘oracy’ is always defined by the authors. The authors who used the term (Heron et al., 2021; Heron, 2019; Bobkina & Domínguez Romero, 2020; Dippold et al., 2019; Doherty, 2010; Doherty et al., 2011; Hill, 2021) also used the term ‘speaking’ sometimes interchangeably, and we posit that this might be the case as the term oracy is unfamiliar to many readers. Our review found that these papers generally framed oracy as neglected and misunderstood and called for the embedding of oracy in the curriculum (Heron, 2019; Doherty et al., 2011). A consistent theme amongst these papers was the comparison of the breadth of studies into literacy (reading and writing) with the dearth of work in the area of oracy, arguing that ‘oracy warrants similarly rigorous scrutiny’ (Doherty, 2010, p. 247).

Some papers made reference to the OSF (Heron, 2019; Heron et al., 2021; Dippold et al., 2019; Hill, 2021) or dimensions of the framework (Bobkina & Domínguez Romero, 2020), reflecting an in-depth analysis of the features of effective speaking in academic environments. These papers provided a more fine-grained discussion of oracy as well as links to notions of access and equitable participation.

Communication (skills)

Papers using the term (oral) communication (skills) (n = 7) were predominantly based in disciplinary contexts, such as Psychology (Sleigh, 2013), Social Work (Parris & Pye, 2015) and Dentistry (Lanning et al., 2011), and almost all were in the context of employability, with reference to graduate skills and expectations of (often disappointed) employers. Communication skills were mostly focused on speaking, with one exception: Caspersz and Stasinska (2015) discuss the importance of listening in the context of Business studies, where listening is described as ‘a soft skill employability factor’ (Caspersz & Stasinska, 2015, p. 1). Papers which discussed (spoken) communication skills did not highlight the linguistic background of students, and the assumption was generally that students were L1 speakers of English. The perspective on communication ‘skills’ resulted in discussions of ‘training’, particularly in order to satisfy employers and the graduate outcomes agenda (Parris & Pye, 2015; Sleigh, 2013). There was some recognition of spoken communication skills as providing access to course material and participation in learning (Parris & Pye, 2015), along with calls for embedding communication skills in the HE curriculum.

Listening (skills)

The definition of oracy proposed by Wilkinson (1965) includes listening as a dimension of oracy, and the OSF (Mercer et al., 2017) refers to active listening under the social and emotional dimension. Although listening is considered key to successful oracy (Mercer et al., 2017), few articles paid more than passing reference to listening (e.g., Heron, 2019; Bobkina & Domínguez Romero, 2020). In the set of 31 papers, four focused on listening skills (Caspersz & Stasinska, 2015; Doherty, 2010; Emerick, 2019; Fraser, 2011). Fraser (2011, p. 111) highlights how communication is a ‘two-way process’ and therefore necessitates a recognition of both speaking and listening. Caspersz and Stasinska (2015) point to the difference between hearing and ‘effective’ listening. Emerick (2019) found a disconnect between what teachers believed and their actual practice in teaching listening, concluding that teachers assume students have strong listening skills and therefore ‘test’ rather than ‘teach’ listening.

Research question 2: within which contexts is oracy discussed?

We found oracy was discussed in a number of disparate contexts outlined below.

Group work and oral presentations

Papers which discussed oracy or speaking within the context of group work tended to highlight how the absence of mastery in speaking resulted in limited opportunities for participation (Dippold et al., 2019; Owen & Davis, 2011). In the context of Law and an increasingly diverse student body, Owen and Davis (2011) linked effective speaking in group work to graduate outcomes, arguing that such group work speaking skills were favoured by employers. Dippold et al. (2019), on the other hand, highlight the challenges that group work brings, both for L1 and L2 speakers of English, in terms of its dialogic nature and lament the predominance of teaching of monologic events (e.g., oral presentation).

Group work also set the scene for discussions of participation, again reflecting the discourse of performativity, equating speaking with engagement. Group work and consultation sessions contextualised the role of oracy in supporting written text (Tapp, 2015; Wilson et al., 2011). In the context of one-on-one consultations, Wilson et al. (2011) describe how discussion scaffolds academic literacies development, and in particular, students’ disciplinary socialisation.

Oracy discussed in the context of oral presentations (n = 6) reflects Dippold et al.’s (2019) argument that teachers tend to focus on speaking in a monologic format. The review found that these studies highlighted the performance aspect of speaking, through either a focus on rubrics, or on the assessment of speaking (Bhati, 2012; de Grez et al., 2012; Elfering et al., 2012; Harman, 2010; Malouff & Emmerton, 2014; Tsang, 2020). This contextualisation of speaking supports Doherty et al.’s (2011) claim that oracy is more likely to be assessed than taught. Oral presentation was often associated with employability and workplace communication skills. In our review, no paper considered the teaching of oral presentations, the genres of oral presentations and the nuances of oral presentations as situated speaking practices.

Assessment and feedback

As mentioned above, oral presentations were mostly discussed in the context of assessment. One paper explored the agreement amongst teacher, peer- and self-assessment of oral presentations (de Grez et al., 2012). Challenges in agreement were found to be due to a lack of shared understanding of criteria (e.g., Tsang, 2020). A further discussion around oracy and assessment pertains to the absence of explicit attention to oracy in curricula, and a commensurate silence in the content of teaching. Doherty et al. (2011) point out that by not explicitly teaching oracy, students are being assessed on the skills they possessed prior to starting HE studies. This mirrors the wider debate on language proficiency and widening participation, with Murray (2013) arguing that:

There is an assumption, it seems, that native speakers come equipped with the requisite language skills by virtue of having grown up in an English speaking environment. This assumption warrants close scrutiny … (p. 302)

Skills discourse

Framing oracy as ‘skills’, such as speaking skills and communication skills reflects a deficit perspective where the focus is on student training. Some studies question the validity of a skills perspective; for instance, Hora et al. (2019) argue that a skills ‘discourse’ ignores the complexity of oral communication and how it is used in social and professional contexts. Instead, they suggest communication ‘genres’ to reflect the situated nature of communication and its relationship to the professional or disciplinary context.

Professional contexts: employability and the twenty-first-century citizen

A significant number of papers (n = 8) discuss oracy / speaking in the context of graduate attributes, graduate outcomes and employability (Heron, 2019; Braun, 2017; Doherty et al., 2011; Harman, 2010; Malouff & Emmerton, 2014; Owen & Davis, 2011; Sleigh, 2013; Tsang, 2020). The review found overlap between communication skills, oral presentation and graduate attributes. For example, oral presentation skills were linked to teaching the characteristics of a twenty-first-century citizen (Tsang, 2020), and important for employers (Bhati, 2012). Effective communication skills were viewed as crucial for success in professional settings, such as Lanning et al.’s (2011) focus on dentists’ professional oral communication.

Research question 3: where does oracy feature in the literacy equity and/or widening participation in higher education literature, if at all?

There was scant attention to academic speaking or oral communication as a means of accessing and participating in higher education. The papers which did highlight issues of equity considered diverse student backgrounds with respect to linguistic background (Bhati, 2012; Parris & Pye, 2015), first generation HE students (Tapp, 2015), ‘under-represented groups’ (Owen & Davis, 2011) and gender (Bhati, 2012). Hora et al. (2019) implicitly highlight notions of equity by arguing for normative notions of oral communication to be challenged and students to be supported in understanding oral communication genres in their social and situated contexts.

The papers that used the term oracy all made explicit connections to equity. Due to its origins in the school context, the term oracy is imbued with democratic notions of access to learning opportunities, equitable participation, democratic engagement as well as cognitive notions of talk and learning (e.g., Ferst, 1999). Equally, oracy was viewed as the means to access and participate in a professional community. It is no surprise then that the papers using the term oracy in HE contextualise it in terms of access to professional communities (Ferst, 1999), access to group work (Dippold et al., 2019), access to learning conversations (Heron, 2019) and problematising assessment that tests pre-requisite ‘skills’ (Heron, 2019; Doherty, 2010; Doherty et al., 2011; Hill, 2021). However, it is notable that none of the papers discussed oracy in terms of heteroglossia, or ‘widening linguistic participation’ (Preece, 2009).

Discussion

In this section, we bring together the themes found in the scoping review, relating these to current theory-practice. The findings help us to understand how students are supported (or not) and highlight the need for shared metalanguage to talk about oracy.

In response to RQ1, we find evidence for a wide range of disparate terms used to describe essentially a common construct, that is academic speaking or oracy. Semantics matter. Describing oracy as a set of skills (communication, listening, speaking) which entails the ‘training’ of students to ‘deliver’ presentations, frames oracy as a competence and as a product. This perspective can prevent a fine-grained understanding of the role of oracy in learning and mastering disciplinary content. Framing oracy as part of academic literacies would be a way forward to embracing a more nuanced understanding of oracy which is not about deficit but is an understanding of literacies as socially and discursively situated (Lea & Street, 1998).

In response to RQ2, we find that oracy is predominantly discussed in terms of tasks (group presentations) and in the context of assessment. The emphasis on performative participation and behavioural conceptions of student engagement has been contested (Gourlay, 2015). These critical perspectives are important. We agree that an increasing emphasis on oral participation often reflects limited and performative perspectives on student engagement, and that such conceptions of participation warrant problematisation. Nonetheless this problematisation does not negate the value of supporting students to develop their ability to engage via speaking and listening, as one of a breadth of ways to learn within higher education.

In response to RQ3, we find little discussion of the relationship between the teaching of oracy and the context of widening participation. This is a significant silence in the literature, given the strong and demonstrated connections between explicit teaching of oracy and increased academic attainment in educationally disadvantaged school communities.

To build a rich understanding of how oracy is framed in existing discussions in HE, we draw on two metaphorical framings of oracy: firstly, oracy may be viewed as process or as product (Heron, 2019). The former occurs when students are expected to use oracy to complete an outcome, for example, group work in support of a final assessment with no recognition of the role of oracy in completing the assignment. Oracy as product, on the other hand, occurs when speaking is focused on in class time and given curriculum focus, such as when speaking forms part of the learning outcomes. Secondly, an oracy as competence perspective views oracy as a subject to be taught explicitly and with appropriate resources (e.g., time, materials) and an oracy for learning perspective views oracy as a tool for thinking, constructing understanding (MacLure, 1988) and a vehicle for meaning-making and for grappling with disciplinary content.

The review has highlighted that the prevailing understanding of oracy is that of product and competence and is reflected in this review by a focus on oral presentations in the context of assessment, and communication skills in the context of employability. In fact, the one theme which crosses all papers, regardless of the terms used to describe oracy, is the employability and graduate outcomes agenda. Much of this is due to the description and use of the word ‘skills’. Whilst we do not deny the place of skills in a critical conceptualisation of oracy, we argue that scholars and practitioners need to highlight the role of oracy in meaning-making and co-constructing disciplinary knowledge.

An oracy for learning perspective (MacLure, 1988) focuses attention on the learning context, activities and genres, as well as the importance of oracy as a fundamental tool for mediating and (co)constructing disciplinary understanding. We contend the arguments that are provided for an academic literacies perspective on writing hold true for oracy. Oracy involves more than skills: it requires a recognition of genre, register, appropriacy and diversity of academic speaking contexts (Hora et al., 2019). Students in HE need support in learning how to confidently navigate these different speaking contexts and understand the different genres in terms of their communicative purposes, structures and rhetorical conventions. We argue for an oracy as competence perspective to be embedded in oracy for learning, utilising the four dimensions of the OSF as a design heuristic to disrupt a ‘bolt on’ skills approach and instead to support a holistic approach that can be embedded into contextualised content within disciplinary teaching. This approach allows for resources to be allocated to explicitly teach students oracy ‘skills’ whilst also emphasising how oracy for learning is fundamental to constructing disciplinary understanding.

Insights and implications

A number of insights have been drawn from this scoping review and we outline implications for future research. Firstly, there is a need to resist the decontextualised framing suggested by the term ‘skills’. This requires a clear alignment of academic oracy with the field of academic literacies, given this field of inquiry has made important progress in developing our understanding of writing as more than a ‘bolt on’ skill. The omission of oracy from this scholarship means that there is an important need for further research, discussions, and recognition regarding oracy as situated practice. This will enable more meaningful work on how students can develop their academic oracies within their own situated learning environments.

Secondly, our review illustrates the dearth of research exploring the interconnected relationships of oracy and equity. It may be that this omission occurs because of educators’ reluctance to approach this thorny and troubling area, which is potentially entangled with a breadth of sensitive issues including class, disability and race. However, this omission also conceals the valuable progress that has been made in illuminating connections between equity and literacy and denies pathways to developing better understandings of the relationships between oracy and equitable participation through talk in future work.

Finally, it is evident that the dominance of oracy as product framings narrows the ways that oracy is, and can be, included in disciplinary curricula and teaching. As per similar arguments about academic writing, a focus on product reduces academic oracy to a set of isolated and decontextualised skills, thus ignoring the complex and context-dependent, disciplinary-specific meaning making potential of talk to enhance learning. An oracy for learning perspective, however, offers rich opportunities for enhancing HE teaching and learning for all students, and can strongly contribute to the graduate attributes agenda by purposefully focusing on talk in the HE classroom.

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Neil Mercer, Sian Preece and Jackie Tuck for their review and recommendations as part of the consultation stage.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Appendices

Appendix 1

Table

Stage 1: Identify the research question(s)	RQ1: How is oracy framed in the higher education literature, and specifically in the literature on academic literacies? RQ2: Within which contexts is oracy discussed? RQ3: Where does oracy feature in the literacy equity and / or widening participation in higher education literature, if at all?
Identify search terms	Higher education & university AND Teaching AND Oracy oral Academic speaking Academic listening listening Speaking Oral presentations Oral communication skills
Stage 2: Identify relevant studies: data bases, ref lists, key journals, networks etc.	Databases ERIC British Education Index Higher Education Academy website (Advance HE) Australian Education Index JSTOR Linguistics and Language Behaviour abstracts Science Direct Arts and Humanities Citation Index Scopus Journals Higher Education Research & Development Studies in Higher Education Active Learning in Higher Education Journal of University Learning and Teaching Practice Language and Education Linguistics and Education Instruction and Learning Journal of Academic Language & Learning Teaching in Higher Education Journal of Further and Higher Education Arts and Humanities in Higher Education Studies in Continuing Education JEAP JESP Journal of Learning Development in Higher Education Journal of Academic Learning and Language
Stage 3: Study selection – inclusion/ exclusion criteria	English language Peer-reviewed Focus on oral language Set in higher education context From 1998–present
Stage 4: Charting the data: what information from the study is relevant, be descriptive and analytical	Author, year, location Key words Study design Purpose of paper Theoretical framework Contribution Findings Link with oral language, teaching and / or equity
Stage 5: Collating, summarising, reporting
Stage 6: Consultation	Expert reviewers

Appendix 2. Sources

Table

Databases	Hand-searched journals	Other
ERIC British Education Index Australian Education Index Science Direct Arts and Humanities Citation Index Scopus SAGE journals Taylor and Francis journals Science Direct	Higher Education Research & Development Studies in Higher Education Active Learning in Higher Education Journal of University Learning and Teaching Practice Language and Education Linguistics and Education Instruction and Learning Journal of Academic Language & Learning Teaching in Higher Education Journal of Further and Higher Education Arts and Humanities in Higher Education Studies in Continuing Education JEAP JESP Journal of Learning Development in Higher Education Journal of Academic Learning and Language	Google scholar University of Surrey library search