Learn English – oral instructions vs verbal instructions

differencephrase-usage

I was given an assignment to correct any mistakes in some given sentences. I saw no real mistake in the sentence below:

Preparing to parachute from the airplane, Cameron received verbal instructions instead of written ones.

But the answer says that it is oral instructions, not verbal instructions. However, I think people also say "verbal instructions" and cannot find the difference between these two phrases (even though I've googled). How are they different?

Best Answer

While many native English speakers use these interchangeably, "verbal" could be considered less precise. From wiktionary:

oral: 1. Relating to the mouth. 2. Spoken rather than written.

verbal: 1. Of or relating to words. ... 4. Expressly spoken rather than written. ...

Since definition 1 of "verbal" is "of or relating to words," some people argue that all instructions that involve words could be called "verbal instructions." I don't agree with them. However, given that this argument exists about possible ambiguity, the clearest solution is to use "oral instructions," which has no possible ambiguity.

Related Solutions

Learn English – verbal English, oral English, and spoken English

The most common terms for these concepts are spoken English and written English.

Let's see how common each of your three choices is. I searched the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA) for each term and wrote down how many results there were:

  search term         results
  ---------------     -----------
  spoken english      54
  oral english        20
  verbal english      0

These results confirm my intuition, which tell me that spoken English is the most common form, and that oral English is still acceptable but is somewhat less common.

Verbal is sometimes used to mean "spoken rather than written", but it's not always used that way, and in this context I'm not sure it'd be understood. (When I was younger, I took a standardized test with a "verbal" section. It tested my written English skills, not my spoken English skills!) I'd avoid saying verbal English.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Learn English – verbal English, oral English, and spoken English

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