TalkaboutoralEnglishteachinginmiddleschool入学英语口语复试.pdf

Talk about oral English teaching in middle school The importance of oral English If a person cant talk with others in English, we cant say he is good at English. So no one can be said to have mastered a language well if he is not able to speak it. People from different countries need to communicate with each other orally and most probably they will communicate in English. So when we learn English, we should also pay attention to the learning of oral English. Problems and insufficiency in the oral English teaching. While learning English, students should be trained in four basic skills - listening, speaking, reading and writing. But influenced by the present examination system, oral English may be thought dispensable in primary and middle school, for there is no concrete demands in spoken English at all. Many students who have a vague understanding toward English just want to get higher scores in the entrance exam so that they can get chances to enter universities or colleges and change their destinies completely. So gradually they develop “Mute English ”.They can not speak out what they learn. For example, after three years of English studying, most of the junior students in middle school can not answer some simplest questions such as “how old are you? ”, “what is your name? ”. Even some college students who passed the CET6 (College English Test), can not communicate with foreign friends, either. Reasons for the problems Why do students have such problems? The reasons may be the following. 1.Less attention are paid to spoken English. Most of all the teachers like to provide the students with a lot of knowledge-words, phrases, grammar, usages and so on, They are focusing these thing, especially on the grammar. The students do need these, but many teachers forget to teach them how to study English, and how to use it. So when you are giving the knowledge to the students, dont forget to teach them all the abilities of the four skills. 2.Students mental factorsThe most resistance of speaking English is students mental obstacle. In another word, they are lack of confidence and are shy to speak. They are afraid to be laughed at when they make mistakes. “Shyness and silence are luxuries you cant afford. If success depends on speaking, you must speak”. There are two mental factors that will influence students spoken English: one is their personal character and the other is their understanding of the importance of spoken English. Many students are nervous when they are in speaking class and are afraid to be asked by the teacher. They dont participate in the class activities unless the teacher calls them. Also because of nerve, they often make mistakes when they speak English. There is a relationship between foreign language learners and their mental characters. Generally speaking, extroverted learners like communicating with others and they are not afraid to make mistakes when they speak foreign languages. They are confident of themselves. So they have more advantages in learning English than those introverted learners. Most of them think that spoken English is very important so that they can concentrate on half of the class. 3.Lacking the essential language environment. Our students study English in the environment of only Chinese language. The students have not enough time and almost no opportunity to contact spoken English. When trained in the class, the students often come to a lot of difficulties. In such an English language environment the student s ability is seriously affected 4. The number of the students in the class is excessively large. The oral ability must be improved through the massive repeated practice. Each student has to have enough opportunity to practice. But in our country the class is big, generally about 50 - 60 students. The number of the class is excessively large so that it is difficult to organize effective spoken language training. Thus the students will have less opportunity to open their mouths to practice oral English and the spoken language ability naturally enhances with difficulty. 5.The opportunity to listen to English is too few. The improvement of spoke English ability must be established on the practice foundation of listening to English massively, but because teachers spoken language proficiency is low, the electrical teachingmaterials and other equipments are more inferior ,and so on, obviously the opportunity of the students to listen to English must be few. This directly affects the training. Suggestions to the problems 1. Improve teachers fully-developed abilities. English is becoming more and more important and English teachers have to face more and severer challenges. Each one has to improve himself continuously to be qualified and meet the demand of society by doing some further study, receiving teachers training, lea rning from others strong points to offset his weakness and so on. A good English teacher should have fluent language, correct pronunciation, beautiful intonation, and moderate tempo in speaking English. At the same time he must have abundant language knowledge like linguistics, be good at teaching, be skilled in communicating, be rich in affections. And the last but not the least, he himself must have many good virtues to influence students to be a successful man. 2 . Enough attention should pay to oral English. Let the teachers and student pay more attention to the training of oral skill by revising the syllabus and adding some formal oral test. Oral English training should be coherent, systematical and scientific. According to critical period hypothesis, children period is the golden period of acquiring language. Their tongues are flexible and they are free of mother tongue accent. So they can speak like native speakers, this is also the most efficient way to avoid developing “mute English ”. Besides training children s oral English can help cultivate their English thought language awareness, which is very helpful in English learning. Thus, we can get twice result with half efforts. To learn English well, both teacher and student should pay more attention to speaking. Nobody can learn English well without practicing his speaking. As a matter of fact, the four skills of listening, speaking, reading and writing is a whole part, without learning any part well you can not master the other three parts. But in reality, most teachers and students go against this rule. They just focus to the grammars, reading, listening and writing, which will be tested in English examinations. Take the Entrance Examination for College for example, there are just listening reading grammar and vocabulary and the writing but no speaking. Thus speaking is neglected by students and teachers both in class and out of class. In order to achieve high marks students prefer to spend time on their vocabulary and grammar, which is not good for their further studying and practicing ability, and also not the purpose of learning a language, because even someone has learnt a great number of words, without practicing oral English in his daily life, he will forget them easily. The best way of mastering a new word is to make a sentence then practice the sentence in reality. Just as the saying goes “practice makes perfect ”. Without practicing oral English, you can not master the language very well. Both spoken English and written English are very important and necessary for students. However, teachers should not spend too much time emphasizing grammar and rules that even native speakers apply in consistently, it would seem to be a waste. Instead, we should make use of the limited time in English class to practise their spoken English. Meanwhile, let students learn about some basic language points, and encourage students to read some reading materials that are written in formal English. What s more, this can improve students reading ability as well as their written English level. 3.Make more chances of practicing speaking We d better teach people how to fish instead of giving people fish. Students are the main parts of the speaking class rather than the teachers. So we should let them speak more. As noted by Frank M. Grittner, “ Speaking too much is the occupational disease of foreign language teachers”.As Jesperson said “ the first requirement of teaching foreign language well is try our best to let students contact foreign language and use foreign language”. Learning foreign language is like learning how to swim. The students should be in the water instead of getting a sprinkling of water now and then. They should be ducked down into the water. Finally they ll enjoy themselves in the water as able swimmers. So foreign language teachers should make more chances of practicing speaking for the students. Teachers should choose suitable teaching approaches, such as communicative approach. It is a student-centered way, which advocates students speak more and teachers are the supporting roles in the classroom. They only guide the students to the right direction. Although the teacher s talk can be good modeling and useful input, it is best to keep the teacher s talk at a minimum level. There is a belief that students should not be forced to speak when they are not ready yet. This brief is based on the assumption that if the students have not learned enough language components (e.g. grammar, vocabulary), they are unable to produce meaningful language. In China, generally speaking, both teachers and students have paid great attention to learning grammar and vocabulary. So our problem is not having nothing to say but not knowing how to say things. And this resulted from the lack of opportunities to speak. Therefore, design ing speaking activities that maximize students opportunity to speak is one of the central tasks for language teachers. In English class, students have chance to practise their oral English. Teacher should encourage them to speak English as often as possible. There are a lot of ways to do it, such as having a discussion among students , the topic must be designed carefully. For example, in Go for it English 7B, Unit 12 “Don t eat in class. ” when I finished teaching Section A, I designed a post-task activity. I gave students one situation: If you are the school presendent, what the school rules will you have for the school? Why? Then let them discuss about it by group work to practise their spoken English, at the same time, students will care the school rules more. To my surprise, the representative of each group can talk about their opinion very fluently and clearly. The atmosphere of the whole class is very active, too. Students also have this opportunity to use English , I also got the teaching targets of this class successfully. What I want to say is that spoken English should be used through the whole lesson. When you communicate with friends from other countries, this kind of training can also help you to talk with each other and change your ideas. Even i f there s something wrong when you are talking, it doesnt matter.4.Make good use of Motivation 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 tasks that they organize in class. Students are eager to speak, when the topic is 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 the task. If the task is too easy, the students may think it is childish and thus lose interest. In a successful speaking task, the language is at the right level. The task must be designed so that students can complete the task successfully with the language that they have. If the students lack too much vocabulary the task will become frustrating and the students are likely to give up or revert back to the native language. At first, teachers should try their best to speak more English in class, which will stimulate students interest and curiosity. In this case, there are more opportunities for students to open the mouth. It is a good requirement that in middle schools English teachers should speak at lest 70percent of English in a class because teacher should do a good example for students, and do not worry about anything, just speak more in English as you can, which will bring a great benefit to students and teachers. Speaking more English will make students keep a good habit of speaking English at any time. 5. Make good use of emotional factors. In the course of growth, pupils are not mature psychologically, and their feelings are very frail. The teachers must be able to arouse the learners active feelings and remove or restrain their passive feelings. A language teacher could pass his kindness, encouragement, trust and respect to the students by means of words, expression and action, and arouse the interest of students. Only in a relaxing teaching atmosphere can students have happy mood and dare to speak English. Though the students mistakes are unavoidable, the teachers may use some suitable methods to correct these mistakes and sometimes they dont have to correct them at all. Teachers should also praise or encourage students more, though their oral English is not good enough, help them to experience success. And we know one success may bring another; many times of success can reinforce the students self-confidence; then they may have the desire to express themselves in English. 6.Involve culture in the language teaching. Chomsky s communicative approach insists language be a tool to serve the society, so the learners must know how to use language in different situations while different language have different culture foundation. Culture factors that interfere communication include social forms (the rules, the customs, habits that must be obeyed in communication such as the forms of address, greeting, requests, making apologies, making calls and so on.), social knowledge, features of thinking, views of value and so on. When teaching oral English, we can give a comparison of the two languages to help students get a better understanding to the differences between them so as to avoid culture shock and reduce interlanguage errors. We should lay emphasis on enlarging the students cultural point of view, strengthening the sensitivity and adaptability about cultural differences and improving their cross-culture communication ability. 7.Application of the two-way communication. Speaking cant be taught separately. It is often connected with listening. So we often speak of listening and speaking. The traditional way of listening and speaking is aural-oral method. Now, the new method of two-way communication is very popular. The aural-oral method is fit for the teaching of beginning stage. It focuses on the practice of oral English drills. But too many drills are being practiced without any context or given conditions. So what is learned is isolat