All courses in the WR sequence require students to participate orally (or through signing) in class discussions, projects, activities, small-group projects, and informal presentations. Many courses also have graded presentations that consider students’ abilities to convey their understanding, research, and arguments orally. These courses introduce students to many different modes of oral communication—formal, informal, in-person, recorded—and familiarize students with a wide range of abilities related to presenting their thoughts verbally, from traditional skills of elocution (such as cultivating an engaging voice and maintaining eye contact) to an agility in improvising in unscripted moments.
An emphasis on oral/signed communication in the classroom
- Complements key learning outcomes for writing
- Fosters class community
- Develops critical thinking through conversation
- Creates awareness of genre
- Offers opportunities to re-examine both audience and argument
WR 111, WR 112, and WR 151, to varying extents, all require graded oral presentations and offer explicit in-class instruction in the skills necessary to succeed with these projects.
In all courses, even those with formal requirements for presentations, instructors have the freedom to choose from a range of options when designing assignments.
Ethics of Oral/Signed Communication Classrooms
- Integrate orality fully throughout the semester, as an essential element of the class, not an add-on
- Make the classroom a safe place for speaking
- Model good oral practices
- Teach skills early; practice and assess often
- Emphasize and facilitate the correlation between writing and speaking
- Emphasize and foster the importance of student-student communication; use the following elements to help optimize the classroom for student-student communication:
- Nametags or placecards
- Room arrangement (circle, semi-circle, pods of students, etc.)
- Topics that meet students where they are
- Group conferences
- Long-term, deliberately formed, teams and/or peer-review partnerships
Oral/Signed Communication in WR 111
WR 111’s special emphasis on public speaking facilitates fluency and communicative confidence. Students receive instruction in and are expected to demonstrate proficiency in basic presenting skills in multiple required presentations. Students also interact with diverse communities on campus and in the Boston area, work on collaborative written and oral projects, and develop the ability to communicate effectively in a variety of modes.
Oral/Signed Communication in WR 112
A strong public speaking component helps students achieve oral fluency and confidence while conversing about cultural contexts presented by course texts. Students will receive instruction in and be expected to show fluency in public speaking in a semi-formal setting for a major required presentation. The course prepares students to engage in focused academic conversations and to apply culturally appropriate communication strategies as an active participant in the intellectual life of our global university.
Oral/Signed Communication in WR 120
Though
WR 120 requires an oral presentation, the presentation or oral element does not have to be formally graded. Many instructors use works-in-process presentations in WR 120 in addition to the three major assignments, while others choose to have the alternate genre assignment be an oral genre.
Oral/Signed Communication in WR 151
WR 151 has a very strong emphasis on verbal/signed expression and confers credit for a
Hub unit in Oral/Signed Communication. This course gives students ample opportunities to analyze and practice oral/signed expression in order to communicate their research to academic and non-academic audiences. Students will receive instruction in and be expected to demonstrate proficiency in each the following five areas: elocution, extemporaneity, leadership/authority, retrieval, and metacognition. WR151 requires students to complete several oral/signed projects, including a major graded presentation.
A Note on Assessment
We suggest using multiple forms of assessment for most oral/signed presentations: reflection, peer assessment, and instructor assessment (both immediate and also, in many cases,
scored with
rubrics).
A Note on Multilingual Students
Multilingual students may have particular anxiety about oral presentations–or even just class participation–because of worries about their “accents.” It may be helpful for instructors to review the suggestions in this guide to
“Leveling the Playing Field for Equitable and Inclusive Class Participation”.
We also offer a
Flipped Learning Module specifically aimed at helping multilingual students with their oral communication needs, and students are welcome to view the videos at any level course. In addition, we offer an
optional pronunciation course that focuses on intelligiblity (not accent reduction) that you may refer English language learner students to, or that they may opt into on their own.
Further Reading
- Chou, Mu-hsuan. “The Influence of Learner Strategies on Oral Presentations: A Comparison Between Group and Individual Performance.” English for Specific Purposes, 30 (2011): 272-285.
- Leff, Michael. “Teaching Public Speaking as Composition,” Basic Communication Course Annual: Vol. 4, Article 12 (1992): 115-122.
- Palmer, Erik. Well Spoken: Teaching Speaking to All Students. Stenhouse Publishers, 2011.
