Speaking and listening in geography

‘Dialogic pedagogies depend on talk, but not any old talk – we are not talking here about ‘having a natter’ or a ‘bit of a discussion’. We are talking about deliberate, planned interventions, with clear educational purposes, designed to enhance students’ understanding.’

Biddulph et al., 2015, p. 110

Topics on this page:

Introduction

Classroom talk lies at the heart of teaching. Ofsted reports that in most geography classrooms teacher talk dominates; teachers ask the questions, teachers give the explanations, teachers give instructions. This is not to say that teacher talk is not important in lessons, but it should always be used purposefully.

Dialogic teaching, as the opening quote indicates, harnesses the effective use of talk to stimulate and extend students’ thinking and advance their learning and understanding. It can involve teacher-student and student-student interactions in both whole class and small group teaching.

As Ofsted points out, students need opportunities for focused talk in lessons. They need to participate in exploratory talk with their peers to make sense of things for themselves. They also need to develop skills of communicating to an audience. As Biddulph et al (2021) write,

‘Students should be given opportunities to talk in a range of contexts and for a variety of purposes in geography including, describing and explaining, negotiating and persuading, exploring and hypothesising, challenging and arguing’.

The other side of the coin is listening. Students often listen to the teacher, but geography classrooms need to provide opportunities for students to listen to each other as well.

Download What does Ofsted say about speaking and listening in geography?

Teacher talk

Teachers use talk to provide instruction and support to their students and to model the kind of spoken language they expect of student. Since it is so influential, teachers should think carefully and deliberately about the spoken language they use. Probably the most common verbal interactions led by the teacher are instruction/explanation and question/answer.

Roberts (2023) notes that teachers use ‘managerial talk’ when they are managing classrooms. This can be in relation to both student behaviour and organising activities. She expresses concern that in many new teachers’ lessons, she has observed managerial talk dominating the geographical talk. It is most important to focus talk on the geography subject matter.

See the eight categories of classroom talk in Roberts (2023) Figure 10.1, as identified by Robin Alexander. These include talk dominated and controlled by teachers: instruction, ‘rote’ teaching and exposition, and more interactive discussion and dialogue to encourage the exchange of ideas and deepen understanding.

Teacher talk can dominate geography classroom talk. Teachers control and direct when students talk in lessons; they decide the purpose of student talk and for how long.

Roberts (2023) reminds us that some teacher talk is highly desirable and discusses the difference between exposition and instruction. Teacher talk is essential for introducing the specialist language of geography and also for capturing students’ imaginations about a topic and motivating them to find out more. Texts can be presented orally by the teacher e.g. through stories and descriptions of places.

For more information about explanation see Exposition and explaining.
See How geographers talk which is section 2.3 in Literacy in Geography p 8.

Learning, in the case of teacher talk, is dependent on student listening, and it is important to focus on this. Two thinking skills strategies, Mind movies and Story telling, require students to listen to teachers reading a passage of text.

In such cases, as students listen, they are thinking back to what they already know. Teachers can use specific listening activities e.g. to note down points, or translate what they hear to a map/table/diagram to help students to engage with the information to better remember it.

Evaluation/Research into teacher talk and student listening

Investigate the nature of teacher talk by using video and tape recordings of lessons to collect evidence. Analyse the types of talk using Figure 10.1 in Roberts (2023).
Use a focused listening task in one of your lessons – such as students listening to a tape or the commentary on a video, an extended description or story read by the teacher or a visiting speaker. Evaluate the success of this approach in terms of students’ geographical learning.

Key Reading

Roberts, M. (2023) Geography Through Enquiry: Approaches to teaching and learning in the secondary school, Second edition. Sheffield: Geographical Association. Chapter 10 ‘The role of teacher talk in the interactive enquiry-based classroom’.

Dialogic pedagogies

Alexander (2000) used the term dialogic teaching to include both discussion and dialogue between teacher and student or between students. Dialogic pedagogy is about using the power of talk to enable students to learn through discussion or debate or in-depth questioning and construct geographical understanding. The format can be whole-class and teacher led or it can be in student pairs or groups, but all require students to deliberate, question, reflect and consider ideas.

Alexander identifies these characteristics of dialogic teaching. It is:

Collective: teachers and students work together as a group/class
Reciprocal: teachers and students listen to each other, share ideas and viewpoints
Supportive: students freely articulate ideas
Cumulative: teachers and students build on ideas (their own and others) and chain them into coherent lines of thinking and enquiry
Purposeful: teachers plan and facilitate dialogic teaching.

Pay attention to these different characteristics when you are planning your dialogic teaching in geography. There has been a good deal of research into the use of dialogic pedagogy which has shown its educational value. But it does not just ‘happen’ because the teacher facilitates discussion, it depends on purposeful planning.

The fundamental nature of dialogic teaching is that it is two-way. True dialogic learning occurs when teachers and students engage in shared meaning-making, striving to understand and respond to each other’s perspectives. This approach extends students’ thinking and understanding but also promotes mutual understanding and human connection.

Good selection of stimulus materials and activities is vital to achieve the learning goals. You should think about: How will you ensure that students listen to each other and develop ideas collectively? What will encourage the sharing of ideas and viewpoints? How will the tasks help students develop understanding cumulatively?

An important role for the teacher in dialogic teacher is a ‘supportive’ one. Students need confidence to contribute ideas without any concerns about ‘getting things wrong’. All ideas should be valued in the discussions and all opinions heard. The classroom culture of openness, a willingness to listen and a desire to inquire and understand the geography is important for achieving success in dialogic teaching.

Read about dialogic talk in Biddulph et al (2021) pp 68-70 and Roberts (2023) Chapter 11.
Read Simon, D.E. (2018) ‘It’s good to talk: Moving towards dialogic teaching’, Impact (Chartered College of Teaching), May.
Refer to Collaborative learning in geography and Dialogic teaching and discussion in geography for more on the classroom practice aspects of this.

Developing students’ oracy

Oracy is both an outcome and a process. As an outcome we are looking for students in geography lessons to talk confidently and fluently using appropriate geographical language. Oracy as a process involves students learning through talk with teachers and fellow students. Evaluations by the EEF indicate that raising the quality and rigour of classroom talk has positive academic, personal and social outcomes.

In 2024 the government made clear their intention to place oracy at the heart of their mission to transform education. The Oracy Education Commission’s Report (2024) makes a strong case that oracy is an entitlement for every child throughout schooling and that it should be the fourth “R”, of equal status with reading, writing and arithmetic. It also emphasises the value of dialogic teaching.

The Report offers a definition of oracy as ‘articulating ideas, developing understanding and engaging with others through speaking, listening and communication’. It notes that oracy is a golden thread through all that the Curriculum and Assessment Review is seeking to deliver and is explicitly mentioned in the terms of reference.

Discuss this Report and its definition of oracy with your mentor. How does the geography curriculum in your school recognise the importance and value of oracy?
Follow the place that oracy plays in the government’s ongoing review of the curriculum.

From the above readings you will see that there is a large body of evidence that students learn more effectively when they are activity engaged in discussion. But to make the most of this it is important to use ‘talking time’ well. Talk has many different types: such as explanation, instruction, description.

Be clear in your lesson goals what type you are looking for students to work with. It might be only a quick element in a lesson such as pair and share, or it could be a substantial part of it in a collaborative activity. You need to consider how long you will allow the talk to last.

A discussion task may create a ‘buzz’ of activity in a lesson – but are the students engaging in quality talk? High-quality talk supports students to articulate geographical ideas, consolidate understanding and extend their vocabulary.

Look at these indicators for quality talk in geography classrooms (based on the National Oracy Project, Carter 1991):

Reciprocity: do students respond to and build upon what each other says? Good talk should be collaborative, so students consider new ideas from different perspectives.
Speculation, making connections and interpreting: are students using terms such as what if… perhaps… I wonder… maybe if they…
Students talking at length: instead of the teacher doing most of the talking.
Students initiating: in most classrooms the teacher initiates, the student responds and the teacher evaluates. Where students initiate discussion with their peers and begin to speculate, more effective learning takes place.
Teacher uses open questions: this encourages students to talk, speculate, feedback ideas etc.

Beech (2023) promotes the strategy to think out loud. Classroom talk should provide students with an opportunity to unravel their thoughts and express them. She offers six strategies for teachers to use to enhance thinking aloud:

Highlight the value of thinking out loud and establish clear protocols for it in your classroom.
Model thinking aloud to demonstrate to students how to verbalize thought processes.
Ask open-ended questions that prompt deeper thinking and response.
Use various methods, such as think-pair-share or cold calling, to involve all students.
Respond to student answers thoughtfully, giving them time to elaborate and reflect.
Praise thinking aloud to reinforce the value of verbalizing ideas.

Read the article to find out more about each of these strategies.

Are you promoting quality talk?

Ask your geography mentor or another teacher to observe one of your lessons in which you plan to use a lot of talk.

Use the above indicators for quality talk from Carter’s research.
Ask your mentor/teacher to give you feedback on the ‘quality’ of the talk they observe.
Which Carter indicators were met successfully in the lesson? What made them successful?
Which Carter indicators were not so successful? Discuss ways could improve its quality in subsequent lessons.

Disciplinary oracy

Subject teachers foster discipline-specific ways of thinking and knowing. When teaching students to reason within geography, we use disciplinary vocabulary and differing types of dialogue. We encourage the use of domain-specific aspects in speaking like a geographer, whether to shape an investigation or an argument, to create something new or to solve a problem,

While disciplinary oracy is important, most oracy skills are applicable across a range of contexts. It is important and necessary for geography teachers to teach both disciplinary oracy and transdisciplinary or transferrable oracy skills. Both are important, and both are necessary.

Activities to create students’ quality talk

The Initial Teacher Training and Early Career Framework (ITTECF) requires that new teachers know that high-quality classroom talk can support pupils to articulate key ideas, consolidate understanding and extend their vocabulary. You need to know how to develop the use of activities that can do this.

The Oracy Education Commission’s Report (2024) states:

Oracy is also a pedagogical issue, involving choices a teacher can make in the classroom and how they deploy talk to elevate learning within their particular subject or phase. Through educationally productive talk, students share, develop and extend their thinking and engage critically yet constructively with the thinking of others, furthering their learning. This can be accomplished through skilfully guided whole-class, pair or small-group discussions, targeted questioning or one-to-one interactions. Moreover, opportunities to present and explain their learning, which require students to make decisions about how to adapt their knowledge for particular contexts or audiences, can help consolidate their understanding.

Activities that involve verbal description provide opportunities for students to develop quality talk. Questions such as: What might it be like? What and Where? In what ways are these places similar/different? To what extent? Although apparently simple questions, with a good stimulus and in the right context, these can be very fruitful.

The actual amount of challenge depends on the level of thinking expected by the teacher and whether they are asking students to apply knowledge, analyse or synthesise and evaluate.

See section 2.2 in Literacy in Geography. Study the list of ways and try out the task.

From this you will recognise that there are a range of different ways to structure talking and listening, both through whole-class teaching and through collaborative learning in groups. By communicating ideas and information, students clarify their thinking and develop own understanding.

See Strategies for developing speaking and listening skills within the geography classroom in Walshe (2017) p 200.
Try a ‘no pen’ lesson in order to allow students to talk more freely.
The GA Project Making my Place in the world aimed to help young people develop their speaking and listening skills within a geographical context. It explored how young people see their world and how they talk about their places. Try out some of these in your lessons.
Look at the suggested activities to encourage ‘speaking and engagement’ in Harris (2017) pp 84-8 and explore ways to incorporate some of these in your lessons.

Holyoak (2025) discusses the oral strategies she uses in her geography classroom to develop exploratory talk. Several of these provide learners with the opportunity to articulate answers before committing to writing. She gives practical advice on how to introduce oracy and build students’ confidence. Use the reflection questions at the end of the article to focus on in a discussion with your mentor.

Reading

Beech, H. (2023) ‘Promoting thinking out loud in the classroom’ Impact, 19, Autumn.
Biddulph, M., Lambert, D. and Balderstone, D. (2021) Learning to Teach Geography in the Secondary School: A Companion to School Experience, 4rd edition. London: Routledge.
Harris, M. (2017) Becoming an Outstanding Geography Teacher, Routledge. Chapter 8.
Holyoak, L. (2025) ‘Oracy strategies to improve geographical writing’ in Owen, C. and Monk, J. What is Geography Teaching, Now?, London: Hachette Learning.
Literacy in Geography (2004) Department for Education and Skills (You might find a hard copy of this publication in the school geography department).
Millard, W. and Gaunt, A. (2018) ‘Speaking up: The importance of oracy in teaching and learning‘, Impact (Chartered College of Teaching), May.
Oracy Education Commission, (2024) We need to talk: The report of the Commission on the Future of Oracy Education in England: Oracy Commission
Roberts, M. (2003) Learning through enquiry: Making sense of geography in the key stage 3 classroom. Sheffield: Geographical Association Chapter 7, ‘Focus on speaking and listening’.
Roberts, M. (2023) Geography Through Enquiry: Approaches to teaching and learning in the secondary school, Second edition. Sheffield: Geographical Association, chapters 10 and 11.
Walshe, N. (2017) ‘Literacy’ in Jones, M. (ed) Secondary Geography Handbook. Sheffield: Geographical Association. Chapter 15.

References

Alexander, R. (2000) Culture and Pedagogy: International comparisons in primary education. Oxford: Blackwell.
Thinking Together (2012) Projects/research into classroom talk.