ChapterOneIntroduction

英语专业开题报告 College of Foreign Languages Northwest Normal University Title The Application of Communication Strategies to Oral English Teaching A Case Study at No 22 Middle School Orientation Curriculum and Instruction of EFL Advisor Ren Zhongyuan Composer He Yuan Date Dec 20 2014 Advisor s Suggestions Signature Date M A Thesis Proposal pPProposal Proposal The Application of Communication Strategies to Oral English Teaching A Case Study at No 22 Middle School 交际策略在初中英语口语教学中的应用交际策略在初中英语口语教学中的应用 以兰州市某中学八年级学生为例 He Yuan 何媛何媛 1 Contents Chapter one Introduction 1 1 1 Background of the study 1 1 2 Purpose of the study 2 1 3 Significant of the study 3 1 4 Method of the study 3 1 5 An Overall structure of the Paper 4 Chapter Two Literature review 5 2 1 The research of communication strategy abroad 4 2 2 The research of communication strategy in China 5 Chapter Three Theoretical Framework 7 3 1 The definition of the communication strategies 7 3 2 The classification of the communication strategies 8 3 2 1 The influence of different communication strategies 9 3 3 The problems in oral English teaching 9 3 4 The different study in communication strategy 9 Chapter Four Research Design and Methodologies 11 4 1 Research subjects 11 4 2 Research instruments 11 4 3 Research procedures 11 4 4 The design of the experiment 12 4 4 1 The teaching design of the control class 12 4 4 2 The application of communication strategy in experimental class 12 4 4 3 A sample of textual analysis 13 4 4 4 The post test 13 Chapter Five Results and Discussion 13 5 1 The results of the questionnaire s comparison 13 2 5 2The comparison of the experimental class and controlled class in pre test 13 5 3 The comparison of the experimental class and controlled class in post test 13 5 4 The discussion of the comparison 13 Chapter Six Conclusion 13 6 1 Conclusion of the research 13 6 2 The limitation and suggestions 13 References i Appendixes iii Appendix 1 A pre test iii Appendix 2 A pro test iv Appendix 3 Survey v List of the Abbreviations CS Communication Strategies SPSS Statistical Package for Social Science 3 Chapter One Introduction 1 1 Background of the study Oral English for the people who treat English as a second language is the most important skill With the reform of curricula some new requirements and expectations about English teaching are raised Developing speaking ability in middle schools have been emphasized by both teachers and designers of the curriculum of English education Though more and more students try their best to practice their spoken English teachers find that it is quite difficult to improve students speaking proficiency and ability The traditional English teaching method has been prevalent in oral English teaching for many years and its limitations has been exposed and criticized by many experts Traditionally the teacher always emphasizes vocabulary grammar items and language points separately In order to improve scores in school language points are told to students by English teachers who can t express its context and background correctly This kind of teaching method can prove to be effective within a certain period but as time goes by its weaknesses and disadvantages will become more and more obviously As for junior students in communicative learning they always try to use their native languages to express target languages which is not known in English Sometimes the learners try not to talk about concepts for which the target language item or structure is not known or stop in mid Students use mime in place of lexical item and the target language item in oral English class or English corner Students like asking for assistance in communication such as looking up dictionary which could affect the fluency of speaking English A view which the middle school students can t improve their oral English in junior middle school could be found in a survey Under such circumstances English teachers should do some research in two communication strategies in oral English class approximation strategy and circumlocution strategy to Lanzhou No 22 middle school students in Grade8 Class3 The students in the Grade 8 hold favorite attitudes towards the training of the two communication strategies This thesis tries to apply approximation and circumlocution strategy to the teaching English in middle schools to 4 check whether it can improve students ability of oral English effectively This chapter first briefly introduces the background of the present study and then discusses the purpose and significance of this research Finally some technical terms are presented and explained This study is to investigate the approximation and circumlocution strategy and its effects on oral English teaching The author choose the subjects of a young age because they are on the way of forming a stable learning style and it is vital to help the young learners to communicate with others appropriately The approximation strategy is one of the communication strategies which means use of a single word to replace target language but which shares enough semantic features in common with the desired item to satisfy the speaker e g pipe for waterpipe The circumlocution strategy as an essential communication strategy which is considered as a useful characteristic of a goodlanguage speaker The learner describes the characteristic or elements of the object or action instead of using the appropriate target language itemor structure It is generally acknowledged that speaking proficiency is one of the most important abilities in foreign language learning and speaking proficiency can be effectively promoted by utilizing communication strategies However there is still much room for us to do a research on the approximation and circumlocution strategy especially in junior school Teachers should manage to reduce students mime avoidance borrowing strategies in oral English Class and encourage students to select approximation and circumlocution strategy in the oral English class thus improving their speaking competence 1 2 Purpose of the study Based on Tarone s theories and previous studies The paper aims to survey and analyze the conditions of the junior school in oral English teaching by means of test and questionnaire This thesis attempts to prove the application of approximation and circumlocution strategy in oral English lessons whether can effect students oral English grades In conclusion it will put forward some suggestions for oral English teaching 1 To learn about the current situation and problems existing in teaching spoken English in middle school 2 To testify the application of approximation and circumlocution strategy in spoken English lessons 3 To improve students communicative abilities Hypothesis of the study 5 1 The application of approximation and circumlocution strategy in class whether it can affect the frequency of carrying on communication strategies 2 The application of approximation and circumlocution strategy in class whether it can improve the students oral English grades 3 The application of approximation and circumlocution strategy in class whether it can improve the fluency of speaking English After knowing the importance of the theme in the passage students can change their habit of speaking which can strengthen their ability of speaking and description 1 3 Significance of the present study Communication strategy has great effects on oral English learning Although some researches have been conducted concerning the effects of communication strategy on oral English Few researches have been carried out to investigate how communication strategy influence the eighth grade learners speaking especially the approximation and circumlocution strategy So the thesis will make some supplement to previous researches in some degree 1 4 Method of the study The thesis carries out the method of qualitative and quantitative The research makes an experiment consisting of three parts which are the pre test the experimental process and the post test The purpose of the pre test is to test the students speaking ability before experiment The purpose of the post test is to compare the results before and after the experiment and to see whether the students speaking ability has improved or not after the experiment However a questionnaire appears in the thesis to further confirm the credibility and significance of the thesis 1 5 An Overall structure of the Paper They are five chapters in the thesis Chapter one is the introduction of the background of the research the concerning the previous studies of communication strategies at home and abroad Chapter Two is the definition and a brief review of communication strategies in China and abroad Chapter three is the classification of the communication strategies Chapter Four is the research methodology In the research class 3 of Grade Eight from Lanzhou 6 No 22Middle School were chosen as the subjects The class is separated into two groups Group A is the experimental group Group B is the controlled group Both groups are at the same level and have the same teacher The approximation and circumlocution strategies were adapted by the Group A during the experiment It took students four months to finish the experiment The experiment consists of three steps the pre test the experimental treatment and the post test and the questionnaire The most important step is the experimental treatment The experiment treatment is divided into three parts The first part is to make students know about approximation and circumlocution strategies in the class which lasts two weeks 80 minutes The second part lasts 9 weeks 360 minutes which asks students to practice their oral English with approximation and circumlocution strategy in oral English class The third part is to test the application of approximation and circumlocution strategy in oral English without any preparation which lasts 9 weeks 360 minutes In order to confirm the feasibility and effectiveness of the communication strategies based teaching model the questionnaire was taken at the end of the experiment Chapter Five present the results of the statistical analysis of the data collection for the pre test post test and questionnaire and then gives some detailed discussion on each research question In Chapter Six the conclusion of the thesis is given The approximation and circumlocution strategy play an effective role in oral English teaching 7 Chapter Two Literature Review 2 1 The research of communication strategy abroad Communication Strategy research has a long history and varied forms It is from the notion of second language in 1970s Selinker 1972 However after one year Communication strategy were considered to be a process in second language 1earning Tarone 1977 made the first systematic research on strategic language behavior basis on the Selinker s notion Then Communication strategy has applied to linguistics and relevant research was also opened Faerch and Kasper 1983 edited a book to conclude and summarize Communication strategy and Interlanguage Communication in a systematic way which forced the framework and classy for Communication strategy In 1987 the significant research of Communication strategy analyzed the psychological processes underlying the speech production Poulisse 1987 Poulisse et a1 1987 Bongaerts et a1 1987 Kellerman et a1 1987 Bongaerts Corder 1977 2 A mutual attempt of two interlocutors to agree on a meaning in situations where requisite meaning structures are not shared Tarone 1980 3 Potentially conscious plans for solving what to an individual presents itself as a problem in reaching a particular communicative goal Faerch Kasper 1983a 4 Techniques of coping with difficulties in communicating in an imperfectly known second language Stern 1983 All the above definitions reveal the same purpose of communication strategies namely to solve an emergedcommunication problem by applying some kinds of techniques Among these Corder s 1977 explanation seems to be more visual and pellucid from the viewpoint of a non native speaker of English The definitions from Faerchand Kasper 1983a and Stern 1983 also provide us specific and precise descriptions for communication strategies which refer to the employed techniques when speakers have problems in expressing themselves 3 2 The classification of the communication strategies The different perspectives used to define Communication Strategies consequently lead to the different classifications The most accepted and cited classifications are those of Throne 1 977 Faerch and 10 Kasper 1 983 Bialystok 1 990 and the Nijmegen Group 1 990 Faerch and Kasper 1 983 1 Reduction Strategies 1 Formal Reduction Phonological morphological syntactic lexical 2 Functional Reduction actional reduction modal reduction reduction of prepositional content topic avoidance messageabandonment meaning replacement 2 Achievement Strategies 1 Compensatory Strategies code switching intertingual transfer interlingual transfer IL based strategies generalization paraphrase word coinage restructuring cooperative strategies non linguistic strategies 2 Retrieval StrategiesBialystok 1983 1 L 1 一 Based Strategies language switchforeignizing transliteration 2L2 一 Based Strategies semanticcontiguity description word coinage 3 Non linguistic Strategies Bialystok 1990 1 Analysis based Strategies 2 Control based Strategies The classification of the Strategies Nijmegen Group 1 Conceptual Strategies analytic holistic 2Linguistic code Strategies morphological creativity transfer Poulisse 1 993 1 Substitution Strategies 2 Substitution Plus Strategies 3 ReconceptuaJization Strategies 4 Direct Strategies and indirect strategies The different classifications are grounded in different theories But as we can see there are some items with different names that 6 communication strategies of Tarone Tarone 1977 cited in Bialystok 1990 39 1 Avoidance a Topic avoidance b Message abandonment 2 Paraphrase a Approximation b Word coinage c Circumlocution 3 Conscious transfer a Literal translation 11 b Language switch 4 Appeal for assistance 5 Mime The argument of different perspectives is continuing and will continue for even longer Different researchers are trying to explain the nature of communication strategies from different point of views The most dominant perspectives are linguistic psycho linguistic and sociolinguistic perspectives Nowadays the psycholinguisIic and the sociolinguistic perspectives seem to be more fashionable than the traditional linguistic one This may have something to do with the popularity of cognition and sociolinguistics The present thesis will focus on one of the perspectives that is the psycholinguistic perspective and tries to find out what factors have psych01inguistic influence on Communication strategies use 3 2 2 The influence of the different communication strategies A classroom related view of communication strategies was offered by Chesterfield and Chesterfield 1985 49 50 Table 5 4 summarizes 12 strategies that they found being used by Mexican American preschool and first grade children learning English as a second language The application of approximation and circumlocution strategy was adopted in No 22 Middle School students which can research whether it can improve students oral English ability 3 3 The problems in oral English teaching Spoken English plays a very important role in communication With the reform of the education in our country It is widely recognized that spoken English is extremely vital and direct in people s communication Not only adding oral expression in textbooks but speaking English fluently is becoming a basic require for most employees and it could represent some kind of fashion at present However there are various problem s of learning spoken English in junior middle school The first one is that most of students comprehend som e basic grammar but they could not use it correctly when they are talking Secondly translating Chinese di rectly into English without considering the fundamentally rules of English is another common mistake that someone always make It is so called Chinglish Last but not the least spoken English is not treated as eq ually as written English by many teachers which makes students spend less time on speaking than writing 12 3 4 The different study in communication strategy As a significant part of it the strategy of communication affects the development of ability of communicati on directly In academic world there is a debate that whether strength the education of communication strat egy by using teaching strategy or not The people who take the idea positively consider that teaching strateg y is extremely important for those who learn second language By using different teaching strategies stude nts could not only improve their knowledge but acquiring more opportunities of expressing However the others who take opposed idea think that the strategy of communication of second language would be affect ed by the developing of first language However Ellis thought that using more communication strategy in oral English learning would disturb the efficiency Therefore in class language competence should be given more attention than other strategies 13 Chapter Four Research Design and Methodologies 4 1 Research subjects The subjects are 60 students in Grade 8 Class3 from Lanzhou No 22 Middle School The students are in the same study environment before testing They are separated into two groups They are at the same level One is called Group A The other is called Group B Group A is regarded as the experimental Group Group B is taken as the control group Both of the groups have the same teacher the same test The whole process of the experiment lasts one term 4 2 Research instruments In the experiment a questionnaire is designed to investigate whether junior middle school students learn about the communication strategies The tape recorder is to record the sound of the students in the test