What Does the Evidence Say?
from Part I - Debating Oracy in the UK
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 September 2025
In this chapter Classics teachers Katrina Kelly and Arlene Holmes-Henderson are joined by Amanada Moorghen and Rebekah Simon-Caffyn of Voice 21 to share new data on how teaching oracy can influence confidence in pupils. In ‘Confidence and Outcomes for Students and Teachers: what does the evidence say?’ they analyse qualitative feedback from over 5000 students and 293 teachers in primary and secondary schools. Confidence has been regularly identified as a primary benefit of a high-quality oracy education, they observe, but very little is known about what aspects of confidence are affected, and the impact of this on students. Their chapter breaks ‘confidence’ down into its component parts and explores what the data from their study shows. They find clear links between the practice of oracy and increased student confidence and outcomes in both speaking and listening across a variety of other contexts and skills, and offer a series of practical proposals for schools.
To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge-org.demo.remotlog.com is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.