Serving as an introduction to a conference for Australian educators on developing oral communication skills, this paper reviews current methods of teaching speech skills. The paper describes a basic approach that holds that a learner's improved use of a skill is related to the number of satisfying experiences the learner has using the skill. It also summarizes a teaching method based on the work of James Moffett that was recommended by the participants in a curriculum workshop in Canberra in 1974. In addition, three theories of teaching communication are described: teaching of techniques or discrete communication skills, teaching of rhetorical principles (the classic divisions of invention, disposition, style, memory, and delivery) and teaching of interaction skills (understanding one's own needs and responding sensitively and empathically to other's needs). (AEA)