Question-answer Technique and the Development of Speaking Ability.doc

问答技巧与口语能力的发展Question-answer Technique and the Development of Speaking AbilityContentsAbstract.1Key words.1I. Introduction1II. What are the Characteristics of Spoken Language? 1 III. Difficulty in Improving is Spoken English in Classroom2 IV. The Importance of Teaching Spoken English.3V. The Teaching Stages to Teaching Spoken English 45.1 Gaining the Students Interest 45.2 Learning the Language 55.3 Producing the Language5VI. Value of Question-answer Technique in Classroom6VII. The Practice of Question-answer Technique in the Classroom7VIII. Question-answer Technique and the Development of Speaking Ability8IX. Conclusion11References12摘 要： 在英语教学当中，口语在英语中是很重要的部分。每个人学习英语更多的是为了交流。问答技巧在口语中扮演一个很重要的角色。然而，最重要是让学生感兴趣并熟练使用它。关键词：问答技巧；口语；发展；能力Abstract: A brief overview of teaching spoken English, spoken English is very important in English study. Everyone accepts the proposition that language is means of communication. While question-answer technique, role working is very useful in oral training, however, the most important thing is to make the students interested in what they are talking and keep them talk.Key words: question-answer; speaking; development; abilityI. IntroductionWith the rapid growth of Chinas economy and interaction with the outside world, there is a growing need among Chinese students to learn English in middle school. However, after eight or more years of English study, more often than not many Chinese students still feel it hard to speak the language. Speaking is the skill that the students will be judged upon most in real-life situations. It is an important part of everyday interaction and most often the first impression of a person is based on his/her ability to speak fluently and comprehensibly. So, as teachers, we have responsibility to prepare the students as much as possible to be able to speak in English in the real world outside the classroom and the testing room.II. What are the characteristics of spoken language?Speaking is the skill that the students will be judged upon most in real-life situations. It is an important part of everyday interaction and most often the first impression of a person is based on hisher ability to speak fluently and comprehensibly. So .as teachers, we have a responsibility to prepare the students as much as possible to be able to speak in English in the real world outside the classroom and the testing room. Speaking is a skill, just like swimming, driving a car, or playing ping-pong. Too often, in the traditional classroom, the learning of English has been relegated to linguistic knowledge only, e.g. knowledge of vocabulary and grammar rules, with little or no attention paid to practicing language skills. How can we tell the difference between knowledge and skill? Bygate (1987:4) points out one “fundamental different is that both can be understood and memorized, but only a skill can be imitated and practiced one of the characteristics of speech in everyday life is that speech is spontaneous. That is, in most situations, people do not plan ahead of time what they are going to say. Only in more formal situations, such as when a person has been asked to give a speech, do people plan and organize their speech. The fact that speech is spontaneous means that it is full of false starts, repetitions, incomplete sentences, and short phases. So, should we expect the students to produce complete sentences in the language classroom? Bygate (1987:8) points out that teachers may be requiring their students to do more forward thing and planning than native speakers do in real life! III. Difficulty in improving students spoken English in classroomIn Chinese language classroom, many students have great difficulty in improving their spoken English. The reasons are as follows.Firstly, most of the speaking activities are of the traditional types, such as reading the dialogue, reciting texts, doing translation, and the materials chosen for the students are non-authentic where students feel deadly bored instead of appreciating them and accepting them. Many teachers do not have many ideas of the role of speaking, nor do they know the importance of providing a natural circumstance of speaking. Secondly, another aspect of producing spoken language is the time-constraint. The students must be able to produce unplanned utterances in real time; otherwise people will not have the patience to listen to them.Thirdly, although speaking has been included in the National Plan for English teaching in schools in China for the past 15 years, the percentage of time devoted to activities in which students can communicate with each other in English remains small in the whole class. Similarly, the method of giving priority to listening and speaking has been advocated, yet it has had little effect. Both teachers and students think it neither realistic nor necessary to teach or learn speaking. It seems to them that their main objective is reading not speaking. They may also think speaking is not a skill worth cultivating because Chinese students have little chance to communicate with native speakers. And more readily they will admit that whether the students can go to university or a college mainly depends on the reading and writing, not speaking, for almost all the important examinations do not consist of speaking test. It is important for teachers to correct mistakes made during speaking activities in a different way from the mistakes made during a study exercise. When students are repeating sentences trying to get their pronunciation exactly right, then the teacher will often correct every time theres a problem. But if the same teacher did the same thing while students were involved in a passionate discussion about whether smoking should be banned on tourist beaches, for example, the effect might well be to destroy the conversational flow. Constant interruption from the teacher will destroy the purpose of the speaking ability. Many teachers watch and listen while speaking act ivies are taking place. They note down things that seemed to go well and times when students couldnt make themselves understood or made important mistakes. When the act ivies have finished, they then ask the students how they thought it went before giving their own feedback. They may say that they liked the way student A said this and the way student B was able to disagree with her. They will then say that they did hear one or two mistakes and they can then discuss them with the class, write them on the board or give them individually to the students concerned. In each case, they will ask the students to see if they can identify the problem and correct it. As with any kind of correction, it is important not to single students out for particular criticism. Many teachers deal with the mistakes they heard without saying who made them.Of course, there are no hard and fast rules about correcting. Some teachers who have a good relationship with their students can intervene appropriately during a speaking activity if they do it in a quiet non-obtrusive way. But it is a risky enterprise. The general principle of watching and listening so that you can give feedback later is usually much more appropriate.IV. The importance of teaching spoken English In my opinion, those who think the major objective of the students is reading not speaking have ignored some obvious pedagogical facts: Firstly, generally speaking, people have the notion that learning English has something to do with oral English. When one says some students are good at English, people will naturally think he or she can speak English well. It may well be suggested that students come to school to study English with the strong wish that they come to learn to speak it. For example, children after their first lesson always show their satisfaction when they say “good morning” or “thank you” to each other. Their attitude towards English is very positive and they are eager to learn more. I would suggest that speaking could increase the students interest in and enthusiasm for English learning. “The development of oral ability is a good source of motivation for most learners” (Harmer, 1991, 53). Secondly, oral language can be very useful for the development of reading and writing skills. As Rivers points out, “When we read and write, we call upon what we know of the language orally.” (Rivers, 1968, 20). He goes on to say that there must be a connection between reading and speaking. If the students are reading, then they are using their oral language, too. If a student has poor oral language, his reading ability may also be poor. Similarly, Rivers (1968) argues that writing involves oral ability as well. Although many teachers with poor oral ability may have some difficulty in teaching English, however, it is by no means impossible for them to do so. It can be suggested that they teach oral language by the indirect method. The teachers who lack oral ability may use a recorder to provide an authentic accent and some authentic materials like dialogue for students to imitate. They can also make good use of class time for active participation by all their students. So the teachers can make up for their deficiency in oral ability by encouraging the students participation with well prepared lessons, highly organized activities and effective techniques.The view that speaking is not a skill worth cultivating because Chinese students have little chance to communicate with native speakers may be judged shortsighted. We would realize that the generation we are teaching will have much more access to English speakers in the future with the further development of the open-door policy. It would be a pity for the teachers to find their students severely inhibited and embarrassed when the opportunity arises for them to speak English.V. The Teaching Stages to Teaching Spoken EnglishWhen teaching a foreign language, there are three main stages that need to be considered during a lesson.5.1 Gaining the students interest.During this stage the teacher must provoke the students imagination, gain their interest and help them to engage with the topic they are going to study. The most common method is to set a reading or listening task. The students will read a text or listen to a tape. The task will most probably introduce new vocabulary and grammatical structure or even provide a model for the students to reproduce. Research has shown that motivation is one of the most important variables in successful language learning. Teachers can do a lot to increase and maintain the motivation of students by the types of tasks that they organize in class. Students are eager to speak when the topics are interesting or there is a clear objective that must be reached. Again great care should be taken to make sure the task is in line with the students ability to deal with this task. If the task is too easy, the students may think it is childish and thus lose interest.5.2 Learning the language Hopefully, the students are now attentive and willing to learn. In successful speaking tasks, the students talk a lot in the foreign language. One common problem in speaking activities is that students often produce one or two simple utterance in the foreign language and spend the rest of the time chatting in their native language. Another common problem is that teacher talks too much of the time, thus taking away valuable practice time from the students. During the second stage they will do most of their learning. Students have to practice the new vocabulary and structures. The teacher may drill the whole class, listen and repeat, set individual tasks or even group work.Whether the task takes place among the whole class or in small groups, a successful task should encourage speaking from as many different students as possible. The task should be designed in a way so that the outspoken students do not dominate discussions. When necessary. The teacher may interfere to guarantee equal opportunities for students of different levels. The important thing here is to use it in the final stage.5.3 Producing the languageIn a successful speaking task, the language is at the right level. The task must be designed so that students are likely to give up or revert back to the native language. While teaching spoken English, productivity is most important and therefore deserves the vast majority of time during a lesson. Students should have a task to complete that requires them to communicate using the new vocabulary and structures. The students have hopefully learnt the new language, but it remains passive and unusable, locked in their minds. Practice will allow them to become used to using the new language and turns passive knowledge into active, usable language. This is perhaps the most important stage for the students as their knowledge is vast but lacks the ability to use it. VI. Value of question-answer technique in classroomThe first characteristic of a successful speaking test is that students talk a lot in the foreign language. This is the strongest way for using question-answer technique because it increases the time for each student to practice speaking in one lesson. The only way to become good at a skill is to practice it. Nobody expects to be good at playing ping-pong the first time they try even if they already know all the truth of speaking a foreign language. Since the students will probably not have enough opportunity to practice speaking in English outside the classroom, it is our responsibility as teachers to give them as many opportunities in the classroom as possible. Speaking in question-answer technique is more natural. Because in real life, we spend most of our time talking to one other person or to a few other people, it is usually a more formal situation where we have spent time preparing what we are going to say. Rather than try to include the whole class in a discussion, it is often better to divide the class into groups so that a number of parallel discussions can take place. In this way more students get a chance to speak, although it is more difficult for the teacher to monitor. At the end of the discussion phase there can be a period when the whole class comes together to compare conclusions. Each group can choose a reporter to take notes and report back on the discussion that took place in his or her group. The groups can also report back using a poster to show the others. Different small groups can work at different levels if the teacher groups them accor