The orality in the Classroom

What pre-school and basic education teachers say in Portugal

Abstract

Orality was, for many decades, the poor relative of Portuguese Didactics (Lafontaine, 2000, p. 42). It was in fact only in recent decades that more significant advances have occurred, with orality assuming a more prominent role in this discipline. There was, for example, both a progressive appreciation of this domain by educational bodies, and embodied in the ministerial normative documents themselves, and an increase in the number of investigations and publications in the area, similar to what was already happening in other countries. Among the possible reasons for this growing interest, Dumas and Lafontaine (2011, p. 285) point out the following four: insufficient knowledge of teaching and evaluating speaking skills; lack of training in oral didactics for teachers and future teachers; inaccuracies in syllabi; and lack of teaching materials and assessment tools.