提高小学生英语口语能力的策略研究.doc

摘摘 要要 本文以儿童发展新论 语觉论 作为主要理论基础 首先论述了当前小学英 语口语教学中存在的问题以及原因 然后在语觉论的指导下 设计了以言语交际 为中心的小学英语课堂教学模式 语觉论认为 儿童的语觉生长发育存在一个关 键期 在这个关键期内 我们必须为儿童创设良好的学习外语的语言环境 从而 有效地培养儿童的外语听说能力 笔者在 语觉论 的指导下 摸索出一套经实 践证明有效且具有可操作性的 交际型 小学英语教学方法 关键词 小学 语觉论 英语口语教学 ABSTRACT Based on the new theory of children s language development Language Sense Theory this paper first discussed the current primary school English teaching as well as the reasons for the problems and then under the guidance of language sense theory using communication strategies the writer designed an English teaching method in the class of primary school Language sense theory points that there is a critical period of children s language development and at this period in order to effectively nurture children s foreign language listening and speaking ability we should created a good language environment for children to learn a foreign language According to language sense theory the author explore a communication based method which had been proven effective and operational in primary school English teaching Key words primary school language sense theory spoken language teaching Contents 1 Introduction 1 2 English teaching in primary school in China 2 2 1 The student 3 2 1 1 The student s motivation 3 2 1 2 The student s personality 3 2 2 The teacher 4 2 2 1 The teacher s traditional role 4 2 2 2 The teacher s quality 4 2 3 Teaching environment 5 3 Literature review 6 3 1 Language sense theory 6 3 2 Cognitive theory 8 4 The strategies of improving pupil s English speaking ability 10 4 1 Cultivate the student s habit of speaking English 10 4 2 Create a pleasant atmosphere of oral expression 10 4 3 Teach students the methods and techniques in communication 11 5 An experiment 13 5 1 The objective of the experiment 13 5 2 The subjects of the experiment 13 5 3 The method of the experiment 13 5 4 A Pre test 13 5 5 A model lesson 14 5 6 A Post test 17 6 Discussions and Suggestions 19 7 Conclusion 21 APPENDIX I 22 APPENDIX II 23 Acknowledgements 24 References 25 1 Introduction With the development of economy and more and more international exchanges in China English particularly speaking English plays an increasingly significant role in society Consequently speaking English learning has received more attention than ever But now students are still spending much more time in learning English knowledge than using it in practice The traditional English over emphasizes the forms of language and neglects the communicative function of language Under its influence in traditional English class in China the majority of teachers saw English learning involving the mastery of grammatical rules and memorization of vocabulary or regarded language as a process of habit formation structural patterns were imitated and drilled until automation was formed As a result after several years of English learning students are only clear with some grammar rules and the use of some words They can get good marks in examination but are very weak in using English to communicate with others They cannot understand others and do not know how to express themselves with correct words in real situation And this is just against the ultimate goal of language learning communicative competence According to Primary English Courses Teaching Requirements issued by Ministry of Education of China the objective of primary English teaching is to develop students comprehensive English competence especially in listening and speaking which enables them to take effective use of English in spoken and written communication In consideration of the case it is necessary to search for an effective teaching strategy to improve students speaking ability in English through classroom teaching and this is what the thesis is going to aim at 2 English teaching in primary school in China Speaking which has been viewed as the most demanding skill in English using has been researched by lots of professors who have offered many thoughts and suggestions on speaking By reviewing these thoughts we can understand the nature of speaking easily and the author believes this will be good to the research of the approach to the teaching of English speaking Speaking is an activity requiring the integration of many subsystems Lack of language learning environment and difficult in changing the way of thinking makes speaking a second or foreign language a formidable task for language learners For many people speaking is seen as the central skill Generally speaking English teaching in China belongs to EFL English as a Foreign Language rather than ESL English as a second language In our primary schools English is merely taught for 4 to 5 classes 40 minutes for a class a week with Chinese translation or explanation as well which greatly differs from the second language acquisition in the target language context Waddell and Liu Runqing have said in 1992 that the students do not have access to the extensive exposure in the target language pervasive meaningful input or the authentic communicative environment to pick up to internalize to create to test and to modify the interlanguage The students in primary schools are between 7 and 14 years old They prefer to concrete images and exactness Also they like talking and are good at imitation but they feel it is difficult to do grammar analysis and reading comprehension Children are not able to achieve the language points very easily These suggest that the method of teaching the primary school students should be different from that of teaching adult students However with vivid input and meaningful context the learners will understand the necessary information by guessing or reasoning or other learning strategies so as to facilitate understanding and increase their confidence in learning the language As we know for children interest is motivation although students in a class consist of students of various characters and learning styles no one will refuse interesting class Aiming to improve Chinese students English speaking ability a lot of teaching methods have been used such as the Situational Language Teaching the Oral Approach Communicative Language Teaching etc As a result the junior or senior schools students are improved but in primary school though task based teaching is highly discussed and advocated many students fail to do well in communicating with others naturally in daily life This situation is extremely expected to be changed Chinese students have not been able to raise the level of spoken English what is the reason for this the writer summed up following three aspects of factors 2 1 The student Although teachers have done a lot to arouse the enthusiasm of the students for learning English students in classrooms may not perform as the teachers would wish them to Here are some reasons that may affect them 2 1 1 The student s motivation Motivation in foreign language teaching refers to learners desire and raw power of learning It s arguably the most important factor in success of failure in language learning Motivation is some kind of internal drive that encourages somebody to pursue a course of action It seems that if the learners want to reach a goal and the goal is sufficiently attractive they will be strongly motivated to do whatever is necessary But if the goal is not attractive they will pay no attention to it A well motivated student badly taught will probably do much better than a poorly motivated student well taught The stronger the motivation is the more positive the learner is and so the quicker the language learning is And from the psychological characteristics of children s stage interesting things can attract students much easier but in the traditional classroom teacher think the more they say the more the students will understand so they always keep talking But they don t make clear the relationship between input and output It s very hard for students to be interested in and join in because they are used to hearing than talking and this leads to students in classroom have no enthusiasm 2 1 2 The student s personality Personality is a complex psychological phenomenon involving feeling sense attention memory thinking method emotion personal hobby ability and character and so on Personality is personal innate power organ which determines a person s specific behavior and thinking Personality is one of main factors in the obtainment of communicative competence The differences between the learners personality have much influence on language learning such as whether he or she is self confident or modest reserved or talkative We often can see in the class in primary schools many outgoing students is very active in class no matter what they know they always raise their hands some students who are shy and nervous don t like giving their ideas in class Teachers always ask the students who raise their hands to answer questions There is no doubt some students will become increasingly active but some students will be more and more silent It will lead to the disadvantage of improving the students overall level of speaking ability Therefore in the classroom the teacher should give each student the opportunity to speak freely The writer think the best way is make the students discuss in groups 2 2 The teacher In the traditional Chinese education teacher as the subject in the class the guide to show students how to learn knowledge has been playing a crucial role So to the problem of hard to improve students speaking ability what are the problems of teachers the writer will analyze next 2 2 1 The teacher s traditional role In oral classroom teachers play an important role in students language learning To a large extent the function and the methodology or approaches the teachers perform in different teaching activities determine the roles of teachers As Richards and Rodgers point out in 1986 teachers roles are related ultimately to assumptions about language and language learning at the level of approach However most teachers pay too more attention to language forms and grammatical rules and little attention to language abilities and competence The teachers control the teaching procedure from beginning to end Finishing teaching the textbook is seemed as their teaching aim But now speaking in a foreign language has often been viewed as the most demanding of the four skills It is an important part of everyday interaction and usually the first impression of a person is based on his or her ability to speak fluently and comprehensibly so teachers should prepare the students to be able to speak in English in the real world outside the classroom and in their own classroom 2 2 2 The teacher s quality The teachers of English should have a very good command of spoken English they should be fluent and accurate they should have a wide range of knowledge and well cultured they should be able to lead the students to appreciate the English language and the culture relate to it But there are some teachers who think finish the task is the most important They don t stand in students point to teach English in order to stimulate students interest as a prerequisite so most of the classroom time is spent on language points There is little time for listening and speaking It is not easy to create a communicative classroom Moreover the teacher s personality is a key factor of the application to communicative methods Some teachers are too serious with little sense of humor and less power of imagination without enough enthusiasm or passion so their classes are often dull and inactive But some teachers who have lively personality can make the classroom very interesting children are very happy to speak in this kind of classes 2 3 Teaching environment Compared with the specific quantitative description about listening reading and writing the national English syllabus about requirements of speaking ability is vague Most of the classroom time is devoted to listening reading and writing Students have little chance to use English outside the school In ordinary school there are no oral English classes at all Even in some key schools with foreign teachers oral English class takes place once a week or once every two weeks students have little time to approach the foreign teachers In addition when students go home they speak Chinese with their parents They live in Chinese speaking environment because their parents are not able to speaking English very well In a way the teaching environment also limits the development of students speaking ability 3 Literature review The studies on English speaking have been increasing rapidly in our country in recent years including researches on theorization as well as empirical studies The scholars in our country conduct a series of large scale feasibly theoretical and practical research on standardized oral test for Chinese students then establish the effective testing and assessment system for CET Band4 CET Band6 TEM4 and TEM8 and widely apply the research finding to Educational Evaluation system in China The writer has come to locate the thesis published during 1995 to 2008 on the important foreign language journal Foreign sector in our country The result showed that during the 14 years in studying of Oral English from the depth and breadth there are 31 thesis up to standard In these articles the writer has extracted two important theories that is Language sense theory and Cognitive theory 3 1 Language sense theory The three famous children s language acquisition theories today are environmental determinism theory congenital determinism theory and the interaction of innate and acquired The environmental determinism theory view children s language ability is acquired by their experience it emphasizes on mimic Imitation was put forward by psychologist Albert in United States in 1924 In his view the children learning language by imitating their parents it s a replica of the language of their parents Reinforcement Theory was put forward by a well known psychologist Skinner in United States In his view children will be recognized or encouraged by adults when their imitation is right it will be enhanced However a large number of observations showed that children not only learn the language through imitation Comparison of congenital determinism theories there are two influential theories LAD theory represented by Chomsky and the critical period theory represent by Lenneberg Chomsky believed that in children s minds there has a congenital genetic factor of the language acquisition mechanism so as soon as the children were born the language acquisition mechanism began to work when they heard language Child s language learning ability is just as child s body it will grow according to a predetermined manner in a suitable environment and nutrition conditions Lenneberg believed that the language development of children was a natural maturing with the child s brain and other physical organs developed to a certain stage subjected to appropriate external stimulus the potential with language related changed in physiological function for the actual language ability so children s language skills was determined by innate genetic factors Mr Berg also pointed out the concept of critical period of children s language development he pointed out in the 2 year old to 12 year old due to physiological factors language acquisition was most easily while over this period the development of language skills would be restricted and developed much slower Canadian psychologist Donald Hebb is a representative of the theory of interaction of innate and acquired He believed that human have speaking ability are not only because there is a congenital special structure of language speech center in human s mind which can process the abstract language but also because of the experience and environment impact of the language Professor He Kekang brings forward the Language Sense Theory based on Chomsky s theory of language development of children He believes that in addition to human vision hearing taste smell feeling also there is a sense of language semantic perception In his book he quoted many achievements of brain science research and some sample cases of linguistics psychology and education scientifically demonstrated that the sense of language is a mixture of genetic characteristics of congenital and the existence of a development period critical period The details are as follows 1 Children s language ability only the sense of language that is the ability to feel and identify the semantic and voice can be development by innate heredity but not all speech 2 In addition to voice the semantic recognition the ability to identify part of speech and analyse phrases need to learn with growth Children need to have a period of education and learning process in order to learn a language more effective and more in depth 3 Based on the critical period concept of language development of also known as the sensitive period of language development a sense of language of children s sensitivity curve has been done As shown below From the previous plan is not difficult to see this curve described more detailed than Lenneberg s critical period of language development 2 12 years old The critical period of children s language development is not steady Children s most sensitive period of learning a language is before the age of 8 then it started to decline after the age of 9 to 12 year old it dropped to 1 2 and around the 14 year old it gone down to 1 10 and in stage of 8 to 12 year old their sense of language declined rapidly with the increase of age Language Sense Theory is the inheritance and development of the past theory it has a significant meaning to English language teaching in primary and secondary schools 3 2 Cognitive theory Cognitive learning theory emerges from cognitive psychology that regards language learning as a complex cognitive process It tries to equate language learning with the acquisition of other cognitive a