Oracy for

teachers and
students
(or Learning to
talk/talking to
learn)

1
 Outline
Recapping weeks 1-3

The relationship between speech and thinking

‘Traditional’ approaches to teacher talk

The case for the dialogic classroom

Talk typologies

Repertories of talk and classroom organisation

2
 Assumptions
• Learning is mediated through Language (linguistic and non-linguistic)
• When we connect with language in meaningful ways we are engaged in
literacy practice
• The subjects of schooling have their own literacy practices that students
must master.
• Making sense of the printed word is dependent on factors related to context,
the reader and the text
• Reading comprehension strategies can support students with reading in the
disciplines
• The mode and media chosen is a crucial element to support student learning
(multimodality)

3
 Why is talk important?
There is a close relationship between how talk is used in the classroom and the
types of learning that take place
Talk is a cultural tool for negotiating meaning and understanding
Traditional approaches to talk are not always productive
The Dialogic classroom maximises opportunities for learning in the disciplines

4
Why is talk important?

5
Why is talk important?: Vygotsky’s
contribution

Osborne, 2020 6
Why is talk important?: Vygotsky’s
contribution

7
Aguilar, 2020
 Why is talk important?
Example 1: Teachers teachers try to interact with as many members of a class as
possible, shooting short questions at different pupils to keep their attention.
Example 2: there is a tendency to pursue a line of thought with one or two
pupils, leading them to analyse the topic in hand at some depth, while other
members of the class are expected to attend closely to the development of the
argument (see Alexander, 2001, Culture and pedagogy)

8
 Why is talk important?: Learning
in the disciplines

Oracy as a tool

Social constructivism (Mercer and Howe, 2012)

Classroom talk as speech genres (Wertsch, 2009)

9
 The persistence of ‘traditional’
models of teacher talk
“…talk which in an effective and sustained way engages learners and scaffolds their
understanding is still less common than it should be” (Alexander, 2020, p.15)
Researchers: Douglas Barnes, Robin Alexander, Courtney Cazden, Neil Mercer,
Martin Nystrand
Concerns regarding ‘traditional models’ include (Alexander, 2020, p.16):
• Interactions tend to be brief rather than sustained.
• There is relatively little talk of a kind that encourages speculation, hypothesising
or thinking aloud.
• Teachers give students time to recall but not time to think (‘wait time’)
• Feedback is positively or negatively evaluative, but is less likely to inform, so the
full cognitive potential of exchanges may be wasted.
• Students’ communicative competence is judged less by how well they reason
aloud (which they are given few opportunities to demonstrate) than by their 10
ability to ‘play the language games typical of classrooms’.
 The persistence of ‘traditional’ models of
teacher talk: Dictation and monologic
instruction

Teachers, rather than students, do most of the talking

‘Banking education’, students as passive recipients (Paolo Freire, 1972)
Nystrand et al(2012): observational data of more than 200 classes and over
23,000 questions analysed
• On average, discussion lasted less than 50 seconds per class in eighth grade
and less than 15 seconds per class in ninth grade.

11
 The persistence of ‘traditional’
models of teacher talk: IRF/IRE

INITIATION The teacher INITIATION The teacher asks

asks a student a Question. a student a Question.

RESPONSE The student RESPONSE The student

answers the Question. answers the Question.

FEEDBACK The teacher Elaboration The teacher

acknowledges and evaluates the acknowledges and elaborate on
Response. the Response to show the it can
be improved.

T: What are two types of power? T: What are two types of power?
S: Soft and hard power S: Soft and hard power
T: Great. That is correct. Soft T: Yes, soft power co-opts or
and hard power. attracts, while hard power
12
threatens or coerces.
 The persistence of ‘traditional’ models
of teacher talk: Closed questions
Closed questions: Require brief answers and do not encourage students to think
aloud.

• Teachers move rapidly from one student to another to ‘maximize’

participation, or from one question to another to maintain pace, and therefore
rarely develop sustained or incremental lines of thinking or understanding.
• Teachers ask questions about content, but students’ questions, on the rare
occasions they ask them, are more likely to be confined to points of procedure.
• Closed teacher ‘test’ questions predominate, and there are fewer ‘authentic’
questions for which the teacher has not specified or implied a particular answer.
• Students concentrate on providing ‘correct’ answers, and teachers gloss over
‘incorrect’ answers rather than use them as stepping stones to understanding.

13
 Consequences of the persistence of
traditional teacher talk
• Students limited ability to generate productive talk.
• Ignoring the significance of background knowledge
• Teachers may remain under-informed about students’ grasp of what is being
taught
• Students do not learn as quickly or as effectively as they could.
• Engagement issues. While some will play the game of ‘spot the correct
answer’, others will become alienated or bored by a process that appears to
define learning merely as a process of jumping through linguistic hoops towards
a non-negotiable end.

14
 The case for the Dialogic classroom
Dialogic teaching harnesses the power of talk to stimulate and extend pupilsʼ
thinking and advance their learning and understanding.
It helps the teacher more precisely to diagnose pupilsʼ needs, frame their learning
tasks and assess their progress. It empowers the student for lifelong learning and
active citizenship (Alexander, Dialogic Teaching Essentials).

15
 The case for the Dialogic classroom:
Two typologies of talk – Mercer (2000)
Disputational:
• Neither participant actively seeks information nor offers explicit
explanations.
• There is no clear or shared focus. Lot’s of disagreement.
• Few attempts to pool resources.
• Atmosphere is competitive rather than cooperative.
Cumulative:
• Children do use talk to share knowledge, but they do so in an uncritical way.
• Everyone simply accepts and agrees with what other people say.
• Children repeat and elaborate each other's ideas, but they don't evaluate
them carefully.
16
 The case for the Dialogic classroom:
Two typologies of talk – Mercer (2000)
Exploratory:
It is not just a means for the expression of different views and information, but
also a cultural and cognitive tool for enabling conceptual change - deeper
learning.
• Partners engage critically but constructively with one another
• Information is offered for joint consideration
• Ideas can be challenged, but if so, reasons are given, and alternatives
proposed.
• Everyone is encouraged to participate.

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 The case for the Dialogic classroom: Two
typologies of talk – Alexander and Lefstein

Alexander (2010)
Collective: Participants address learning tasks together.
Reciprocal: Participants listen to each other, share ideas and consider alternative
viewpoints.
Supportive: Pupils express their ideas freely, without fear of embarrassment over
ʻwrongʼ answers, and they help each other to reach common understandings.
Cumulative: Participants build on answers and other oral contributions and chain
them into coherent lines of thinking and understanding.
Purposeful: Classroom talk, though open and dialogic, is also planned and
structured with specific learning goals in view.
Lefstein (2010)
Critical, where participants explore points of contention, and
18
Meaningful: in which the participants consider their ‘horizons of meaning’ in
relation to others’ and thus develop new (rather than shared) understandings.
 Repertories of talk
In dialogic classrooms (Alexander, 2010) teachers may use familiar kinds of
teaching talk such as:
• rote (drilling ideas, facts and routines through repetition)
• recitation (using short question/answer sequences to recall or test what is
expected to be known already)
• instruction (telling children what to do and how to do it)
• exposition (imparting information and explaining things)
But in dialogic classrooms teachers donʼt limit themselves to these. They also
use:
• discussion
• scaffolded dialogue.

19
 Repertoires of classroom organisation
In dialogic classrooms teachers (Alexander, 2010) exploit the potential of five
main ways of organising interaction in order to maximise the prospects for
dialogue:
• whole class teaching
• group work (teacher-led)
• group work (pupil-led)
• one-to-one (teacher and pupil)
• one-to-one (pupil pairs).

20
 Applying these repertories
Reflect on a recent teaching/observation experience which involved one of the
following repertories of classroom organisation:
• whole class teaching
• group work (teacher-led)
• group work (pupil-led)
• one-to-one (teacher and pupil)
• one-to-one (pupil pairs)
Consider:
1. The target knowledge/skill
2. How the teacher used talk
3. How students used talk
4. The extend to which the language use represented a dialogic classroom 21
 Talk pedagogies for the dialogic
classroom
Mercer and Howe’s (2012) suggestions:
• use some ‘open’ questions to explore students' ideas
• encourage students to put knowledge into their own words (while also offering
them new vocabulary to accommodate new ideas)
• press students to elaborate and justify their views, e.g. ‘How did you know that?’,
‘Why?’, ‘Can you say a bit more?’
• allow students extended turns to express their thoughts and reveal their
misunderstandings
• hold back demonstrations or explanations until the ideas of some students have
been heard (so that explanations can be linked to what has been said and to issues
raised)
• give students enough time to construct thoughtful answers to questions, rather
than moving quickly on if they are hesitant
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 Talk pedagogies for the dialogic
classroom
1. Ground rules for talk
2. Talk moves
3. Wait time
4. Questioning techniques
5. Socratic questioning
6. Sentence starters
7. Reciprocal teaching
8. Metatalk

23
See you in the
workshops
Alexander, R. (2010). Dialogic teaching essentials. In (pp. 1-7). Singapore: National Institute of
Education.
Alexander, R. (2020). A Dialogic Teaching Companion. Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY: Routledge.
Alexander, R. J. (2001). Culture and pedagogy: International comparisons in primary education.
Malden, MA: Blackwell Oxford.
Freire, P. (1972). Pedagogy of the oppressed. Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin.
Lefstein, A. (2010). More helpful as problem than solution: Some implications of situating dialogue
in classrooms. In K. Littleton & C. Howe (Eds.), Educational dialogues: Understanding and promoting
productive interaction (pp. 170-191). London: Taylor and Francis.
Mercer, N. (2000). Words and minds: How we use language to think together. New York: Routledge.
Mercer, N., & Howe, C. (2012). Explaining the dialogic processes of teaching and learning: The value
and potential of sociocultural theory. Learning, culture and social interaction, 1(1), 12-21.
Nystrand, M., Gamoran, A., Kachur, R., & Prendergast, C. (1997). Opening dialogue: understanding
the dynamics of language and learning in the English classroom. New York: Teachers College Press.
Wertsch, J. V. (2009). Voices of the mind: Sociocultural approach to mediated action. Cambridge,
Mass: Harvard University Press. 25