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An Analysis of the Problems and Solutions in Oral English Teachingby杨丽春A thesis presented to the School of English Studies ofXuzhou Normal University in partial fulfillment of the requirementsfor the degree ofBachelor of EnglishSep 15, 2011Class: 2009-1 Advisor: 杨树林 徐州师范大学毕业论文（设计）任务书（开题报告）毕业论文（设计）题目：英语口语教学问题分析及解决方案任务起止日期 2005年 11月 20日 至 2006 年5 月30日毕业论文主要内容及参考文献： 随着中国加入世贸组织和经济全球化，英语作为第二语言变得越来越重要。在中国，越来越来越多的人，不论男女老少，都在学习英语。然而，毕业后很少人能同外国人熟练地交流。大多数人学的是哑巴英语。所以本文首先从语言本身和教学活动两方面分析了英语难学的原因，接下来本文又从教师和学生两方面提出了相应的解决方案。最后，作者希望广大学生从中得以借鉴，从而更好的学习英语。 Brown, H. Douglas. Teaching by Principles: An Interactive Approach to Language Pedagogy. London: Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press, 2001.Byrne, D. Teaching Oral English. London: Longman Press, 1986.Klippel, F. Keep Talking. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984.Underhill, N. Testing Spoken Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987.指导教师 (签名)年 月 日英语口语教学问题分析及解决方案摘要： 随着中国加入世贸组织和经济全球化，英语作为第二语言变得越来越重要。在中国，越来越来越多的人，不论男女老少，都在学习英语。然而，毕业后很少人能同外国人熟练地交流。大多数人学的是哑巴英语。所以本文首先从语言本身和教学活动两方面分析了英语难学的原因，接下来本文又从教师和学生两方面提出了相应的解决方案。最后，作者希望广大学生从中得以借鉴，从而更好的学习英语。关键字：有效，自尊，互动。The Analysis of the Problems and Solutions in Oral English TeachingAbstract: With Chinas entry into WTO and economic globalization, English has become more and more important. In China, more and more people, old or young are learning English. However, few people can communicate fluently with foreigners after graduation. Most of them are learning dumb English. So first the author analyzes the problems from the language itself and teaching activities. Then the author proposes the solutions from teachers teaching and students studies. At last, the author hopes that English learners can learn much from the paper in order to speak English well. Key Words: effective; indignity; interactive.Table of ContentsI. Introduction.1II. The problems in English learning and teaching.1 A. The complexity of the language1 B. The problems in English teaching.3III. Good methods for English teaching and learning.5 A. Teachers efforts to make teaching effective.5 B. Students own efforts to learn English.10VI. Conclusion.12V. Works Cited.15I. Introduction In Pennys view, of all the four skills (listening, speaking, reading and writing), speaking seems intuitively the most important: people who know a language are referred to as speakers of that language, so most foreign language learners are primarily interested in learning to speak.According to the British council, English has official or special status in 75 countries and is the main language for international business and academics. In China, with the implementation of the policy of reform and opening, English has become more and more important. More and more people, old or young, are learning English. However, few people have gained the excellent ability of speaking. Most people are just learning dumb English (people are good at taking examinations, but they can not speak well). Most students can not communicate with foreigners fluently after graduation from universities. They can just speak a few sentences, for example: What is your name? How old are you? What is wrong with the oral English? In the following context, the author will analyze the problems and give the solutions about oral English learning and teaching, which helps people to improve their oral English.II. The problems in English learning and teachingA. The complexity of the language itselfBrown said that some idiosyncrasies of spoken language make speakingskills somewhat difficult to acquire.1. Clustering Fluent speech is phrasal, not word by word. Learners can organize their output both cognitively and physically.2. RedundancyThe speaker has an opportunity to make meaning clearer through the redundancy of language. Learners can capitalize on this feature of spoken language.3. Reduced formsContractions, elisions, reduced vowels, etc. All form special problems in teaching spoken English. Students who do not learn colloquial contractions can sometimes develop a stilted, bookish quality of speaking that in turn stigmatizes them.4. Stress, rhythm, and intonation This is the most important characteristic of English pronunciation. The stress-timed rhythm of spoken English and its intonation patterns convey important messages.5. Colloquial language This means that students are reasonably well acquainted with the words and idioms and phrases of colloquial language and that they get practice in producing these forms.6. Rate of delivery Another salient characteristic of fluency is rate of delivery. One of teachers tasks in teaching spoken English is to help learners to achieve an acceptable speed along with other attributes of fluency.7. InteractionLearning to produce waves of language in a vacuumwithout interlocutor-would rob speaking skill of its richest component: the creativity of conversational negotiation.8. Performance variableOne of the advantages of spoken language is that the process of thinking as people speak allows them to manifest a certain number of performance hesitations, pauses, backtracking, and corrections. Teachers can actually teach learners how to pause and hesitate. For example, in English the “thinking time” is not silent, but rather people insert certain “fillers”: uh, um, well, you know, I mean, like, etc. One of the most salient differences between native and nonnative speakers of a language is in their hesitation.B. The problems in English teaching 1. Lack of an English speaking environmentStudents in China are learning English under the only language of Chinese. Except the limited courses every week, they have little chance to touch English. What makes things worse, it is hard for students to review what they have learned in the English class since they have more other courses to learn. In everyday life, they can only communicate with Chinese. So it is evident that the English learning environment has limited the students development in speaking. 2. The low level of teachers oral English At present, some teachers oral English is not very good. They can not do teaching with fluent English. For example, when I was in the third year of English learning, my English teacher of intensive reading was always using Chinese in class. As an English major, I wanted to cherish every chance to improve my ability of speaking. However, my teacher could not give me that opportunity. I had to learn English in a Chinese environment. 3. Too many people in a classIn English learning, students need to do much practice in order to gain excellent English ability. But there are too many people in a class, generally speaking, on an average of 20-30 people in English-majoring universities, but 50-100 in non- English-majoring universities. It is hard to organize activities to practice English.4. The result of examination-oriented education Examinations are the most important means to check the students studies. Besides, the students study achievement is the standard to evaluate the qualification of the teachers teaching. In order to improve the students marks, teachers have to pay much attention to the examinations. 5. The bad effects of traditional teaching methodsIn the traditional teaching process, the teachers play a leading role. In order to make students learn more and understand more, they speak all the time in class and try to translate every English sentence, phrase, word, etc. into Chinese. The students are just “good” listeners. As is known, the key point to learn oral English is not listening but practicing. However, students are learning dumb English. Take Liyang (the originator of Liyang Crazy English) for example. When he was in school, he did poorly with English. He thought it was hard to learn the boring language. What is more, he failed in many examinations. As a result, he was self-abased. However, he was not beaten down. On the contrary, he learned English using his own way. He usually went to the mountain to yell out English loudly. He cherished every chance to practice English. Finally, he succeeded. Now many people are learning English in his school. From his example, people can know that a poor student in traditional teaching can learn well using good methods. 6. Students psychological barriersBecause students do not have good English basic knowledge, such as, standard pronunciation, large vocabulary, and clear grammar, they are afraid of speaking English. They are afraid of making mistakes and being laughed at. As a result, it is very hard for the students to open their mouths to speak English. Therefore, most graduates can not communicate fluently in English. For example, when I had the oral English class, I would speak little. It was not because I did not have chance to speak but because I was afraid other people would make fun of me. Most of the time, I just kept silent.III. Good methods for English teaching and learning A. Teachers efforts to make teaching effective 1. The efficiency of class activities Students oral English has much to do with the class activities. As is known, some students who cooperate with the teacher in class do better in speaking than those who keep silent. So there is need to take measures to make class interactive and let every one have chance to speak. In order to find the solutions the author will first analyze the problems with speaking activities. Penny said there are four problems in the class activities: (a) Inhibition Unlike reading, writing and listening activities, speaking requires some degree of real-time exposure to an audience. Learners are often inhibited about trying to say things in a foreign language in the classroom: worried about making mistakes, fearfull of criticism or losing face, or simply shy of the attention that their speech attracts.(b) Nothing to sayEven if they are not inhibited, you often hear learners complain that they can not think of anything to say: they have no motive to express themselves beyond the guilty feeling that they should be speaking. (c) Low or uneven participation Only one participant can talk at a time if he or she is to be heard; and in a large group this means that each one will have only very little talking time. This problem is compounded by the tendency of some learners to dominate, while others speak very little or not at all.(d) Mother-tongue use In classes where all, or a number of, the learners share the same mother tongue, they may tend to use it: because it is easier, because it feels unnatural to speak to one another in a foreign language, and because they feel exposed if they are speaking their mother tongue. If they are talking in small groups it can be quite difficult to get some classes to keep to the target language. Since the problems are clear, the author will propose the solutions in the following context. (a) Use group workThis increases the sheer amount of learner talk going on in a limited period of time and also lowers the inhibitions of learners who are unwilling to speak in front of the full class. It is true that group work means the teacher can not supervise all learner speech, so that not all utterances will be corrected, and learners may occasionally slip into their native language; nevertheless, even taking into consideration occasional mistakes and mother-tongue use, the amount of time remaining for positive, useful oral practice is still likely to be far more than in the full-class set-up.(b) Base the activity on easy languageIn general, the level of language needed for a discussion should be lower than that used in intensive language-learning activity in the class: it should be easily recalled and produced by the participants, so that they can speak fluently with the minimum of hesitation.(c) Give some instructions or training in discussion skillsIf the task is based on group discussion, then include instructions about participation when introducing it. For example, tell learners to make sure that everyone in the group contributes to the discussions; appoint a chairperson to each group who will regulate the participation.(d) Make a careful choice of the topic and task to stimulate interestOn the whole, the clearer the purpose of discussion, the more motivated participants will be.(e) Keep students speaking the target languageThe teacher might appoint one of the group as monitor, whose job it is to remind participants to use the target language, and perhaps report later to the teacher how well the group managed to keep to it. Even if there is no actual penalty attached, the very awareness that someone is monitoring such lapses helps participants to be more careful.2. The importance of an English environment Small children can speak, mostly because he or she is in a language environment. Every day they hear peoples talks, and make imitation. Gradually, they can also express their needs in this language. From that example, we know the importance of a language speaking environment. In order to create a good English environment, teachers should use English to organize the teaching, using English to explain English. Try to avoid teaching in Chinese and translating all the English articles or dialogues into Chinese. We know it is not enough to learn English in the class. So teachers can assign tasks for students homework. For example, let students watch an English film and tell the main idea to other students next time. Besides, students can listen to English songs and standard tapes, which help them much in English pronunciation, rhythm, tone, etc. After all, make students have more chance to listen to and speak English.3. The good methods to correct students mistakes It is inevitable to make mistakes, so teachers should pay attention to the mistake-correcting methods. Some teachers are used to interrupting students immediately when finding mistakes and asking them to repeat the right sentences. Teachers can use this method but they should not use it too often, for it will put pressure on students. Teachers should choose to correct mistakes. To small mistakes, there is no need to correct, because with the improvement of speaking ability, students will correct them themselves. It is better for students to do that. For example, when a student said:“Tom always does her homework carefully”, the teacher can shake his head slightly and repeat the sentence. When the student said：“Tom always does his homework carefully”, the teacher can nod his head. In this way, the students correct the small mistakes themselves. However, when students make serious mistakes, teachers should correct them. But they should also pay attention to students indignity. In this case, it is better to use the indirect method. For example, when a student said: “I go to see a friend of mine yesterday after breakfast”, the teacher could say naturally: “Oh yes, I see you went to see a friend of yours” or say: “Yesterday after breakfast you went to see a friend of yours”. So in this way, the teacher both corrected the students mistakes and made him speak continually.4. The elimination of cultural barriersThere are great differences between English and Chinese cultures, so the success of oral English teaching is to help students banish the cultural barrier. It is boring to learn something unclear. I still remember when I started to learn English, the young teacher just taught me letters, words, grammar and phrases. However, I did not know what English was and why I needed to learn it. Of course, I did very poorly with English when I was in the secondary school. But when I came into the university, with teachers help, I have read many books about English. Now it is very easy for me to learn English. What is more, I have found a job working as an English teacher. From my experience, we can see it is very important to teach students the culture, convention, values and habits of the English-speaking countries. If not, students may have misunderstandings when they communicate with native speakers. For example, we Chinese people usually greet each other saying: “Have you eaten?” If you say that to a native speaker of English, he may think you will invite him to dinner. What is more, we Chinese people do not care so much about the private life. It means nothing if we ask somebody: “How old are you? How much can you earn a year?” However, if we ask a native speaker of English such questions, he will be very angry. From all the examples, people can know it is necessary and important to help students banish the cultural barriers. B. Students own efforts to learn EnglishAs is known, oral English learning is an interactive process. If the best teacher in the world teaches a student who is lazy, the student can not speak English well. Diligence is the way to make up for ones dullness. In order to speak fluently and accurately, students need to work hard. Liyang once said that if people want to learn English well, they must toughen their bodies and their minds. Before having the English class, students should get well prepared. For example, students can look up the new words and read the new articles to find the difficult points. In this way, students can have class purposely. After class, they also need to review what they have learned immediately. In fact, the key to learning English is to learn it actively. In this modern society, students can learn English everywhere and everytime. When reading papers, watching films, listening to songs