Critical oracy in education: reconceptualising oral language for critical participation

This concept article aims to advance the understanding of critical oracy in changing communicative and educational contexts by clarifying and exploring its critical dimensions. Schools are preparing students for a future in which oracy is increasingly important, and students need to learn to raise their voices, engage in enquiry, and debate for lifelong learning. Moreover, education must equip students to recognise the expected norms of interaction and either comply with them or intentionally violate them. As oracy encompasses verbal language, in addition to body language and tone, a critical oracy approach must adopt a critical stance in evolving communicative contexts. Therefore, as communication increasingly shifts towards digital forms, we argue that critical oracy is needed as a language-in-education concern encompassing cognitive, emotional, social, and interpretive skills. Building on existing theories of oracy and critical literacy in education, we reconceptualise critical oracy as the ability to analyse, critique, and transform speech and listening acts within situated contexts, while recognising interactional norms, power relations, and the possibility of intentionally challenging expected patterns of response. This reconceptualisation matters for language education because students need explicit opportunities to learn how oral genres, interactional norms, verbal and nonverbal resources, and power relations shape participation. The article therefore highlights implications for language pedagogy and curriculum, particularly the teaching of listening, oral genres and interpreting contexts, and critical participation.