Analysis of the Importance of Oral English in English Teaching of Middle School in the West Region Abstract: As we know, English has already become an international language in the world. Oral English plays an important role in real life. It is one of the basic skills in English learning. Recently, oral English appears more and more important in English teaching of middle school in west region of China. But there are also some problems that exist in language teaching.
Some students can’t find the right word when they communicate with others in English with the results that they have the impression they are poor at oral English. On the other hand, because of these problems, some of the students might give up this opportunity to learn and practice oral English. With the time flying, they become afraid to talk out aloud in the class. As a result, the less they speak, the worse their oral English will be.
This paper tries to explore the importance of speaking English, then find out the original problems and analyses the reasons why student’s ability of speaking is so poor, in view of the realistic problems that middle school students have, we should improve oral English into practice through this research. Key words: oral English; middle school; communication; west region ?? : ????? ,??????????????????????????????? ??????? ,????????????????????? ,???????? ???????????? ,?? ,?????????????????????? ??????????????????????? ,???????????? ??????????????? ,????????? ,???????????? ???????? ,???? ,?????????????????? ,???? , ?????????????????????????? ,?????????? ?????????????????????????????? ,??????? ?????????????????. ??? : ???? ;?? ;?? ;???? I. Introduction In the west region of our country, the traditional English teaching attaches the great important to the grammar, sentence structures. The students normally think that oral English is not as important as they have been expected. The entrance exam of high education institutes also has not he speaking section, not to mention the oral exam. The students think that it is unnecessary for them to learn speaking, it takes them Iots of time to learn, but they gain little achievements, finally most of them give up. Just under the circumstances, few students learn and few teachers teach, even, few theorists do the research on this project. So, it won’t help our English teaching. As long as we have realized the seriousness of the problem, we can pay more attention to it.. In the modern society, communication is indispensable for learning a foreign language. ith China’s economy increasing every year, the contact with outside is becoming more and more important, and we should have good communication skills. Communication’s basic tool is speaking. The middle school students of west region should concern more about it, if we lack of this tool, we will undoubtedly fail in our future work. It is well known that most of the students in middle school would not like to speak in English in their English class, and they consider that speaking something in English is hard work, which also have troubled me for a long time.
For this problem I did sumo research. According to the research, with my knowledge and theory I learned in university, I want to share my own idoas with you. The following lists of statements mainly give us the reasons why same of the students want to learn oral English well: To be able to communicate with people all over the world in an international language. To be able to read and understand a wide range of English sources for future purposes. To have a better opportunity of employment, status, and financial reward in the job market in the future.
To be able to read and listen to English media for information and pleasure. To pass the tests in the school. And pass the Entrance Examination. To survive abroad if given a chance to go to the West especially in English-speaking countries. From this survey we can see that students themselves need to learn English because most of them consider it as other purposes or they wish to improve their English ability to contact with international people. So students should learn to use language through communication.
The task of language teachers is not to inforrn students of the language but to develop their ability to use the language far a variety of communicative purposes. II. Literature Review People found that some problems still existed in oral English teaching in the west region of our country. For example, the first one is putting more emphasis on examination rather than communication. The second one is neglecting the whole understanding of the text. The third one is speaking too much mother tongue in English teaching. The author conducted two oral tests for the students during the action research.
From the test score, the author fully convinced that the students have been steadily making progress in their oral English during implement of their practice. The contents were convened into a written form with four aspects: pronunciation, intonation and rhythm; correctness; appropriateness; fluency. By comparison on these four aspects of the two tests, the evaluation is carried out obviously. In my experience of teaching, I fmd students actually have a strong desire to speak. They are reluctant to speak because they arc afraid of making mistakes and failing to find suitable words to express themselves well.
If the teacher try to encourage them to speak by using as many ways as possible and creating a good language speaking environment, students will speak actively, willingly and naturally. speaking as one of the four skills, this can be mastered only through practice. Practice makes perfect. Language we used should be fluent and precise, the format should be correct, suit the requirements of the thesis, the structure should be complete, and the arguments should be sufficient and reasonable, the points should be very clear.
It is well known that no student can be said to have learned an item of language until he or she uses it naturally and automatically irt an appropriate situation, and this should be the first importance in oral facility. We must make our daily talk accurate, fluent and appropriate. According to the oral English teaching, in west of China, middle school students are supposed to speak oral English in their daily life. At the first, students are expected to be able to express daily onversations in simple English, to ask and answer questions based on some reading or listening material, and to talk briefly for about two minutes about the content of a text after one or two minutes’ prior preparation. Then, students are expected to be able to carry on conversations with native English speakers not only about daily life but also about social issues. Given some reading or listening material, they should be able to retell the content and discuss the topic for three to four minutes with one or two minutes’ preparation irt advance. III. Analyzing the Reasons of Poor Dral English in Middle School of West Region. . Too timid to speak aloud in the class One way to tackle this problem is to find the root of the problem and start frorn there. In fact, most of the students are afraid to speak aloud in English in their class, or they feel really shy about talking in front of other students, then one way to change this situation is a create and establish your own classroom way where speaking aloud in English is the norm. One way to do this is to distinguish your classroom with other classroorns by arranging the classroom tasks differently in groups, and you can also decorate the walls through English posters.
At beginning you should encourage your students to speak in English whether their language is right or wrong, and encourage your students to ask questions in English. Of course, you should not give up this method by yourself. Giving positive feedback also helps shy students to speak more. Another way to get students motivated to speak more is to allocate a percentage of their final grade to speaking skills and let the students know they are being assessed continually an their speaking practice in class throughout the term.
And encourage your students to speak out in English is to speak in English yourself as simple as possible in class. If you are shy about speaking in English, how can you expect your students to overcome their fears about speaking in English? Don’t worry if you are not completely fluent or don’t have that elusive perfect native accent, as Swain wrote “ We learn to speak by speaking” and that goes for teachers as well as students. The more you practice the more you will improve your own oral skills as well as help your students improve theirs. . Boring activities make students keep silent A completely different reason for student silence may simply be that the class activities are boring or are pitched at the wrong 1eve1. Very often our interesting communicative speaking activities are not quite as interesting or as communicative as we think they are and all the students are really required to do is answer ‘ yes’ or ‘ no’ which they do quickly and then just sit in silence and avoid speaking more.
So maybe you need to take a closer look at the type of speaking activities you are using and see if they really capture student interest and create a real need for communication. 3. Students don’t know the importance of practice Sorne students do not know the importance of their own practice. Language- learning is just like learning swimming, you are not able to learn to swim by reading books. So is earning a language or skill, the most effective way is to practice it in the authentic situation with authentic media.
For our English learners, if we want to master a language including mastering all its skills, we should try your best to think something in English, express in English, a world famous socialist Karl Marx ever said “ when you are learning a foreign language, you must learn to forget your native language”, that is to say, when you are learning a foreign language, you should put yourself into an atmosphere of foreign language. The factors that influence the development of students’ oral English are mainly three aspects:
Number one, students are unwilling to speak out, for they’re afraid of making mistakes and showing her or his dull-wit before classmates. Number two, English environment is also important for the students who are learning a foreign language, but most Chinese students lack of such environment. Number three, students have few chances to practice speaking, many schools invite foreign teachers, but most of them don’t know about Chinese education background, undoubtedly, they can’t understand Chinese students’ psychology, or they always speak to themselves during the whole class, so that the students have no chance to speak. . Lack of language acquisition environment It is not an easy thing to learn second language, when they were born, they heard Chinese, they learn Chinese, they speak Chines, Chinese are our mother tongue, they lack of the way of think English, they had a fixed language think form, the output and input are all Chinese. About this situation, we should encourage them to see more English films; to organize more English drama; to listen more English tapes; and to read more English readings. 5. Learning interests are also a big problem In most cases, when they first to learn English, they don’t like English at all.
So, they are not concentrated on English study, they don’t like to remember new words and practice oral English, from that on, they give up English study, so they don’t study English well. The solution to this problem, you must cultivate the students’ interests at the first time. If they failed, as a teacher, you must encourage them, make them feel study English is a fun for them. And it is very important for them to go to the key university in the future. IV Analyzing the Current Situation of Oral English and Methods toSolving This Problem 1. Current situation of oral English
In our country which is non-English speaking country, because there was little time to contact with those who speak English, and being effect by Chinese indeed, when the students speak English, owing to the effect of the vocabulary of mother tongue, Chinese English appears. On the other hand, different countries have different form of structural sentence. Frankly speaking, that knowledge in mother tongue must influence acquirement of the foreign language knowledge in different way, at the same time, the middle school students often think in Chinese instead of English most of the time, and form a habit of their thought.
Therefore, there are so many typical Chinese English when speaking. For example, when they ask the caller’s name, most of them will say “ who you are? ” instead of “ who is that? ” and some sentences also expressed in Chinese English. However, the Chinese English express only understand by Chinese, not the foreigner. I made a plot investigation in order to know the situation. For this reason, I designed a questionnaire to find out the true causes of the problem. I intended to get more detailed and more exact opinions from all the students through the questionnaire.
And I tried to make it as scientific and effective as possible. At first I asked a few students why were at different English levels to try out the questionnaire. Then I modified some of the items. After that I distributed the questionnaire to students and gave them ten minutes to fill it out When all these data was collected, I made Some statistical evaluation. The result showed that 54% of the students thought English is very important; 43% thought it important and 3% thought it comparatively important. The result also showed that 100% of them want to speak perfect English; 88% of them like English and like speaking English. 5% of them thought they worked hard or comparatively hard in their English learning and 78%of them had learned English for more than three years. But why do they have problems in speaking? Oral English is not included in mid-term exams, final exams and the Entrance Exams to high school or colleges. Therefore, students and parents do not pay much attention to it. As a result, the 1ess they speak, the worse their oral English will be. In class the teachers pay more attention to explaining the grammatical points and important phrases. So the students have not enough time to speak English.
On the other hand, some activities that the teachers ask the students to do are boring, just only reading text and dialogue, and acting out the dialogue. The students are not interested in them. So they would not like to speak English. 2. Methods to sole this problem First, laying stress on various practices. Generally speaking, in the middle school of our country, there are more than 50 students in each class. Even more, there are more than 70 people in the sarne class. There are too many Student in a C1ass so it’s impossible for every student to have chance to discuss with teacher in the limited time.
Consequently, discussing in-group work can solve the problems. Students make social activity in a wide topic. They can talk freedom, like this, every learner have the equal chance to talk about the topic in class. The form of those activities demands two to four students in a group. They talk about the topic which the teacher given. Thus, they can practice linguistic knowledge, or express their views, or acquire the answer by the way of discussion. This kind of activity not only increases the practice effect of the students but also cultivates cooperative competence in the group of the students.
On one hand, those activities will reduce the introversive students’ psychological pressure; improve their initiative and enthusiasm. At that time, being accepted in traditional teaching translates into active take part in. There are only several students in a group work, they cannot rely on the teacher to tell them how to do, and they will do it by themselves. Most of the participants felt that group work helped them to get better understanding of the material and stimulate their thought process. In addition, they share responsibility of reducing the anxiety associated with problem solving.
The participants commented that humor too played a vital role in reducing anxiety. A couple of participants mentioned that they wasted a lot of time explaining the material to other group members. When the group’s task is to ensure that every group member has learned something, it is in the interest of every group member to spend time explaining concepts to group mates. It will make the students getting excited, say what they want to say. Students’ enthusiasms are increased by nature. On the other hands, those activity are good at create a good study environment which makes the students positive speaking English and feel comfortable.
In the traditional teaching, generally speaking, the teacher asks students answer question immediately. Most of Students, especial the introversive character students and low standard of learning students, they was too shy to speak in the class, some students feel nervous, because didn’t know the answer. In contrast, cooperative leaning supply a comfortable enviramnent. They help each other in the same group. The competitions between individual students have become competitions between different groups. They will reduce learners’ anxious feeling and increase the interest of learning English and self-confidence.
The topics of discussion are various. They can be discussed of an article, or in a view of a special business, a picture, and so on. In addition, the topic must raise the students’ interest and encourage them to take part in the linguistic practice. Otherwise, the students have nothing to talk about. On the other hand, the teachers have to pay more attention to the situation of discussion in group work. The students are responsible for one anothcr’s learning as well as their own. Thus, the success of one student helps other students to be successful.
As communicative approaches have developed, teachers have been concerned to ensure that students not only practice speaking in a controlled way in order to produce features of pronunciation, vocabulary, and structure accurately, but also practice using these features more freely in purposeful communication. Second, cultivating a sense of speech by reading and reciting. The sense of speech is that people, while studying and using languages, the sensitive feeling and experiencing to the spoken and written languages.
Some teachers only pay attention to the explanation of the grammars in traditional teaching, they neglect the cultivation of the sense of speech of the language; these are the main causes of fluently that so many students use Chinese English to express their views. The middle school students as a new learner of English, the cultivation of the feel for the language can’t be ignored even more. Only by reading and recite mare and more. It is a relatively effective method to read aloud and recite. The students read English aloud hccausc of the activity of the talking, and a series of response activities emerge.
Such as feeling and thinking, etc. , favorable to the forming of the feel for the language, for instance Liyang’s crazy English, Just make use of the reading loudly of machinery to train produce a kind of feel for the language. V. Tactics on Improving Oral English 1. Handling teaching methods The problems found in teaching are really cormnon. Most of students have problems in their oral English. Firstly, some of them could not speak appropriately. Secondly some others could not speak correctly in grammatical structure, namely they frequently made mistakes in their sentences.
Thirdly, still others could not speak English at all in class. These three kinds of shortcomings should be solved. The problems identified are really serious. It has been troubling me for a long time and now I am determined to find a solution to deal with these problems. I use three methods in my problem analysis: analytic, cause analysis and questionnaires. A few students admitted that the English class was sometimes dull. Only recitation, pair work and reading are not enough for them to put whole heart into the class. It is difficult for the students to contribute to the class under the dull atmosphere.
Therefore, how the teacher makes the class lively is very important to the class efficiency. According to the students’ suggestion, we should change the teaching method. We would do our best to design sornc interesting tasks to encourage every student to speak English. We study spoken English so as to make oral communications, so this order of importance of oral English study should be followed: Fluency, Accuracy, and Appropriateness. That is to say, we have to pay more attention to practicing comrnunicate ability instead of only laying emphasis an the grammatical correctness.
If English partners are not easy to get, then we have to create an English environment by speaking English to ourselves. This method is very effective and easy to insist on– interpreting Chinese-English novels or books. First we read the Chinese parts and then try to interpret them into English and then compare our interpretation with the original versions in the novels or books so that we can find out the mistakes, shortcomings and progresses in our interpretation. Oral composition and 3-minute training method: This method is suitable for intense training.
Making an oral composition about a certain topic for one minute at the first time and record the composition on tape at the same time, then listen to the composition and find out the room far improvement. Then make the same composition for two minutes for the second time and also record it. And at last repeat the above-mentioned for three minutes. If possible, we may read some English tongue twisters loudly and quickly with one or two cakes of candy in our mouth(just as the Chinese cross-talk actors do. ) to train our oral cavity muscle and tongues suitable far English pronunciation.
In view of lacking the real English environment for the students, this method is very practical. What does this method refer to? It generally involves tallying with yourself anywhere, but how can you use this method skillfully in practice? You should pay attention to the following aspects; First, create your language enviromnent. You can talk with yourself in your own room, or you can talk with the wind, flower, and tree. Anyway, no one will laugh at you. Speaking before the mirror is another way for the English learners to practice their oral English.
Second, try to speak with high quality. Any language has its own rules or laws, you can’t create its basic regulations. First, you should follow the tape recording or the radio announcer; try to imitate his pronunciation, intonation accurately or sometimes like that. Then, your speaking should have your own points, or talk it logically. Third, choose good materials. What kind of material should you choose? You’d better consider it carefully. The material you choose should be a story or a passage you are interested in.
It should be vivid, terse. The best one should have clear plots, so that you can understand easily. Fourth, retell in time. When you finish up a passage, you’d better retell it in your own wards in time. Remember, retelling is not reciting; you could use the key words or sentence patterns in the passage when you do retelling, but don’t recite it word by word or sentence by sentence. Another way is that you can retell when you finish up a tape or a film. This way can not only train your listening ability but also practice your oral English.
When you use this method, you’d better quote its original words to retell, because you can improve your own pronunciation and intonation. Fifth, stimulate the learning power. Many students are able to speak a language as knowing the language and therefore the view of learning the language as learning how to speak the language, as Nunan wrote, “ Success is measured in terms of the ability to carry out a conversation in the (target) language. ” Therefore, if students do not learn how to speak or do not get any opportunity to speak in the language classroom they may soon get de-motivated and lose interest in learning.
On the other hand, if the right activities are taught in the right way, speaking in class can be a lot of fun, raising general learner motivation and making the English language classroom a fun and dynamic place to be. 2. Brainstornning action When I was engaged in the problem analysis, I often consulted my thesis ideas with teachers and frequently talked to my colleague about all the problems. They gave me a lot of instruction and suggestions so that I pondered the problem more deeply and carefully After a lengthy problem analysis, I began to launch a project to solve the problem.
My research objective is to improve my students’ oral English by applying the approaches suggested by TBLT (Task-Sased Language Teaching) to my oral English teaching. 3. Activities in oral English Learning in class Students are asked to report whatever they like before class. The contents might be connected with news report, like in or outside school, sports, arts etc. Those active students will be praised or encouraged. In thls way, the students will speak English more and more fluently and their vocabulary will be enlarged.
After the free talk, I begin class by asking some relevant questions about invitation and let them answer in a casual way without standing up. In this way they can speak actively. The questions and answers are “ Do you like your school? ” Some students said yes, others said no. I continued to ask what you know about your school. I got different answers. When asking the students what subjects they will learn in Grade 1 and Grade 2. I want to find out whether they know how to express these subjects in English_ Then I said we are going to learn a new unit.
It is about school and study. The task is to introduce the design of subjects in each grade. VI. Conclusion In sum, the improvement of the spoken level of English is an important segment. During the teaching of spoken English in middle school, teachers should overcome mute English and Chinese English phenomenon, teachers need to have a correct attitude to their roles in the classroom, help learners to overcome the influences of the psychological obstacle. They should establish good language learning environment, which improve the students’ ability of expression in spoken English.
Besides grasping the knowledge of English, students should understand the cultures of English spoken countries and the custom and the communication rules, etc. All these are closely linked with oral English. Grasping these skills helps to improve the practicality and the communication abilities of language of students’. In a word, the spoken teaching mode should be based an communication, and has its own characters, Compared with traditional teaching approaches, it emphasizes communication ability and the student’s subject function.
Oral English is a course that can strengthen and develop the ability of communication disciplines, and teachers should make full use of this teaching made to develop the ability of students’ oral communication systematically It is generally accepted that all roads lead to Rome. Oral English is very important for all English learners, and the ways to improve this ability is also quite different. This paper analyses its reasons and puts forward the practical solutions according to the middle school students’ features in the western of China. Undoubtedly, it has great significance for achieving further improvement in speaking.
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