Oral communication skills were built up in a carefully graded progression organized around question-and-answer exchanges between teachers and students in small, intensive classes.
They recognize that writing and speaking are activities that involve expenditures of energy, unflagging attention, and the effort to reach out to the minds of others by written or oral communication.
And there was a very well developed tradition of oral communication and oral transmission where you'd pass down the sayings of a wise figure very accurately, and if you got it wrong, people would correct you.