Assessing Academic Oral Presentations in English Medium Education: Navigating Linguistic and Social Justice Implications of Decision Making, 2021-2022

Delivery of content is reported by many HE practitioners to be fundamental to successful performance in an assessed oral presentation task on their respective modules on degree programmes (Palmour, 2020). Conducting rich qualitative case studies on degree programmes is crucial to establishing the nature of oracy expectations and demands placed on students from diverse linguacultural backgrounds. This study addresses this neglected area of scholarship, by investigating AOP practices on degree modules at UK universities with a particular focus on how judgements are made on learning through oracy, with the ultimate aim of interrogating and fostering ways to maximise fairness. The study involves 7 interviews at 7 sites and focused fieldwork at 2 sites (Knoblauch, 2005). A site is a degree module on a UK degree programme which uses an oral presentation as part of its assessment suite. The following research questions guided the study: 1. What oracy skills do teachers and students value in assessed AOPs on their degree module? 2. What is the relationship between disciplinary knowledge and oracy skills in the assessed AOPs? 3. In what ways might the approaches to assessment and development of oracy skills in AOPs promote or undermine fairness and justice? The findings show that in some contexts there is insufficient support for the oracy demands placed on students. Furthermore, even when oracy support is provided, aspects of delivery style (e.g. confidence, slide design and eye contact) are overvalued in ways which might disadvantage particular student groups. It is paramount that oracy support is provided in tertiary education and that HE stakeholders promote increasingly fair and just oracy expectations.