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Many schools are increasing opportunities for students to talk through presentations, debates and podcasts. This is a positive shift. However, opportunities for talk are not, in themselves, a system for improving talk. Improvement comes from a clearly articulated body of knowledge that can be taught, practised and assessed. Tongue Fu Talking® provides this structure by defining what effective talk consists of and how it develops over time, enabling students to become more precise, reasoned and purposeful in how they speak and listen.
It is encouraging to see talk gaining greater attention in schools.
Students are discussing ideas, presenting their thinking and engaging in a wider range of speaking and listening activities than in the past. Classrooms are, in many cases, richer in talk.
This matters because talk is central to how students learn to organise ideas and make meaning.
Alongside this positive shift, it can be helpful to clarify a key distinction.
Providing opportunities for talk is not the same as improving talk.
Many of the approaches schools adopt are best understood as occasions for talk:
These provide purpose and audience. They can motivate students and make learning more engaging.
They are important.
However, they are contexts in which talk happens, rather than a method for developing how talk improves over time.
A useful question to ask is:
What are students getting better at when they talk?
For example, are students:
If students are improving in these ways, then talk is developing.
If the answer is more general, such as “they are more confident” or “they are talking more”, it may be worth considering whether talk is being developed, or simply encouraged.
Speaking and listening draw on several elements:
These do not typically improve through participation alone.
Some people assume that increasing opportunities to speak will naturally lead to better talk. In practice, improvement tends to come when these elements are:
Without this, students may become more fluent, but not more precise, and more confident, but not more accurate in their reasoning.
In many areas of the curriculum, there is a clear sense of what is to be learned:
For talk, this is less consistently defined.
Recent work, including contributions to the Oracy Education Commission, has highlighted that while talk is widely valued, there is not always a clearly articulated body of knowledge that sets out:
As a result, practice can sometimes focus on:
All of which are important, but do not in themselves ensure progression.
It can also lead to greater emphasis on performative talk, such as presenting, and less on exploratory talk, where ideas are developed and refined.
Some approaches make very effective use of talk in supporting other areas of learning.
For example, in Talk for Writing, students rehearse language, internalise patterns and test ideas before writing. This can play an important role in helping students develop their writing.
It is helpful, though, to be clear about the purpose.
In these cases, talk is being used to prepare for writing.
That is different from a structured approach designed to develop spoken language itself, with its own progression, practices and purposes.
Tongue Fu Talking® is designed to address this gap by providing a clearly defined and teachable body of knowledge for talk.
It begins with a clear definition:
Oracy is the disciplined art of speaking and listening, where thinking, language, expression, and collaboration come together to shape understanding and communication.
From this, it builds a structured system through:
This gives clarity about what effective talk involves.
Within each discipline, specific practices are identified and taught.
For example, students learn to:
These are explicitly modelled and practised so that improvement is visible and cumulative.
Tongue Fu Talking® distinguishes between:
This ensures that students are not asked to present ideas before they have had the opportunity to explore and refine them.
Through the belt system, development is structured over time:
This makes oracy both teachable and assessable.
Opportunities for talk are valuable. They provide purpose, audience and motivation.
Alongside this, students benefit from a clear structure that helps them improve:
This is the distinction:
Occasions for talk create the space for speaking.
A structured system ensures that students are getting better at speaking and listening each time they do it.
Tongue Fu Talking® is designed to provide that structure.
Alexander, R. (2008) Towards Dialogic Teaching: Rethinking Classroom Talk. 4th edn. York: Dialogos.
Alexander, R. (2020) A Dialogic Teaching Companion. London: Routledge.
Department for Education (2025) The Writing Framework. London: DfE.
Education Endowment Foundation (2021) Oral language interventions. Available at: https://educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk/education-evidence/teaching-learning-toolkit/oral-language-interventions
Education Endowment Foundation (2017) Talk for Writing: Evaluation report and executive summary. London: EEF.
Hirsch, E.D. (2006) The Knowledge Deficit: Closing the Shocking Education Gap for American Children. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
Mercer, N. and Littleton, K. (2007) Dialogue and the Development of Children’s Thinking: A Sociocultural Approach. London: Routledge.
Mercer, N. (2013) ‘The social brain, language, and goal-directed collective thinking: A social conception of cognition and its implications for understanding how we think, teach, and learn’, Educational Psychologist, 48(3), pp. 148–168.
Oracy Education Commission (2024) We Need to Talk. London: Oracy Education Commission.
Primary Writing Project (2015) Talk for Writing: Review of related research. Available at: https://www.talk4writing.com
Rozenblit, L. and Keil, F. (2002) ‘The misunderstood limits of folk science: An illusion of explanatory depth’, Cognitive Science, 26(5), pp. 521–562.
