National Adult Literacy Database

Message from Tom Sticht, international consultant in adult education

Definition of oracy: auding (listening while processing spoken language) and speaking skills

The use of oracy to promote interest in and the achievement of literacy has a long history. Writing in 1908, Edmund Burke Huey made the point that “meaning inheres in this spoken language and belongs but secondarily to the printed symbols.” He also commented on the importance of parents reading to their children, saying “The secret of it all lies in the parent’s reading aloud to and with the child.

The latter was an idea which Cora Wilson Stewart, the founder in 1911 of the famous Moonlight Schools of Kentucky for illiterate adults, drew upon in writing her 1930 Mother’s First Book: A First Reader for Home Women. She understood the importance of children having literate parents, and especially literate mothers, who could read to them. In her book for mothers, she was direct in her guidance regarding the use of oracy, stating to tutors that “The first reading lesson should be made interesting by conversation, in which the pupil is led by the teacher’s questions and suggestions to speak the sentence before she sees it in print. Then when it is presented, the teacher may say, “Here are the words in print that you have just spoken—see my baby.” The sentence then comes to the pupil with new interest.” Later, this technique of teaching literacy by first using oracy came to be known as the “language experience” approach.

A third major figure in the field of literacy instruction, and one who like Cora Wilson Stewart focused upon the use of oracy in adult literacy instruction, was Paulo Freire, the great Brazilian educationist and philosopher. In describing what became known world-wide as the Pedagogy of the Oppressed, the title of Freire’s most famous book, Paulo Freire described his techniques of using “culture circles” to promote interest in learning literacy.

In his “culture circles”, Freire first had adult learners study pictures depicting various scenes and discuss what in the scene was made by nature and what was made by humans. His aim was to get the learners to come to realize through their discussion (oracy) the difference between what nature produced and what humans (culture) produced. The purpose of this was to get the adults to come to realize that the oppressive conditions under which they lived were not the result of nature but of human culture, and that culture could be changed by their actions. Then literacy, as a cultural tool to be used in changing the conditions of their lives, was taught using emotional words taken from the oracy discussions.

Like Stewart and Freire, Huey recognized that in many cases parents might not be literate enough to help their children learn to read and write at home before they began their formal schooling. For these parents, he recommended therefore that the school“…will have as one of its important duties the instruction of parents in the means of assisting the child’s natural learning in the home.”

Today, tens of thousands of undereducated adults who are or are about to become parents are being assisted to develop their own literacy skills and those of their children in family literacy programs that work with both children and adults. These programs are more and more emphasizing the importance of the oracy skills, both for adults and their children. Data from over thirty years of national assessments of reading in the United States repeatedly show that as their parent’s years of education increases, the literacy skills of their children increase. Better educated adults have better educated children.

Additional research has indicated that much of this intergenerational transfer of literacy is due to the parent’s use of oracy. In general, better educated parents expose their children to greater amounts of oral language in their early lives. Thus the more likely the child is to acquire a large oral vocabulary and a large amount of conceptual knowledge expressible and comprehensible by oracy. In turn, this provides the children with the foundation for achieving higher levels of literacy once they enter school.

The professional wisdom of Huey, Stewart, and Freire in emphasizing the importance of oracy in the development of literacy has found support in a large body of scientific research. It would seem prudent, therefore, to focus a greater amount of resources on understanding how to bring about greater levels of oracy among adults. It appears that to a large extent, oracy is the bridge to literacy from parents to their progeny.

Contact:
tsticht@aznet.net