Stated practices on the teaching and assessment of oral communication in primary education

Abstract

Command of oral communication has an effect in the cognitive, emotional, educative and social development of the students; thus, Didactics of languages must address how this skill is taught. This paper presents the results of a research about teaching practices of orality within the context of primary education. The study is a quantitative and descriptive analysis of stated practices from 25 teachers of Spanish language and literature (5th and 6th grades), in state schools from Asturias (year 2017-2018). They answered a questionnaire (adapted from Nolin, 2013), which allowed to collect data about the teaching process of oral communication (awareness, contents, methodology and assessment). The results prove that teachers are aware of the difficulties involved in the process of instruction; they use different genres and texts; however, oral production is addressed to a lesser extent than reception, the assessment is complex and an absolute correspondence between what is taught and what is evaluated does not always exist. To sum up, the study signals the need of further critical attention to orality, due to the impact on the course of an active and equalitarian citizenship.