论文总字数：29962字

摘 要

当今英语已经成了使用最广泛的交际工具。而口语作为人际交往的最重要媒介理应得到人们的重视。然而当下的英语口语教学现状是令人担忧的。本文深刻分析了现如今初中英语教学在培养学生口语交际能力方面存在的问题并从学生和教师两个方面分析了引起该问题的原因。接着提出了培养初中生口语交际能力的方法。最后呈现了在培养口语交际能力的过程中所需要的策略。

关键词：口语交际能力；初中英语教学；培养；

Contents

1. Introduction 1

2. Literature Review 1

2.1 The introduction of input hypothesis 1

2.2 The introduction of output hypothesis 1

3. Problems and Causes in Middle School Oral English Teaching 2

3.1 Problems in middle school oral English teaching 2

3.2 Causes of the problems in middle school oral English teaching 4

4. Measures in Cultivating Oral Communicative Competence in Middle School 6

4.1 In Class 6

4.2. Out of class 8

5.Strategies in Oral English Communicative Teaching 9

5.1 Developing the habit of thinking in English 9

5.2 Following the teaching principle of motivational evaluation . 9

5.3 Finding the nature of English communication. 10

5.4 Helping students overcome the fear of speaking English 10

5.5 Creating a Real Language Environment 11

6. Conclusion 12

Works Cited 13

1. Introduction

With the advancement of society, there is an increasing demand for oral English talents. However, the current English teaching cannot meet this need. Strengthening oral communicative teaching and improving students" oral communicative competence are not only the inevitable needs of the development of modern society, but also the inherent requirements of English as a language. However, due to the influence of examination-oriented teaching for a long time, oral English teaching has been neglected and the overall teaching of oral English is not optimistic. With the comprehensive advancement of the new curriculum reform, more attention has been paid to oral English teaching and the cultivation of students" oral communicative competence. Strengthening listening and speaking training and improving students" oral communicative competence are the important goals of current English teaching reform.

2. Literature Review

Lots of scholars and teachers have put up with many different measures in cultivating oral communicative competence in middle school and after reading their papers we can easily find a common point that these measures are all based on two theories, namely, the input hypothesis and the output hypothesis.

2.1 The introduction of input hypothesis

The Input hypothesis was proposed by Krashen. If learners want to learn a new language they must be exposed to proper input that is slightly higher than their current level of language. This is his famous‘i 1’ formula. Therefore, in order to improve students’ oral communicative competence, students must be exposed to enough and proper language environments that conform to their language ability.

2.2 The introduction of output hypothesis

The output hypothesis was proposed by Swain. Simple exposure to language is less sufficient for language learning, and at the same time learners should exercise language as much as they can. Therefore in learning, students should have all kinds of activities to practice English.

3. Problems and Causes in Middle School Oral English Teaching

3.1 Problems in middle school oral English teaching

3.1.1 Teachers emphasizing imparting but neglecting using

When teaching, most of the teachers usually ask students to memories language knowledge but ignore the use of language. When most teachers have finished explaining the content and grammar, they begin a written test-based drill, and under such circumstance students seldom have the opportunity to use what they have learned to express themselves in spoken English. Although students from junior high school to senior high school spent six years learning English, memorizing a lot of English words, and learning a lot of grammar knowledge, it is still difficult for them to speak English fluently. There are not a few students with high marks, low ability and mute English.

3.1.2 Simplification of classroom teaching model

The traditional exam-oriented education model makes the oral English teaching and the curriculum form set in a fairly single scope, which pays much attention to the instilling teaching and lacks interaction. Some teachers do not realize that multimedia teaching is an important way to increase the efficiency of students" oral English teaching. Instead, they think it is unnecessary to use multimedia teaching in the classroom, which in the end results in a less vivid teaching atmosphere and makes the classroom depressed and dull, and cannot effectively mobilize students" enthusiasm. Therefore, the teaching efficiency is lower.

3.1.3Students not having enough oral practice training

As we all know, most oral communication takes place spontaneously in our daily life. However, in China because of the long-existing conventional teaching model, the use of English for the interaction purpose in our life or even in English class is rare .Many teachers’ focus is on the teaching of vocabulary, sentence and grammar, while ignoring the training of students" spoken language, not to mention the cultivation of oral communication ability, which will inevitably affect students" overall level improvement. With most of students paying much attention to written exercise and less attention to the training of oral English, students’ oral communicative competence will be weakened further.

3.1.4 Students lacking self-confidence

Many students will get nervous and perplexed when they speak English, as it is anxious for them to be made fun of by their classmates and blamed by their teachers when they make mistakes. This fear often causes students to appear anxious and nervous when expressing their emotions and opinions in spoken language, which affects their thinking and normal communication. Students who are highly anxious tend to be extremely nervous when asking questions or answering questions in class, often making mistakes, and their ability of language expression is reduced, so they are unwilling to speak on their own initiative. Therefore, fear is the main psychological factor affecting oral expression. However, students’ anxiety is closely related to the attitudes of teachers towards pupils’ mistakes. Students who have experienced setbacks and failures in their studies are afraid of teachers" criticism and are prone to fear or anxiety. They lack self-confidence and motivation to learn. They don"t answer questions, don’t open their mouths, and don"t want to talk to their teachers. Therefore it is not difficult for us to find that teachers are definitely an important factor that affects students’ performance and anxiety in class. Teachers" classroom behaviors and attitudes can easily cause students to be too nervous, so that they cannot fully express themselves, affecting their enthusiasm to actively participate in oral training activities in the classroom. For example, when correcting students" language errors, the number of corrections and how to correct errors will affect the anxiety level of students" oral training.

3.2 Causes of the problems in middle school oral English teaching

3.2.1Analysis from students

Firstly, students tend to pay no heed to the magnitude of oral English. Although with the intention of managing the entrance examination, a larger number of pupils put great value on oral English learning and they are willing to spend some time practicing oral English. On the other hand, still a lot of students hold that oral English is worthless, or even needless. Especially in some areas where the spoken English test has not been popular or not even been implemented, the students are actually oblivious to the significance of spoken English and at last think that spoken English needs no additional training.

Secondly, students have stereotypes of thinking in learning English .Sentences in junior high school students" English textbooks are not very complicated, but because of the influence of thinking habits of Chinese as the mother tongue, students often translate English words and sentences according to the literal meaning of Chinese, which makes translation not go smoothly and hinders students" oral communication. According to a survey, most students think that the biggest difficulty in learning English is the influence of thinking patterns, which makes the students fear of speaking English making mistakes.

Thirdly, students lack necessary language environment. In China, most of students are only exposed to a single language environment where almost everyone around them barely speak English and they have no chance to have access to native and natural oral English. In addition, there are only a few English lessons per week, which makes their chances of practicing spoken English rarer. According to our questionnaire survey of 200 second-year junior middle school students about the problems in oral English teaching and the ways to improve it, ‘42.93% of the students realize the importance of English teaching environment and are eager to improve it’. (Deng)

Analyzing the above reasons, we can find that many factors of students are partly responsible for the current situation of oral English teaching in middle school such as ignoring the importance of oral English or lacking proper language environment and therefore proper attention should be paid to students in order to change that situation.

3.2.2. Analysis from teachers

Firstly, teachers are short of due attention. Most of teachers argue that the main target of English education is to help students achieve higher grades and pass a variety of exams in their lives so that they spend most of time helping students master language knowledge. In their opinions, if the exam results are improved and are desirable, then their purpose of learning English is achieved. This concept directly affects the teaching of spoken English.

Secondly, teachers’ teaching methods are not appropriate. In China, English classes are usually led by teachers. Teachers are the core and the master of the class and students are just dependent on teachers and do what they order. Teachers speak and teach for most of the classes. For example, they teach grammar rules, analyze texts and so on. Students just need to understand and memorize some grammar knowledge, some newly learned expression and words. This mode leave students in such a situation where they have few opportunities to use what they have acquired to talk and interact with their classmates and teachers , which greatly weaken students’ enthusiasm in learning English and is not beneficial to the development of oral communication competence.

Thirdly, there are less excellent oral English teachers. In spoken language teaching, teachers not only communicate with students, but also act as language communication instructors, constantly managing students" feedback to information. Therefore, spoken language teaching is very challenging and demanding for teachers. They should have an excellent grasp of language and master scientific teaching methods so as to attain teaching objectives. Otherwise, it is difficult to achieve ideal teaching results. It has been pointed out that if the water of knowledge is to flow from teachers" hearts to students" thirsty hearts, there must be a smooth channel, which is teachers’ teaching language. And the canal mouth of this long canal should be the mouth of teachers. This metaphor vividly illustrates the importance of teachers" good quality and oral ability. As far as the whole country is concerned, in urban middle schools with better conditions, foreign teachers are employed, and oral English courses are taught by foreign teachers, and good teaching results have been achieved. However, in rural middle schools and urban middle schools with poor conditions, spoken English is still taught by native English teachers in China. However, almost every English teacher in China is born and bred in China and therefore they have no chance to talk with native English speakers and therefore cannot have access to the authentic language so it’s hard for them to create some real communication situations and have a native and fluent oral English . On the other hand, most English teachers in china are proficient at the subject they are teaching but they have little knowledge of background knowledge and cultural elements that greatly affect communication .What’s worse, some teachers regard teaching as stimulus-response and completely exclude any consideration of cultural factors. In addition, teachers" good qualities and personalities, such as patience, humor, imagination and humanity, can promote "cooperation" in communicative teaching. However, some teachers pay more attention to the accumulation of knowledge and experience, but seldom consider and study the impact of their own personality on teaching, resulting in "indifference" and "non-cooperation" attitude in oral English teaching.

To sum up, these three causes mentioned above are main obstacles of developing student’s oral English communicative competence in middle school .In order to facilitate students to apply language flexibly no matter in life or in class, teachers must make some adjustments to their language structure and their beliefs in English teaching and also they should have noble qualities so as to effect students not only intellectually but emotionally.

4. Measures in Cultivating Oral Communicative Competence in Middle School

4.1 In Class

4.1.1 Dialogue

Dialogue can be carried out in different forms .Teachers should adopt proper forms according to their goals and students’ language level. Pair work is where students are divided into groups of two where they can carry out many activities and more importantly, students are free to talk with each other. Dialogue, sentence patterns, language point exercises and problem discussions in the text can all be carried out in this way. Group work is dividing the class into groups, usually 4-5 per group. This form applies to multi-role dialogues, discussions, etc. Usually students will speak English in groups at ease.

4.1.2 Social games

This kind of activity is to put students in a game-like situation where students will feel relaxed to talk and interact with their classmates in English .For example, when students are playing games such as drawing and guessing, they will actively feel the need to interact and communicate with each other .Such games are abundant and teachers should try to capitalize on them so that students oral communicative competence will be improved gradually.

4.1.3 Role-play

Role-play is another form of language communicative training that students like. Teachers are supposed to invent a real situation in class, for example, interviewing, traveling and so on where students will act in different roles such as interviewers, drivers, etc. to conduct simulated communicative training. Standing in the shoes of the roles they are playing will helping students be active to use language.

4.1.4 Retelling the text

Retelling the text that students have just learned can help students promote their language expression. To begin with, teachers are supposed to help students to get a full understanding of the passage and then let students retell this passage. Using retelling to teach dialogue and grammatical points in reading articles can not only enable students to actively use their brains, expand their imagination, but also make them freely use the knowledge they have learned to express their ideas.

4.1.5 Topic discussion

Topic discussion is definitely instrumental in the persuasion of students to speak English. Firstly, teachers can provide students with a variety of topics then students will choose one topic that attracts them most and after that they will discuss around that topic. Finally, students will be invited to present their fruits. In these informal atmospheres, students have no pressure to speak English and enthusiastically share their opinions and gradually their oral communicative competence will be strengthened.

4.2. Out of class

Extracurricular activities provide more chances for communication in English. It can also help stimulate students" initiative and intellectual development. For example, organizing English corner ,setting up English salon, organizing community activity groups, carrying out a series of activities, such as watching the movie "The cat in boots", reciting poetry "Following the dream", learning to sing English songs "My love" and so on. In a word, English extracurricular oral communication activities have various forms which students are interested in.

4.2.1 Playing games

Extracurricular games are, of course, imperative forms to get pupils involved in speaking English. Teachers can design different games. For example, students can play a game called “word succession” where a student will say an English word and then the next student should put up with another word beginning with the same letter as the first one .All students take turns to put forward a word if one cannot make it and he or she will be punished in such ways as telling a story in English or singing an English song. Games like this can relieve students’ anxiety in speaking English, and make students feel competitive to use English. It is important to note that these games are ones that will occupy much time and cannot be finished in limited class time.

4.2.2 Competition

Competition has many forms. It mainly includes speech contests, story-telling contests and so on. For example, we can launch a speech contest on certain topic .Students take turns to deliver a speech. Teacher, as a judge, will rank students grades according to their performance. During this process, students will keep polishing their speaking skills and content and try their best to give a perfect presentation. Through this kind of competition, students" learning enthusiasm can be effectively mobilized and their oral English communicative competence can be improved.

5. Strategies in Oral English Communicative Teaching

5.1 Developing the habit of thinking in English

When students speak English, most of them usually organize their thoughts and opinions in Chinese and then they translate them into English, which greatly affects the fluency of oral English. Therefore, in order to improve this situation teachers should urge students to use English more, which can not only increase the chance of language practice, but also effectively improves students" English comprehension ability, contributing to cultivating students" habit of thinking in English .For example, they can talk with their classmates in English, talk with themselves in English or keep a habit of writing diary. In addition, teachers should set up a good example .They should strive to use English more often when students are around and make sure their expression are native and fluent..

5.2 Following the teaching principle of motivational evaluation

In class, if we want to nurture students’ oral communicative competence better, we should try to arouse students" interest of learning. Interest is the motivation for communication; interest is the motivation for active thinking. One of the efficient ways to stimulate students" interest is to give them proper encouragement and incentive evaluation timely, so that students can see their progress, which therefore stimulates their initiative and protect their self-esteem.

Firstly, in teaching students should be praised more and fewer students should be criticized and every bit of progress should be valued. Besides, different forms of evaluation can be carried out by teachers or by peers themselves. After evaluation, immediate feedback should be given to students.

Secondly, when students are speaking English especially in those activities intended to develop the fluency of spoken English, teachers should try not to interrupt speech and correct mistakes and rather keep mistakes in mind and correct them later .By doing this, students can conduct complete speech with fluency and confidence.

5.3 Finding the nature of English communication.

Imitation is one of the ways of students’ learning. Therefore, in order to develop students’ oral communicative competence and make their speech more native, teachers" classroom discourse should embody the characteristics of oral discourse such as spontaneity and creativity and accordingly teachers" English discourse in class should be natural, flexible, constantly renovated and full of personality, not always those fixed classroom phrases, fixed questions and answers and some dry sentences.

5.4 Helping students overcome the fear of speaking English

It is necessary to help students overcome their fear of speaking. By doing so, their motivation and interest in learning English will be strengthened, which in the long term will build up the fluency of oral English communication. English teachers can assign oral tasks before class, let students set up oral groups, adopt MINI-SPEECH (short speeches) approach, put forward different requirements for different levels of students, take turns on different topics (self-introduction, life anecdotes, personal experience, off-campus facts, etc.), or start cooperative training such as simple dialogue, telling small stories, discussing hot topics, etc. During these tasks, teachers should pay heed to students" emotions .For those students who are nervous, they should use words such as "Take it easy" and "Don"t be nervous" to alleviate students" tension, eliminate their inferiority, fear and anxiety, and build up confidence to speak. After the lecture, teachers should pay attention to the art and strategy of evaluation so as to avoid damaging the enthusiasm of students. With gentle attitude and tactful language, teachers should encourage students to open their mouths boldly, communicate actively, praise their courage appropriately, guide students to overcome psychological barriers, and make students experience success in loose, pleasant communication, so as to better understand and accept the language content, activate the internal motivation of learning spoken language, and get emotional encouragement and support.

5.5 Creating a real language environment

From input hypothesis theory, we can draw that students should be exposed to proper language environments so as to learn a new language. That is to say, by understanding the input language, contacting the actual language, and using the real context and communicative situation, students naturally grasp language knowledge and communicative strategies. Real discourse situation training can enable students to grasp the unique way of expression, thus reducing pragmatic failures and improving the appropriateness of language communication. To improve students" oral communicative competence, the construction of meaningful language interaction is regarded as the core activity of the classroom.

Firstly, creating communication situations for students is necessary. In china students have fewer situations to use English except in class and therefore their motivation in learning English are not high .Teachers are required to create classroom life situations that stimulate students" interest and integrate language input, language practice and classroom communication into language use activities. If we adopt "communication-interaction" teaching, through role-playing, creating simulated scenes and creating learning atmosphere, students can participate in, experience, interact, communicate and cooperate in the created situations, and accurately express the general situations of daily life, such as greeting, calling, asking for directions, seeing a doctor, shopping, reception and service. Creating student-centered classroom communication scenarios, on the one hand, can increase students" language practice opportunities, once they encounter similar contexts in life, they can listen, express and respond calmly; on the other hand, it can alleviate students" nervous and anxious psychology, cultivate their team spirit and break through the bottleneck of "dumb English".

Secondly, making full use of multimedia assisted instruction is important. Teachers should use CD-ROM and homemade courseware to create language, picture and audio communication situations, and transform the static knowledge into the dynamic content of the combination of form and sound, so as to enrich the classroom content, improve the quality of language input, enable students to easily enter the real situation of language activities, stimulate curiosity and interest in learning, and cultivate students" autonomy, learning ability, and insight into language and cultural differences.

Finally, we should fully carry out colorful extracurricular activities. The second class is the supplement and extension of the first class, and can offer a bigger stage to practice oral English. Spoken English teaching should broaden students" learning channels, adhere to the principle of "optimizing the first class and strengthening the second one", and vigorously conduct various activities to help improve students" oral English communicative competence, such as English Corner, English Salon, letting teachers communicate with students in English, and students use language in a relatively free and close communication environment, so as to perceive and avoid pragmatic failures. Organize various speech contests, English drama, English poetry recitation and other activities to stimulate students" interest in learning, so that students can release their language potential in free, open and pleasant activities, and achieve the goal of free communication.

6. Conclusion

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