英语专业学生口语能力培养中的问题与对策

摘要

英语作为一种交际语言在当今世界起着越来越重要的作用，同时英语教学也越来越被社会所关注。为了了解英语专业学生的口语交际能立，我们对浙江科技学院100名英语专业大三，大四学生进行了问卷调查。结果发现学生的口语交际能力亟待提高，反映在教学上就是传统的教学法过分强调了语法教学而忽略了语言在现实中的运用。因此笔者提出将任务型教学等方法运用到教学中去。此外，调查、分析和实验也给英语教学提供了几点启示即：课程设计要以培养交际能力为目标，以学生为中心；同时教学要注重文化、语境意识的培养。

关键词：英语专业；口语交际能力；调查分析

ABSTRACT

Nowadays, English as a communicating device is playing a more and more important role. Therefore, English teaching and learning become matters of considerable social importance. In order to know the present situation of English majors?oral communicative competence, a questionnaire survey is made on it..The writer tries to analyze from the students? utterances with the contextualization cue as a focus in the process of inference. What?s more,the empirical investigation and analysis and the experiment show us that FLT curriculum should also be both learner-centered and communication-oriented and the teacher should cultivate the students?awareness of culture and context through implementing a serious of activities.

Keywords：English majors,spoken English communicative competence; investigation and analysis

Contents

1.Introduction (1)

2. Oral Competence (2)

2.1 Four standards of oral English (2)

2.2 The requirement of English speaking abilities for English majors (4)

3. Survey (4)

3.1 The survey of current status of Spoken English (4)

3.2 The results and analysis of survey (5)

4. Problems of cultivating English speaking abilities of English majors (7)

4.1 Problems in the curriculum setting (7)

4.1.1 The limited oral English courses (7)

4.1.2 The problems about the teaching material and evaluation system (8)

4.2 Lack of diversification means in English Language Teaching (8)

4.3 Traditional Culture and Learner Anxiety (9)

4.4 Problems of students in the improvement of English speaking ability (10)

5. Solutions in cultivating English speaking abilities of English majors (11)

5.1 Adjust the curriculum setting (11)

5.1.1 The reform of curriculum setting (11)

5.1.2 Make uniform and standardized teaching materials (12)

5.2 Use of diversification means in English Language Teaching (13)

5.3 Activators to Release Students? Speaking Potential (15)

5.4 Classroom English for Students (16)

6. Conclusion (17)

Appendix: Questionnaire (18)

Acknowledgements (18)

References (19)

1. Introduction

The ultimate goal of English language teaching is making students improve their English language abilities of thinking and communicating[1]1.In foreign language teaching, the four basic skills——listening, speaking, reading and writing---have been greatly improved on the part of English major students in the past decades. However, these skills have not been developed at the same rate. Many students understand others' English but can not express themselves effectively in English. For the majority of students, speaking still remains the most difficult skill for them to master even after four years study at universities. It is well known that the teaching of oral English has been the weak aspect of our EFL (English as a foreign language) teaching[2]13. The production of spoken English——learning to speak English is considered to be one of the most difficult aspects of English learning. It is often the case that even English major students find it hardest to improve their oral English. Although they have strong desire and motivation, in terms of concrete learning and practice, they find it much more difficult than expected. As a result, some students are in the dilemma that they can hardly express themselves freely even when they are juniors or seniors. In that case, their advantage over other non-English majors is weakened. Therefore, how to improve and develop oral English teaching in Chinese schools has drawn attention of both teachers and educators, and it becomes one of the most important issues in EFL teaching field nowadays.

To change this situation, more efforts have been made to work out more effective ways to improve students' oral English level. Although many researchers and educators have tried to put various teaching theories and methods into practice to improve the teaching of oral English, there is not much progress made so far. Thus, it's urgent for teachers to conduct research on other aspects and to find more effective ways. It is indicated by the survey that the research on oral English teaching, though diverse and various, mainly focuses on its grammatical use and linguistic, but not on the role of psychological factors, especially the role of cognition. Many linguists and educators have studied the objective factors of teaching oral English, i.e. English language itself and its social property, but seldom take the subjects of oral English learning, namely learners, into account. So the methodology procedures suggested by researches haven't produced any obvious effect on the teaching of oral English.

Considering the current situation of teaching oral English and its research in China, the author intends to make the further study with the purpose of finding the effective ways to improve English majors? oral English.

2. Oral competence

English as a communicating device is playing a more and more important role. Therefore, English teaching and learning is becoming a matter of considerable social importance. For learners of English as a foreign language (EFL), oral communicative ability is not necessarily well guaranteed by other receptive and productive abilities, as the former involves psychomotor flexibility in articulation as well as capability in interactive strategies. To make English majors achieve the goal of good oral English we also set the standard of English language speaking.

2.1 Four standards of oral English

In order to achieve successful oral communications, all these competences should work together. Besides, after baptism from history, we get the oral English standard of English majors.

(1) pronunciation（including volume, stress, intonation and tone）

To learn English very well, first of all, we must learn how to pronounce English well. Generally Chinese students think wrongly that the reason why they can?t pronounce English well is that they don?t practice enough. Most people think if they can practice reading English more, their pronunciation will be better. In fact, the greatest reason why Chinese people can?t pronounce English well is that they don?t know the secret of English pronunciation. Teaching of English phonetics aimed at improving learners ?pronunciation and intonation is in one form or another included as an integral part in English teaching at different levels and kinds. However, the unsatisfactory performance in English pronunciation and intonation of most English learners in China seems to imply that the achievement of English phonetics teaching in China is not as m uch as expected in improving English learners? pronunciation and intonation. Chinese students always have the following problems in pronunciation. (a) They use a similar tone in their mother tongue instead of English which they find it difficult to pronounce

(b) They confuse the similar phonology in mother-tongue and English.

(c) They are confused by the individual phoneme which made the acceptation

difference.

(2) accuracy（including grammar, word diction and tongue）[3]6

Accuracy is an important indicator of assessment in oral communication. V ocabulary and grammatical mistakes are serious in students spoken English as an important factor in accuracy. Many studies have found Intralingua factors (such as over-generalization) and Interlingua factors (mother negative transfer) are the two main reasons leading to mistakes. And Interlingua interference with the wrong language is relatively serious. Most of the mistakes come out because they use the Chinese language as their mother tongue. Take the definite article “the” for example, there is no “article” in Chinese, so students do not pay attention to the study “article”. They do not know much about the meaning or the features of the word. And they may believe that definite article will not affect the word much. In addition to the negative migration of the mother tongue, learners do not know much about the grammar similarities and differences between Chinese and English.

(3) fluency（including speech pace, match long and short sentences）

Oral English fluency is one of the pursued objectives of the second language learning and foreign language teaching. According to Webster's New Third International Dictionary, fluency is defined as: (words), such as mellifluence, easy and rapid. This is the general common-sense understanding. In English learning, fluency usually refers to the ability of expressing themselves freely.

(4) communicative competence（including independence, flexibility and speaking manners）

In order to speak in another language, one needs to know how to articulate sounds in a comprehensible manner, one needs an adequate vocabulary, and have mastery of syntax[4]3. These various elements add up to linguistic competence which, first put forward by Noam Chomsky, refers to the ability of an ideal native speaker to construct and recognize grammatical sentences in his language. Chomsky?s linguistic theory excludes all the social factors. While linguistic competence is necessary, for someone who wants to communicate competently and appropriately in another language, it is still not enough since the circumstances in which language behavior occurs will never be an ideal one. People in actual communication are always influenced by some conditions such as distractions, shifts of attention and errors in applying their knowledge of the language in actual performance. Since they have

different age, education background, occupation, social status, and etc, their language behaviors are quite different from each other. And all those social factors will be reflected on the language they use. Thus in 1974, the sociolinguist Dell Hymes[5] (1972) proposed the notion of communicative competence as an alternative to Chomsky?s linguistic competence. Besides linguistic competence, communicative competence also includes a range of other sociolinguistic and conversational skills that enable the speaker to “know when to speak, when not, and as to what to talk about with whom, when, where, in what manner”

2.2 The requirement of English speaking abilities for English majors

Syllabus[6]of English Majors in Colleges and Universities require students to achieve these goals in English oral expression [7]:

(a) English majors are supposed to master the English language.They can express their ideas more clearly, compensate for breakdowns in communication due to limiting conditions in the actual communication situation in one or more of the other areas of communicative competence

(b) English majors are capable of enhancing the effectiveness of communication on different occasions with different people and using appropriate forms of language to reflect the different communicative functions;

(c) English majors are able to establish the confidence in speaking English with enthusiasm and interest;

(d) English majors should combine accuracy with fluency in the English oral expression.

3. Survey

3.1 The survey of current status of Spoken English

English major students compared to the non-professional English language learners in listening, speaking, reading, writing and translation of various capacities up with a much higher level, they should not only have an ordinary language communicative competence, but also should have to use relatively, correctly appropriate and effective oral English language communication ability[8].

To the vast majority of English learners, even they spend years of time in English

learning, the oral ability is still the most difficult to grip. Therefore, this article has done a preliminary investigation and study.

1) Objective of thesurvey.

In order to find the current status of spoken English, 100 English major students of senior and junior in Zhejiang University of Science and Technology were investigated.

2) The methods of survey.

The survey was conducted by asking students to answer the questionnaires.

Researchers on 15, 16, and 17 Mar. 2009 three days, 100 volumes issued, and a total of 87 valid questionnaires were taken back.

3) The tool of survey.

In this study, the survey tool is a questionnaire [9] a total of eleven questions, in which the first are multiple-choice questions and the next eight are individual-choice questions. And the last one is an open question, about the recommendations of the current teaching and learning of oral English.

3.2 The results and analysis of survey

Table 1-1

*Multinomial Choice

As to the Table 1-1, the data tell us the obvious problems in oral English teaching and learning. And big percentages show that we should find ways to solve the problems immediately. Because, if we don?t face the problems more and more English major students would suffer from the current oral English system and we will go into

a vicious circle. As to the questions we can analyze these problems:

1) The vast majority of students lack self-confidence and realize that the most urgent ability to improve is speaking ability.

2) Most students think that usual practice and language environment are the top things related to the improvement of oral English study. Only a few of them think that classroom learning is directly related to it. There are two reasons, the first one is that they think classroom learning is too limited and they can?t improve much in it. And the second one is that the old methods of classroom learning are too hard to change and be useful to them.

3) There is a big majority of the students think that good English is related to good jobs. According to the Survey Report of the Requirement of Using English in the Employment Market, English ability has been a common requirement in employment.

4) Because students have less sense of requirements in the Syllabus of English majors they don?t know what they will learn and how they will develop. The direction of the English majo rs? development is unclear. After four years? learning and training the students still can?t reach the goal of teaching and learning.

4．Problems of cultivating English speaking abilities of

English majors

English major students compared to the non-professional English language learners in listening, speaking, reading, writing and translation of various capacities

up with a much higher level, they should not only have an ordinary language communicative competence, but also should have to use relatively, correctly appropriate and effective oral English language communication ability[10]. The development of ideation will help English major students to improve their comprehensive quality.

According to the survey we have made. The author has discovered four main problems in oral English teaching and learning. The problems have been the block in the development of English speaking ability.

4.1 Problems in the curriculum setting

Through the data in the survey we found that the current English speaking curriculum planning needs to be improved immediately. A big range of the students think that they are unsatisfied with the planning.

4.1.1 The limited oral English courses

We find that oral English classes at the foundation stage are arranged 2 periods a week. It is very difficult to give the opportunity to all the 30 students who can fully practice their oral English, for the time assigned to each student is only 4 minutes a week.

From the fifth to the eighth semester, some schools do not have the native speaking teachers, so in the high-grade English teaching, the stage of oral English capacity-building has become a blank. When the students are in the advanced level, they even don?t have the opportunity to speak English either inside or outside school. That makes them unfamiliar with English speaking language.

On the other hand, the English major courses include advanced English, English translation, English culture communication, English reading, writing and listening and so on. These kinds of courses take up large proportions on their own characteristics and they also occupy large percentage on the student?s curriculum. However, oral practice is paid less attention to in class. Although all the courses are about English, and the textbooks are written in English, the teachers of these courses do not realize they have the duty to help the students cultivate good oral English ability so that they design little oral practice in their courses.

4.1.2 The problems about the teaching material and evaluation system

The English majors don?t have the scientific system of oral English teaching material or evaluation system. Each foreign teacher gives lessons to students basically

according to their own ideas. And the university does not give them a very clear requirement, while the foreign teachers?awareness to students?current level is not clear enough. Therefore, the design of class is sometimes blind in a certain degree. Oral class is a great degree of freedom, and sometimes even a little bit arbitrary. We know that English is not arbitrary[11]. Many regular expressions have their own way, so we must have a system oral English teaching material.

The university has n?t enhanced the communication with foreign teachers, strengthened the management of oral English classes or established a scientific standardized evaluation system.

English course evaluation is an important part in English course. Scientific evaluation system is to achieve an important guarantee for curriculum goals. English courses should be based on the evaluation of the objectives of curriculum standards and requirements, the implementation of the whole process of teaching and the results of an effective monitoring would be successfully achieved.

4.2 Lack of diversification means in English Language Teaching

English speaking courses are different from the Basic English, reading and other curriculums. It is a “communication tool”to study not the “knowledge”[12]. The means of English speaking teaching must break the traditional focus on grammar teaching, instead of subject-oriented body system of perfect model, and make the students in a “natural language learning environment”. From easy to digestive, step by step, emphasis should be laid on spoken language training[13]. The teachers should use new teaching methods to improve the oral English level of students. However, readers can see from the survey that 54 of the 87 English major students are dissatisfied with it, and the rest are satisfied. That is to say more than half of them are dissatisfied with the current teaching methods. Since the current teaching methods can?t meet the requirements of most of students, they should be improved immediately.

The foreign teachers have different professional quality of teaching. If the teachers is not professional enough, the oral English class is not as efficiency as possible. Only high-quality foreign-language teachers can cultivate high-quality students. Oral teaching is a highly practical course, which requires flexibility in teaching methods and teaching art skills.

1) The content in class is not compact enough, the instructional design is too

simple, many students do not have the sense of achievement, in terms of language knowledge they harvest less.

2) There is no serialization of the design of teaching, each class of the content of these is isolated and have little contact with each other.

3) The foreign teachers have too little sense of the student?s knowledge level, it lead to the teaching content has little connected with the students cognitive level.

4) Sometimes, the teaching content is the same in both freshmen and sophomore.

The teachers do not meet the two grades students? cognitive level.

4.3 Traditional Culture and Learner Anxiety

What hinders students from speaking in class is mostly not the teacher, not the students themselves but the teaching method under the traditional culture[14].

Generally speaking, Chinese students tend to consider their teachers the main source of learning, which, to a great extent, results from the philosophical foundation for education in China laid by Confucius, one of the greatest thinkers in ancient China[15].

Even today, no one can deny his unparalleled contribution to Chinese education. Many of his wise sayings and maxims still govern the behavior of learners in China. Take TEFL[16]for example, students are still accustomed to a classroom situation dominated by a teacher-centered, book-centered, grammar-translation method and an emphasis on rote learning. Most of the interaction in the classroom is from the teacher to the students, it is only a one-way information conveying or activity guiding. There is little student initiative and, if any at all, little student-student interaction. Teachers who are keen on spoon-feeding their students generally receive higher appreciation than teachers who are not because test results would be linked to teachers?bonus. Students are likely to associate games and communicative activities in class with entertainment exclusively and accordingly, are skeptical of their use as learning tools[17]. So any attempt from teacher for interactions such as games, role-plays, talk-based communication activities, i.e. pair/group/team work, risks resistance or even resentment are for these students. Chinese culture, teachers are viewed as knowledge holders. If teachers do not display their knowledge in lectures, or if they play games with students or ask students to role-play in class, then students think that their English teachers are not doing their job!

4.4 Problems of students in the improvement of English speaking ability

With social developments, Standard fluent oral English highlights the growing importance in English Major Courses. Oral English teaching is one of the most vivid courses in basic course teaching. It still has some problems from the aspects of students. These issues are part of high school left behind problems. If the problems are not solved in time, they will affect the improvements of the students in English speaking to a large extent.

(1) Heavy accent of spoken English

The problem is widespread among students in general. Students? pronunciations are affected by the heavy dialect. The students are from different regions of secondary school. They were educated under the impact of examination education, the local secondary education are often re-examination of teaching spoken language skills and neglect the result of the vast majority of students in initial stages, in which their English pronunciations has not been corrected.

(2) Poor communication skills —— Spoken words are less.

In the initial phase of oral teaching is facing one of the biggest problems is students lack of spoken words. The foundation year of English Majors Level in the course of the input word is not small. However, students? word is still the traditional attitude. They try to remember the meaning and spelling of words and rarely take the initiative to learn the use of the word. This influences students during the time of speaking practice. The big lag in oral English has a serious impact on the ability of self-expression.

(3) Less time to practice.

Proficiency use is unnatural. The important part of oral expression is self-expression. To achieve this degree a large amount of exercise is required The English Major Speaking practice for students in the extra-curricular time is short. On the one hand, it is difficult to find exercise on suitable occasions. At the same time, students themselves are largely inert psychological impact by the Ring expression of natural spoken English to fluency.

(4) The psychological quality is not good enough.

Lack of confidence is also a problem in the basic stage of the freshman. As the problems listed above led to the unconfident expression, they choose to say nothing, which is why their oral English can?t improve any more.

5. Solutions in cultivating English speaking abilities of

English majors.

According to the survey we have made and the problems we have analyzed. The author has discovered four main problems in oral English teaching and learning. The problems have been the block in the development of English speaking ability.

"Syllabus for English Majors in Colleges and Universities" is a scientific outline with Chinese characteristics in the new era. The “syllabus” in the training objectives and teaching content reflects the communicative competence. However, the problems still exit.

The most important thing is to find appropriate ways to solve these problems, and cultivate the English majors to be excellent both in English pronunciations and expression.

Here we list the four main problems and the solutions accordingly in oral English teaching and learning. The first one is from the aspect of the education system and the college operation; the second one is from the aspect of teaching methods of the oral English teachers especially the foreign teachers and the last two aspects are of the English majors themselves.

5.1 Adjust the curriculum setting

We have known the situation that the period of professional oral English classes in the foundation stage is 2 times a week. It is very difficult to give the opportunity to all the 30 students who can fully practice their oral English, for the time assigned to each student is only about 4 minutes a week. However, the fact is that the teacher speaking takes up most of the time so that most students don?t have the opportunity to open their mouths or have conversation with the foreign teacher. So the time divided to each student is not equal. And we don?t have oral English lessons in the advanced level. If the students do not use extra time to strengthen the oral training, their spoken English ability is hard to improve. From the fifth to the eighth semester, some schools do not have the native speaking teachers, so in the high-grade English teaching, the stage of oral English capacity-building has become a blank. When the students are in the advanced level, they even don?t have the opportunity to speak English either inside or outside school, which makes them unfamiliar with English speaking language. On the other hand, the English major courses include advanced English, English translation, English culture communication, English reading, writing and listening and so on. These kinds of courses take up large proportions on their own characteristics and they also occupy large percentage on the student?s curriculum.

However, oral practice is paid less attention to in the classes. Although all the courses are about English, and the text books are written in English, it is still a waste of resource, because it does nothing with oral English ability improvement. Also the teachers of these courses do not realize they have the duty to help the students cultivate good oral English ability.

5.1.1 The reform of curriculum setting

We should adjust the curriculum setting, which should make more chances for the students to talk with or even make friends with the foreign teachers. The oral English classes should be set into each semester during the four years study. No oral English class in junior and senior teaching and study would lead to serious problems of the whole English majors.

The students should establish the language environment by themselves. We should get at the root of the problems and bring up some related countermeasures, so as to improve the teaching quality and level up the general standard of students?pronunciation and intonation. To realize the English majors sustainable development, the major setting and curriculum arrangement should be lead to market system, instead of running a school by closing the door, we must run the school according to the talent market and social demand and change with time.

As we all know, the reason why it is difficult for Chinese students to learn English well mainly is the lack of language background and environment. How to get rid of this bottleneck is the study subject of Language education. Swain[18] carried out in 1985 the famous "water test" (immersion program).

“She argued that French immersion students do not demonstrate native-speakers productive competence not because their comprehensive input is limited, but rather because their comprehensive output is limited."

The curriculum setting should be adjusted to the requirements of the situation and the students. Practice makes perfect, that is why we should set more oral English courses and give more opportunities in the other special courses to input and output the speaking language.

5.1.2 Make uniform and standardized teaching materials

The oral English classes of English majors should have scientific system of oral English teaching materials[19]and evaluation system. It is commonly to see that the foreign teachers give lessons to students basically according to their own ideas. So the government and the education department should set the oral English teaching

standard material immediately. With the material, the knowledge of each lesson can be connected easily and it can be a system.

And the university does not give them very clear requirements, while the foreign teachers?awareness to students?current level is not clear enough. Therefore, the design of class is sometimes blind to a certain degree. Oral class is a great degree of freedom, and sometimes even a little bit arbitrary. We know that English is not arbitrary. Many regular expressions have their own way, so we must set up a system of teaching oral English. A common curriculum must have its textbook as well as the oral English classes.

In recent years, the role of textbooks in the English Language teaching (ELT) has been more and more important, with the promulgation and operation of new syllabus. Textbooks are best seen as a resource in achieving aims and objectives that have already been set in terms of learner needs. So it reflects that the curriculum setting attach importance to the oral English textbook as well as to the English major students.

The university has n?t enhanced the communication with foreign teachers, strengthened the management of oral English classes or established a scientific standardized evaluation system.

English course evaluation should be set immediately. It is an important part in English course. Scientific evaluation system is to achieve an important guarantee for curriculum goals. English courses should be based on the evaluation of the objectives of curriculum standards and requirements, the implementation of the whole process of teaching and the results of an effective monitoring would be successfully achieved.

5.2 Use of diversification means in English Language Teaching

Oral English is a two-way process between speaker and listener (or listeners) and involves the productive skill of speaking and the receptive skill of listening (or listening with understanding). Through our survey most students are not satisfied with the current English speaking course, part of the reasons are the means of teaching are not diversified enough and most of the students think that the teaching methods are of old tradition. The students? anticipations are not enough either. So here the author lists some classic and new teaching methods to follow the problems of lack in diversification means in English Language Teaching.

(1)Task-Based Approach in teaching English majors oral English

Lots of research was done in TBA from the late 80s which made TBA being

gradually modified and improved. Prabhu[20]defined the task in his book Second Language Pedagogy as a kind of activity which requires learners to arrive at an outcome from the given information through some process of thought. He supports that the meaning-centered activity in developing language competence and held the view that it was not necessary for the teachers to teach grammar rules to students or correct errors too much, and stated that while the conscious mind is working out some of the meaning-content, some subconscious part of the mind perceives, abstracts or acquires or recreates as a cognitive structure some of the linguistic structuring embodied in those entities as a step in the development of an internal system of rules. This intensive exposure caused by an effort to work out meaning-content is thus a condition which is favorable to the subconscious abstraction-or cognitive formation-o f language structure?[21]. Thus the students could acquire the grammar system by focusing on meaning. Candlin and Breen regarded the task as a unit of syllabus design and called this process …syllabus?,which is the same as Prabhu thought. They also believed that the students could acquire language better by communicating with purpose. Different from Prabhu, Breen required the syllabus designers to provide more activities and tasks for language teaching, which requires teachers to have good teaching ability and learner to be more active. Compared with Prabhu, Candlin advanced the theory by sequencing tasks .He put forward a set of criteria by which tasks might be chosen and graded. These are cognitive load(this relates to the general complexity of the content of the task, containing the naturalness of the sequence it may be requested to follow and also the number of participants or elements.),communicative pressure(more stressful tasks are seen as those which concern stress which comes from the interlocutor, either because he or she is a native speaker or due to superior knowledge or proficiency.) particularity and generalized ability (this involves the clarity of the goal of the task, as well as the standards of interpretation.),code complexity and interpretative density (the former is related to the complexity of the linguistic code itself, while the latter concerns the complexity of the operations which need to be carried out on such a code.), and process continuity(this comes from the familiarity of the task type and the learners capacity to connect tasks with tasks they know well.).

Tasks are used as a tool for attracting learners in meaning-making and thereby for creating the conditions for language acquisition. TBA is different from CLT in that tasks are regarded as tool for achieving a focus on form as well[22]. Therefore,

task-based approach has the potential of integrating accuracy and fluency as well as attending to both the meaning and form. If appropriately used, TBA can enable the balance development of the four aspects of communicative competence.

(2) Multimedia information technology

Multimedia information technology could be used in English language teaching. Take the information technology as a tool, a media and a method used in the every aspects of teaching, including teaching preparation classroom teaching and teaching evaluation process. It is a great impact and influence on the traditional English teaching. It can create situations and enrich the teaching contents, make the students easy to get self-learning and it also sharing resources. It also provides the teaching with expression tool of the image work. Then to change the traditional model of English teaching and training students in creative thinking, to improve teaching effect so that students feel like as if the communication in the real field Together in practice. Convert a large number of teachers in the use of information, situational simulations, games, the form of role play and other activities to help students in a creative manner, free of surface feelings and willing to fully carry out the practice of communication

1) Teachers should encourage students as much as possible to mobilize students to participate in oral communication initiatively.

2) Teachers should make reasonable error-correcting strategies to master, allowing students to have a "sounds are not allowed, if incoherent language, words do not convey the idea, grammar confusing "process. When the students expressed designate, not to interrupt in order to correct the error of its expression, until he finished and then pointed out that table of the impropriety. Teachers can not be blamed for the excessive harm to students and their lacking of self-esteem capacity, resulting in some students lose interests in spoken language training.

3) Teachers should pay attention to hear the combination of the training. Strictly speaking, the English class in itself listening, speaking, reading, writing and translation of the organic integration. There are no classes and hearing in the spoken language Class. Oral expression is a kind of information output, which is the source of hearing and reading from the information.

5.3 Activators to Release Students’ Speaking Potential

It is very crucial and practical for teachers to adopt pre-communicative activities for students to practice English in class. The success of this teaching strategy is due

largely to the fact that the learners can be activated by their prior knowledge and choose what they have done and got in their previous learning experience and talk about them in class.

It is essential that if the teacher wants to get the students started and encourage them to speak, he has to put the topics based on common experiences first. Students often feel more comfortable talking about an experience they have in common: a trip, a false alarm, an experiment, a blind date, a film, a book, etc. A shared experience can stimulate good discussion because, as they exchange their observations, students frequently discover that they have different perceptions and reactions to the same event. The discussion can be used by English teachers to focus on the performance and practice.

Students can often do more with their language resources than they realize themselves. As teachers, encouraging students to use their existing knowledge is just as important as teaching those new materials .The purpose of this matching with the old is to activate and reinforce students?prior topical and linguistic knowledge. Several main features in activating students? prior knowledge are listed below:

1. It is important for students to be able to link what they already know to the on coming content.

2. When students?prior knowledge about the topic is activated or built by the teacher, students begin to predict what they might hear and make connections with what they already know, increasing the relevance of the information.

3. The time to familiarize students with key concepts and vocabulary is shortened before a listening and speaking experience. English as a compulsory subject has been taught in middle schools and colleges in China for decades. Due to competitive college entrance exams, secondary school students usually have memorized a great deal of English words and acquired a certain reading level. They even carry forward this learning habit to the college. Unfortunately, when they go on to college, the teaching methodology usually remains the same as what they were taught in secondary schools, such as teacher-directed curriculum, priority of reading, basal textbooks and so forth. Most college students still think English learning is all about memorizing vocabulary words and reading for academic purposes. If they are asked whether they improve in English, they will say that they have mastered a larger vocabulary than before. College EFL teachers should take advantage of students?vocabulary and reading capabilities and help them to explore the English world by

using what they already know. As most Chinese students are afraid of making mistakes and losing face or lowering their self-respect, we could minimize our expectation to erect a makeshift process in which broken words can be accepted and praised without consideration of accuracy at the beginning. In other words, so long as students can put their meaning in spoken English and get their ideas across, they have completed the communicative process and have got the first step in the “survived”skills acquisition. We have found the activities in 4.3 to be useful in encouraging students to use their existing knowledge and resources.

5.4 Classroom English for Students

English teachers should try their best to activate the prior knowledge of students; Meanwhile they should also provide students with what they failed to get in the past. That is the classroom English for them. Before the teacher takes actions to activate the students to perform it is necessary to show the students the expressions they will use in class. As mentioned in the above chapters, the students are inhibited to the spoon-feeding curricula and lack the necessary spoken words and phrases, and they will have no idea if they are asked to produce any. Students are not able to create from nothing. They have to take some examples to follow. Hence, teachers should provide the students the necessary oral expressions for their practice in class. Lists of expressions like these seem to be spoken everywhere for good reason. Students need to learn these kinds of expressions if they are to communicate in English in class. Naturally teachers should help them with pronunciation, meaning, and usage at the beginning stage of oral activities. Teachers may want to suggest that the students paste the list inside the front cover of their English books so they can refer to it easily Teacher?s expressions include the greetings, directions, transitions, initiations (questions) and feed backs, and disciplinary expressions when necessary.

6. Conclusion

In short, the oral English teaching is an essential part of English majors in colleges and universities. It should be paid sufficient attention to. How to help the students change from the past negative and passive learning methods to a balanced development of listening, speaking, reading and writing is what the oral English teachers have to face. To resolve this problem, teachers and students should work