高中英语课堂教学中的口语教学.doc

高中英语课堂教学中的口语教学On the Instruction of Oral English inMiddle School EnglishClassroom TeachingXi Xuejiao Under the Supervision ofSun Peng School of Foreign Languages and CulturesPanzhihua UniversityMay 2006Contents摘要I关键词.IAbstract.IIKey Words.IIIntroduction.1.The problems in the teaching of oral English.2.Reasons for the Students Poor Oral English3A. The Reasons Related to Teachers Aspect31. The Neglect of Oral English Instruction.32. The lack of Methods to Teach Oral English.33. The Insufficient Ways to Teach Oral English.44. Not having Flexible Ways to Teach Oral English.4 B. The Reasons Related to the Students Aspects5. Ways to Instruct Oral English in Classroom Teaching6A. Increase Students Interests and Motivation6B. Cultivate Students Correct reading Habits in the Classroom.6C. Create Suitable Situation.8D. Cultivate Students Ability to Ask Questions.9E. Cultivate Students Ability to Retell a Story11F. Encourage Meaningful, Appropriate and Natural Use of Language 11G. Encourage Oral Reports.12H. Take Student Attitudes into Consideration in Oral Practice.14I. Cultivate Good Psychological Qualities15J. Use Visual Aids .16K. Make a Radio Program17L. Ensure Enough Effective Input17M. Make the Students Practice the Spoken English in Multiple Ways.18Conclusion.19Bibliography.21Acknowledgement.22ABSTRACTAs a communicative tool, language is vocal under many situations. The ultimate purpose of language learning is to cultivate the ability of communication. Speaking is the fundamental need of communication. So speaking is one of the most important skills in English language Teaching. In the 21st century, with the rapid development of our society, science and technology, especially with Chinas entry into WTO, China and other countries will have more and more co-operation. In addition, China will hold the 2008 Olympic Games, and this requires our country to have more people who have wealthy specialty knowledge, higher accomplishment of information and higher English level. Among them, oral English is very important. But the present English teaching in middle schools is far away from realizing this goal. The high school is the most important period for students to cultivate their speaking ability, as well as an improvable period. So, how to instruct oral English in high school is a very important problem that needs to be solved. In this essay, the author will give some suggestions on the instruction of oral English in middle school English classroom teaching.Key WordEnglish； oral English； classroom teaching；skills摘 要语言作为一种交流工具，多数情况下是有声的。语言学习的最终目标是培养交流的能力，而说的能力是语言交流的基本要求。所以，在英语学习中， 说是英语教学的重要技巧之一。在21世纪，随着社会与科学技术的发展，特别是中国加入世贸组织以后，中国与其他国家的交流越来越多。 另外，中国将在2008年举行奥运会，这就要求我国必须有更多的人拥有更丰富的专业知识、更高的信息获取能力以及更高的英语水平。在他们之间，英语口语是非常重要的，但现在的高中英语教学中却远远没有意识到这一重要性，高中阶段是培养学生说的能力的重要阶段，更是容易提高能力的阶段。因此，如何实施英语口语教学，成了高中英语教学需要解决的问题。在本文中，作者将就高中英语教学中的口语教学作些初步的探讨。关键词 英语；口语；课堂教学； 方法IntroductionOral communication is a special social activity. The final purpose of foreign language learning is to communicate with the native speakers. Speaking is the fundamental need of communication. So speaking is one of the most important skills in English language teaching. In the 21st century, with the rapid development of our society, science and technology, especially with Chinas entry into WTO, China and other countries will have more and more co-operation. In addition, China will hold the 2008 Olympic Games; this requires our country to have more people who have wealthy specialty knowledge, higher accomplishment of information and higher English level. Among them, oral English is very important. But the presentEnglish teaching in middle schools is far away from realizing this goal. In China, most middle school students have poor oral communicative ability. “Dumb English” is perplexing most English teachers and students of high school.The Problems in the Teaching of Oral EnglishThe problems in the teaching of oral English is not concerned with the students, but also the teachers ourselves. First, many investigations indicate that most of the teachers think it both unrealistic and unnecessary to teach speaking in Chinese schools, and an overwhelming majority of students cannot speak English, though most of them show an interest in speaking. Teachers, of course, have their reasons. “Our main objective is reading, not speaking.” Some say, “speaking is not a skill worth cultivating because Chinese students have few opportunities to communicate with native speakers,” others maintain. And more readily they admit that they themselves are not fluent in speaking English, nor do they know how to teach it.Apart from the problems teachers have, the environment is also an important problem, because of the unawareness of the importance of speaking, students dont have enough chances to practice their oral English. The lack of atmosphere is the most important reason of their poor oral English. As everyone knows, “Practice makes perfect!” Without practice, how can they become perfect? Because of that, students dont have the habit of speaking. When they are acquired to speak, many problems appear, such as: their hands and feet are trembling, the tune of their voice is changing, the sentences are in disorder. Many of them just recite instead of speak. . Reasons for the Students Poor Oral EnglishAs far as students poor oral English is concerned, there are many reasons. But in my opinion, it is mainly teachers ourselves and students themselves who are to blame. The following will be focused on the two aspects.AThe Reasons Related to Teachers Aspect1The Neglect of Oral English InstructionIn language teaching, a teacher ought to be a facilitator of his students learning. His major responsibility is to organize classroom work and to establish appropriate situations. Most of English teachers think oral communication means the ability to deal with words. And because the requirement oral English in University Entrance Examination is lower than that of other skills, many teachers ignore the importance of it. Some teachers think they should train students abilities in listening,reading, writing and analyzing.They always neglect training students speaking ability. So, they dont want to waste time training students oral English. For example, when a teacher starts teaching a new text, he always pays more attention to the grammar, exercises, listening and analyzing the main part, but hardly asks the students to read the text or have a free conversation about it. This phenomenon shows that teachers pay little attention to train students oral communicative ability in classroom teaching.2 . The Lack of Methods to Teach Oral EnglishTeachers dont know how to improve students oral English in classroom teaching. It is important to create a good environment for students to study English. Making good use of class time is an efficient way to improve students oral English. But as everybody knows, middle school students are very busy. Teachers dont want to spend much time practicing something which has nothing to do with the University Entrance Examination. As far as I know, few teachers organize their classes in English,which is, in fact, very useful for students to learn new words and improve their oral communicative abilities.Instead, many teachers just use English to ask students some simple questions. It shows that the ways of teaching students oral English are incorrect,andthey hinder the improvement of students oral English.3 . The Insufficient Ways to Teach Oral EnglishThe teaching methods we use in class are not helpful to improve students English. For example, in the past several years, oral English teaching has been mainlyconcerned withsound teaching. The students spent much time studying and reading phonetic symbols, and then learning to read sentences. Many teachers prepared Standard English vernacular speech demonstration with meticulous care, or asked the students just to listen and read after the tape-recorder without any discussion. This results in students being unable to express themselves freely. For another example, teachers place too much emphasis on accuracy in classroom teaching. Although many teachers speak English in class, they use the traditional method to have their classes. That means they ask the students to practice the old teaching mode again and again, whichmakes the students ignore the content and meaning of language, thereby, cant improve the students ability to use the language correctly. And some teachers are very strict andattach great importance to the forms of language in classroom teaching, and therefore, they askstudents to practice some fixed sentencepatterns again and again. And many other teachers correct students errors frequently and timely. Consequently, many students keep silence most of the time. They dont want to be corrected frequently in the presence of the whole class and they dont want to become the laughingstock of others. That is why although many students can make grammatically correct sentences, they can not express themselves properly in spoken English. 4. Not Having Flexible Ways to Teach Oral EnglishMany teachers think that thegoal of oral English communication is to cultivate the abilities of having a speechor use correctwords. But influenced by the direct approach, many teachers use some incorrect ways. For example, some teachers ask the students to answer some questions which have obvious answers, or tellthem some truths which everybody knows. These kinds of communicative activities are not really oral communicative activities. And many teachers ask students to recite the texts learned in class. Although this way is useful for students to improve their oral communicative skills, it also neglects the flexibility of using a language. Students still cant expressthemselveswithproperwords and sentence structures indifferent situations. As a result,they cant carry on the normal social intercourse.B. The Reasons Related to the Students AspectsOn the other hand, students themselves are blame for their poor oral English.Because of the actualities of Chinese teaching, the requirements of oral English are much less than grammar, listening, reading and writing. So many students dont pay enough attention to it. For example, when studentsare asked of the four skills-listening, speaking, readingand writing, which one is the most important, many will choose reading and grammar without any hesitation. Few students will choose speaking. Another investigation shows that only 1% students communicate with others in English after class, most students communicate in English once in a while, some of them never. This shows that the students themselves dont pay enough attention to oral English. The status of oral English needs to be enhanced.Of course, manyother factors alsolead to students poor ability to speak English. For example, the University Entrance Examination sets a very low standard for students oral English; and students have few chances to practice oral Englisheither in or after class. But in my opinion, the most important reasons for students poor oral English arethose mentioned above. Since we have realized the importance of oral communication and have found the reasons for students poor ability to use English orally, how can we instruct oral English in classroom teaching so as to improve students oral communicative competence?. Ways to Instruct Oral English in Classroom TeachingA. Increase Students Interests and MotivationPeople in general have the notion that learning a language has something to do with speech. When we say Mr. So-and-so is good at English, people will naturally think that he can speak English well. The same is true of the students. They come to school to study English with the strong conviction that they come to learn to speak it. Children after their first English lesson display an obvious sense of satisfaction when they say “Goodbye” to each other in English and their attitude towards English is very positive and favorable for learning, and their attitude is greatly encouraged by the family and community when they are found to be able to say something useful in English, by this, the motivation of study is formed. A correct motivation plays an important role in language studying. Only with the correct study motivation shall the students have a correct and overall cognition about English studying, in order to remain high hope of success, strong self-confidence of study and active behavior of studying. Although the high school students are shouldering the burden of entering a higher school, as educators, the teachers should guide them to form correct motivation to study English actively. What shouldnt they do is taking the examination as the ultimate goal, they should stretch their teaching to a higher degree. B. Cultivate Students Correct Reading Habits in the ClassroomAs everybody knows, we have various ways to gain information, of which reading is a very important way. With the information, we can express our ideas freely, and the speaking ability can be improved. To enhancestudents oral English, it is necessary for us to cultivate students correct reading habits first because with good reading habits, students can get as much correct information as possible in the shortest time, with which they can express themselves effectively.Some students have very bad reading habits. For example, some like pointing at the material with their fingers or pens when reading while some others like analyzing an article sentence by sentence in their first reading. With these bad habits they read very slowly and cant get a general idea of what they read even if they have read it over. Although it is difficult for students to change these bad reading habits, teachers should try their best to help them. Teachers should help the students to develop good reading habits, which will not only help them recall what is read more easily, but also enrich their knowledge. In order to develop a good reading habit, we must give some different directions and requests according to different students situations, help themtoheighten theirconfidence,and developa good reading habit gradually in class.There are many ways to help students form a good reading habit. First, we can helpstudents to choose correct methods and useful materials before their reading in class. On one hand,we can teach students to use different ways to read (general-comprehension reading, skimming, scanning, careful reading) andon the other hand we can make conscious efforts to help students use various reading skills in their reading as much as possible and improve their reading speed. For example, we mustask students to understand the main idea of the reading material first; then, ask them to understand the organizationof the material, and after reading it, grasp the authors main idea revealed in the material. The students must learn to understand and analyze the main information and details supporting the theme, and learn to read between the lines. In this way,they can improve their thinking ability and improve their reading skills.Second, teachers can familiarize students with the commonly used reading skills. Teachers cancome toa conclusion fromdaily oral English studying, the goal of which is to understand the material. So the reading skills are the abilities to understand the reading material and grasp its useful information as soon as possible. The time each person spendson readingdepends on the ways of reading. In the authors opinion, the first paragraph is very important, sometimes it is the main part of the article. Reading the passage as a whole at the very beginning also can help them to understand the whole passage better. In the entire reading process, the students should understand the reading material as a whole. Theyshould not care much about the individual words or expressionsthat theydont understand. It doesnt matter when studentsmeet some complicated sentences difficult to understand.What they need to do is just to continue reading it. After reading over the whole material, they will find that many problems they meet at the beginning can be solved without any difficulty. What is the most important thing in reading comprehension is to understand. In order to guarantee students understandingof the reading material accurately, the teacher must explain some useful and difficult sentences in it. In the reading process, teachers should request the students to work by rules and grasp the mainidea of the whole passage.C. Create Suitable SituationThe practice of language speaking needs suitable situation. The view that Chinese students have few opportunities to speak with native speaker may be judged simply shortsighted. Teachers must realize that they are teaching a generation who are free from insularity and xenophobia and who will have much more access to English speakers in the future. As educators, teachers should creat