Practice-Oriented and Design-Based Approaches to Researching Oracy: An Introduction

Siepmann, Philipp; Reckermann, Julia; Matz, Frauke

Abstract

This volume is the final result of the symposium Fostering and Assessing Oracy in English Language Education: Insights from Practice-Led and Design-Based Research that was held at the University of Münster, Germany, in June 2021. Our understanding of oracy developed over the time from planning the symposium to publishing this book and is mostly based on the oracy skills framework (Mercer et al., 2019) as well as Diehr’s elaborations on oracy in this volume. Oracy refers to the foreign language learner’s competence to realise own speaking intentions and successfully participate in oral discourse, taking into consideration the four strands of oracy (linguistic; cognitive; physical; social, cultural, & emotional). This introduction sketches this conceptualisation of oracy and depicts why and how this field benefits from practice-oriented research. The latter is understood as research that is either conducted in close cooperation with practicing teachers and thereby partly even practice-led, or has a clear focus on teaching practice and is thereby directly relevant for teachers and practitioners. This chapter also introduces the readers to the structure of the whole volume and summarises each contribution.