华德外语系本科毕业论文格式范例.doc

哈尔滨工业大学华德应用技术学院毕业设计（论文）首行缩进2字符小二，黑体，居中，一级标题段落间距：段前12磅，段后0行摘要（空一行，此行字号为五号，段前、后间距均为0，单倍行距）在中国的英语学习者所掌握的四种语言技能中，口语能力被认为是最差的，而这显然无法满足日益增长的国际交流需求。这篇文章基于对一组学生的调查以及作者对中国的英语学习者学习状况的调查，主要研究了中国的英语专业学生在拓展口语技能是所面临的主要问题：缺乏信心和缺乏训练（空一行，此行字号为五号，段前、后间距均为0，单倍行距）小四，宋体，两端对齐行距：固定值，18磅字符间距：加宽0.2磅关键词：中国学生；口语技能拓展；自信；练习；交际能力小四，宋体，最后一关键词后不加标点关键词之间用中文输入法下的分号隔开字符间距：加宽0.2磅小四，黑体，顶格写字符间距：加宽0.2磅小四，times new roman, 两端对齐行距：固定值，18磅首行缩进，2字符小二， Times New Roman, 加粗，居中段落间距：段前12磅，段后0一级标题Abstract（空一行，此行字号为五号）Among the four kinds of language skills of Chinese learners of English, oral skills are found to be the weakest, which are certainly incompatible with the demands of the increasingly growing intercultural communication. This paper, based on a survey among a group of students and the authors observation of the Chinese students English learning, studies the main problems Chinese English major students face in developing their oral skills: Lack of confidence and lack of practice, two major obstacles to their improvement. In effect, students lack of confidence is closely related to their fear of losing face, which, in turn, affects their motivation to seek opportunities to practice the target language. Learning the language this way has actually created a vicious cycle of learning, which explains why satisfactory teaching effects cannot be achieved. Following a detailed analysis of the students problems and related factors, the author presents some practical classroom strategies in a holistic approach, which has proved helpful in dealing with the problems. Those strategies effectively help lower students “affective filter” and overcome their fear of losing face so as to build up their self-confidence. Additionally, these strategies help provide students with adequate opportunities for oral practice of the language, thus transforming the previous vicious cycle into a virtuous one and eventually resulting in enhancing the students communicative competence.（空一行，此行字号为五号）Key words: Chinese students; oral skills development; self-confidence; practice; communicative competence小四，times new roman, 行间距18磅关键词之间用英文输入法下的分号隔开最后一关键词后不加标点小四，times new roman, 加粗小二，times new roman，加粗，居中，非一级标题段落间距：段前12磅，段后0行小四，黑体，不加粗，字中间空格Contents（空一行，此行字号为五号）摘 要IAbstractIIChapter One Introduction1小四加粗Chapter Two English, English majors and English lessons in curricula in China2Chapter Three Speaking, the weakest among students language skills4Chapter Four Students main problems for their oral skills development6Chapter Five Strategies in a holistic approach to dealing with the problems95.1 Lowering students “affective filter” to build up their confidence95.2 Creating language atmosphere and providing opportunities for practice115.3 Integrating oral practice with other aspects of TEFL135.4 Utilizing the positive testing effect14Conclusion15Bibliography16Acknowledgments1717小二，加粗，居中，一级标题，段落间距：段前12磅，段后0行行距：固定值，28磅Chapter One Introduction（空一行，此行字号为五号）正文中段前、段后间距为0行“For many people”, as Anne Lazaraton (2001, p. 103) observes, “the ability to speak a language is synonymous with knowing that language since speech is the most basic means of human communication”. Nowadays, speaking ability of English learners, especially English majors in China, has been drawing increasingly greater attention. For the speeding-up globalization and increasing contacts between China and the outside world have made it increasingly necessary for Chinese learners to be all-round English professionals who can directly contact native speakers, being able to engage themselves in political, economic, cultural and academic exchanges with westerners, using English as a serviceable tool in cross-cultural communication in their future career. However, “speaking in a second or foreign language has often been viewed as the most demanding of four skills” and “a formidable task for language learners” (Bailey & Savage, 1994, pp. vi-vii). This is especially true with English learning in the context like China, where no natural language environment is accessible to learners of the language. How to effectively improve students oral skills is of great concern to TEFL in the country. This paper, based on a survey among a group of students and the authors observation, discusses the main problemsChinese English majors face in developing their oral skills and some practical strategies in a holistic approach that may help deal with these problems so as to effectively better students oral skills. Chapter Two English, English majors and English lessons in curricula in China（空一行，此行字号为五号）English has always been considered very important in China ever since the end of the disastrous Cultural Revolution, especially the early 1980s when the reform and open-door policy was widely carried out in the country. As is well known, China is now a country with the largest population learning English in the world. The importance attached to English learning can be seen not only from the number of people learning the language but also from the following facts: It is always a compulsory course in the curricula for middle school students, college or university students, post-graduate students and up to doctoral degree candidates no matter whether they are arts, literature or science majors. In cities, primary schools and even kindergartens put English in their curricula in spite of the hot debate on the controversial issue whether it is good to teach kids a foreign language as early as possible. Besides, much time is allotted on the course Englishin effect, more time on it than on any other subjects in middle school education in China, especially in the last year of senior middle school. Moreover, English is always tested in entrance examinations of schooling at every level. With the increasing awareness of the importance of English learning and growing demand of qualified personnel in society, English major training in China has been a very welcome field and the enrollment of English majors kept expanding until recently. Besides producing teachers and linguistic researchers of the language, English major departments in colleges and universities also shoulder the important task of training personnel who will use English in their future career such as diplomats, interpreters and translators.Freshmen English majors in colleges and universities are senior middle school graduates who have succeeded in passing the higher education entrance examinations. During their following 4-year studies, English majors go through two stages of learning: Basic stage and advanced study stages, each of which covers 2 years. During the former stage, basic courses are scheduled aiming at developing students basic language skills, such as Basic English, Listening, Speaking, Extensive Reading, and Grammar and later on in the second year, Lexicology and Basic Writing. All the courses take two 50 (or 45)-minute class hours per week within one semester or four except Basic English, which is taught throughout the two years of the basic learning stage with six to eight class hours per week assigned on it. In the past two years, the author of this paper was teaching Basic English, which is also commonly referred to as Intensive Reading or Comprehensive English. As the last name of the course implies, the teaching of this course is supposed to cover all the language skills and aim at helping students gain all-round development of their language ability: Listening, speaking, pronunciation and intonation, reading and writing, etc. But in practice, it is quite common that more attention is paid to language understanding and grammatical analysis. Chapter Three Speaking, the weakest among students language skills（空一行，此行字号为五号）In spite of the facts that competent users of the English language are in demand, great importance is meant to be attached to English teaching and much time is spent on English learning, the actual picture of Chinese students oral skills is far from satisfactory. There used to be in public those complaints about TEFL in China as “high marks, poor ability” and “high investment, low outcome”, referring to students poor language competence in terms of their ability of actual use of the language, especially oral use. The learned foreign language was commonly known as “mute English”. In recent years, things have improved, but how to fundamentally change the situation still greatly concerns TEFL professionals. For Chinese students, written exams may not be a problem. Most of them actually can do them very well. The students in the authors class, for instance, did successfully on the English test in the college entrance examinations. Over half of the 26 students scored more than 120 out of the total mark 150 and one of them got a mark as high as 132. But when it comes to communication, things are not so optimistic. This was evidently shown by the students performance in the first class when they were asked to briefly introduce themselves in English. They appeared quite nervous and could not do it properly. In their hard-tried brief self-introduction, there emerged very simple errors which could have been avoided if they had had adequate practice. Later on, we found it not uncommon that many of them were reluctant to answer questions in class or had difficulty in doing so and in making daily conversations in English. Dr. Robert Ackerman, an American professor of East Stroudsburg University in Pennsylvania, U.S.A., after teaching at the authors university for a semester, once remarked in his e-mail to me, “The biggest need for English teaching in China is to improve speaking abilities”.The students themselves also admit that low speaking ability is the biggest problem to them as English majors. To obtain some general information about the students, a simple survey was conducted among the 196 newly-enrolled English major freshmen at the beginning of the authors teaching program, which was carried out through getting a questionnaire anonymously completed by the students. The data collected from the simple survey have presented suggestive feedback for us to ponder over. When answering the question “What do you think is the weakest among your language skills: Listening, speaking, reading and writing?” 76% of the students admit that speaking is the poorest, though the majority of them (89%) are well aware of the importance of oral skills in such an era as today when economic globalization and international communication are household phrases and English is commonly accepted as a global language. Both the observation and the survey show that students productive skills are strikingly inferior to their receptive skills and their oral expressive ability is by far poorer than their understanding ability, while their reading is the strongest. This seems to indicate that the students have gained good grammatical competence, one of a foreign language learners four components of communicative competence, the others being sociolinguistic competence, discourse competence and strategic competence (Hymes, 1971). Obviously the backwardness of the students oral skills is incompatible with the requirements of the times and therefore requires teachers special attention. Greater efforts should be made in TEFL in China to enhance students speaking ability. But where do the students main problems lie in the development of their oral productive skills? Chapter Four Students main problems for their oral skills development （空一行，此行字号为五号）We find that lack of confidence and lack of practice are students key problems, two major obstacles to their oral skill improvement. In effect, students lack of confidence is closely related to their mentality of being afraid of losing face. This is diagnostically indicated in the survey mentioned above. To the question “How often did you volunteer to answer questions in English in class?” only 5 students ticked the choice “Often” and 32% of them ticked “Occasionally”, while 66% admitted that they “Seldom” or “Never” did. When asked why if the answer to the previous question is the latter, 52% of them ticked the reason “Not sure of the correct answer”, 28% said that they are “Afraid of making mistakes”, 13% made their choice on “Afraid of losing face” and 7% said that they were “Not interested”. As a matter of fact, psychologically speaking, no matter whether the students attributed their reasons for not volunteering to answer questions to not being certain of the answer or to being afraid of making mistakes, it is, in the final analysis, a matter of face problembeing afraid of losing face is the biggest obstacle to opening their mouths to speak the target language. Shyness may be said a cultural characteristic of Chinese children. If that is true, it should be taken into consideration when teaching strategies are decided so as to help students overcome this unfavorable mental condition for foreign language learning. But it seems to be worsened by two factors in TEFL in China, one being objective and the other subjective. By objective factors, we mean the objective environment in the country mentioned above, which lacks natural target language spoken around and in which the learners have visual information as the sole or main language source. In such environment, the communicative function of the target language can not be exerted and the unfavorable condition makes students have very low internal learning motivation on the one hand. It, on the other hand, gives them little exposure to the language and few opportunities for their authentic use of it, a necessary condition for language acquisition. By subjective factors, teachers mean problems in the language teaching: The traditional teaching approach in English teaching is still prevalent in China. It is true that with advanced linguistic theories and teaching approaches introduced into the country, there has been some change in TEFL in China. But teachers regret to say that the deep-rooted translation-and-grammar approach would not give way easily, especially under the pressure of the two important tests: Senior middle school and college or university entrance examinations, the success of which mainly lies in test takers grammatical competence as no oral test is given in either of the tests except that in the latter for those students who students want to become English majors. Such test-oriented English teaching tends to resort to the comprehension approach rather than communicative approach, under which, excessive emphasis is placed on mastery of linguistic knowledge and receptive skills, whereas rather insufficient importance is attached to students oral work and their productive skills simply neglected. Students are instructed to receive so much training of reading, translation and grammar exercises that there is little, if any, time left for oral practice. Few opportunities for orally using the target language would inevitably result in students poor communicative competence. That would eventually make them lose interest and confidence in their oral skill development, lack of which would deteriorate their mentality of shyness.English learners shyness and nervousness is a problem of what is called high “affective filter”. According to Krashens (1982) “Affective Filter Hypothesis”, learning has much to do with learners affective factors, namely the learners mental state, such as their motivation, needs, attitude, emotional state, etc., on which the level of the imaginary “filter” depends much. With the learners high motivation and relaxed mood, the “filter” goes down, which in turn makes learning more effective. Conversely, nervousness, shyness and low motivation may make the “filter” go up and thus hold up learning. The students so high “affective filter” in learning to speak will inevitably affect their acquisition of communicative competence. The more they are afraid of speaking the language, the less they will practice speaking it. As a result, there appears the vicious cycle: Having little practice due to the fear of losing face leads to little progress in developing their speaking ability and little progress makes them even less confident of learning. Insufficient attention to oral skill training in classroom teaching also lies in the fact that class work is normally done in written form with little oral practice carried out in class. As a result, language teaching class, which should be very practical, often turns out to be a lesson in which linguistic knowledge is imparted and mechanically drilled. This can also be seen from the survey. To the question “Were there any opportunities for you to speak English in class at middle school?” Most of the students (80%) say “There were rare” and 10 % of them say “There was none”.Related to the traditional method is the testing system in the country, which has also exerted negative effect on students way of learning. It always attaches importance to testing grammar, vocabulary and reading, but neglects examining students oral skills. The survey shows that only six among the surveyed students (3%) have taken more than two oral tests, 25 % of them have taken oral testing once and another 28% twice, whereas 44% have never had a single oral test. Without the positive stimulus effect of testing, it is not surprising that TEFL in China, commonly known as testing-oriented, will not be so satisfactorily fruitful in terms of urging students to better their oral skills. There is no wonder that students could successfully pass tough written tests, but are still poor in ora