Enhance Students’ Interest in Oral English

1、enhance students interest in oral english论文中文摘要 兴趣是学习任何知识的一个重要的前提条件。学习英语口语也是如此。然而，笔者通过对22名中学生的问卷调查发现，有些中学生对口语学习并不感兴趣。通过分析，笔者发现问题主要是出在教学者的“教学设计”上，主要问题有：1.没有让学生明确口语学习的目的；2.没有帮学生理清口语学习与发展其它英语学习技能的关系；3.没有设计出一套切实可行的教学方案。依据有关的英语教学理论，笔者剖析了以往的口语教学活动，提出了通过改善教学设计来增加学生对口语的学习兴趣。 为此，笔者设计并实施了为期4周的，以 “ppp”( presen

2、tation, practice, production)为理论模式，以“information-gap activity”为主要形式的实验性教学，并取得了令人鼓舞的结果：参加教学实验的多数同学都开始喜欢口语学习了。通过对比两次问卷调查的结果发现，喜欢口语训练的学生的比例由44.5% 提高到了70.1%，说明研究结果基本达到了预期目的。通过本项目的研究和实施，可以提高学生对口语学习重要性的认识，明确口语学习的目的，掌握口语学习的具体方法，特别是尝试解决长期困扰许多中学生的所谓“口语训练与以语法及结构为中心的考试的矛盾”，从而纠正“口语训练对这类考试帮助不大”的认识上的偏差。笔者希望 本次项目研

3、究可以为受类似教学问题困扰的中学教师提供一些有价值的帮助，使其抓住口语教学的实质，科学地设计口语教学，有效地组织课堂口语活动从而激发学生的口语学习兴趣，切实提高中学生的英语口语能力。abstract this project is about how to enhance the students interest in doing oral practice. interest is the best teacher. students can be motivated by their interest that is also one of the important elements

4、to ensure the success of oral teaching. but in my teaching, ive found that some students are not interested in oral practice. so a questionnaire survey was done, the results of which shows that how i used to teach is mainly responsible for students lack of interest in oral practice. i failed to give

5、 the students a clear goal of speaking; i offered little help to the students about the relationship between speaking and the development for the other english learning skills; above all, i did not have well-designed oral-teaching plan and the oral work was not quite interesting. to change the situa

6、tion, i decided to carry out a 4-week research on 22 middle school students with a hypothesis that learners interest in oral practice will be greatly increased by better oral work design. during the research ppp model was adopted with information-gap activity as the main type of task. by comparing t

7、he results of pre-project questionnaire and post-project questionnaire, it is found that most of my students started to like oral practice, which is really encouraging. apparently, the results are consistent with my initial hypothesis, because the percentage of the students who are interested in doi

8、ng oral practice is increased from 44.5% to 70.1%. therefore, teachers can make better oral work design that can really improve students ability of speaking in english. table of contents pagesi. introduction 11. introduction of the project 12. literature review 1ii. problem identification and analys

9、is 21. problem identification 22. problem analysis 22.1 summary of the problems 2.2 methods of analysis 3. results of problem analysis 4 iii. project objective and hypothesis 4 1. project objective 4 2. project hypothesis 4 iv. project rationale 41. the purpose and importance of teaching speaking in

10、 english course 42. communicative approach in teaching speaking 42.1 ppp model2.2 communicative speaking activities2.3 the learners roles and responsibilities 2.4 the role of the teacher3. successful elements of speaking class 64. the role of good lesson planning 7v. project research 71. research de

11、sign 7 1.1 objectives1.2 subjects 1.3 material 1.4 researching tools 1.5 researching methods2. researching procedure 82.1 before the research: problem identified with the first questionnaire 2.2 during the research: implementation of the research 2.3 after the research: data collection and analysisv

12、i. results and discussion 111. summarized data analysis in relation to project hypothesis 112. unsolved problem 12 vii. conclusion 13references 15appendix 16-40 i. introduction 1. backgroundthree years ago, i have started my own english training school-“dream crazy english training center”, and i ha

13、ve been teaching in the school. in my teaching, ive found some problems, especially the problem that some of my students are not interested in speaking english. ive told them time and again the importance of oral english and urged them to take an active part in oral work. however, their interest in

14、speaking english does not seem to be enhanced. since taking the english courses in beiwaionline, i hope i can find solutions to the problem that has troubled me for some time through action research so that i can apply what i have learned into practice. hopefully, the present situation in teaching o

15、ral english can be improved and my students can also benefit from the project.2. literature review the purpose for learning english in china has changed in recent years due to the open door policy. in the past, everyday communication was not the main goal because one didnt need to listen and speak i

16、n english. so the grammar-translation method started to getting more and more popular from 1700s, 1800s in europe. it is the one which has been used in the foreign language leaching for the longest time. it has some advantages which are well known, such as to improve the learning effect through stud

17、ents comprehension to the grammar rules, etc. but the deficiency of it is apparent. for example, it ignores the oral teaching, etc. ( li , 1983) “the big breakaway from the grammar-translation method in schools in the west came with the founding of the european community 1957 as a reaction to the di

18、visions caused by the second world war.” (gu, 1998) a functional-notional approach emerged in 1960s. it is more effective to train students ability of speaking. first it points the language is a kind of tool for communicating , the main purpose of teaching is to improve students ability of using the

19、 language.( wilkings, 1974) . at the same time, communicative language teaching (clt) has developed into a comprehensive teaching and learning methodology. the goal of the two methods is still communicate. in the 1990s, the ppp procedure came out, which stands for presentation, practice, and product

20、ion. in this module, the teacher introduces a situation which contextualizes the langue to be taught. (harmer ,2003) and this is the main theory whish my project based on.ii. problem identification and analysis1. problem identificationin my speaking class, the students usually read and recite the te

21、xts or key sentences. because i used to believe that if they could recite the key sentence patterns, they can express themselves in english. but to my disappointment, ive found although they have recited many key sentences, and can even interpret these key sentences between english and chinese, they

22、 could hardly express their own ideas. so when i give them some topics and ask them to talk about them, they dont seem to be interested.2. problem analysis2.1 summary of the problemsin my teaching, the problem identified was really a serious one. my preliminary research confirmed that there were thr

23、ee main reasons that accounted for students lack of interest in oral class. firstly, some students were afraid of being laughed by others because of their poor pronunciation and performance. secondly, some students wanted to say, but they didnt know how to get start and what to say. thirdly, some st

24、udents particularly those who did not do well in the traditional grammar-oriented written exam lacked self-confidence in oral work. they thought that the oral class was only the showing- time for the “top-students”. fourthly, some students didnt think the oral practice is useful to their grammar-ori

25、ented exam, so they were not interested in it at all.the problems had been troubling me for a long time and now i was determined to work towards the solution to the problem. i started off by making an analysis of the problems.2.2.methods of analysis (see appendix a)2.2.1 the analytic method my probl

26、em is: some of my students are not interested in oral practice. through the analytic method analysis, i made a chain of reflections about “others” and “my colleagues students” compared with “some of” and “my students”. the result showed that they are not as the same. so i noticed the poor oral work

27、design was the main reason the problem. 2.2.2 socratic dialogues the socratic dialogues was used to analyze one of my big trouble-makers : i hardly help my students to express in english. as the result, “ the purpose of speaking i gave my students was not much clear” was the main reason. 2.2.3 cause

28、 analysis: (see appendix a)i did the cause analysis on both “teachers side” and “students side”. i analysised the four main reasons of students not being interested in oral practice. i recognized that i should add some pronunciation training activities to improve students pronunciation; give the mor

29、e clear instruction to let students know what to speak and how to speak; offer more encouragement to the “low students” with low marks on the “grammar exams” to grow confidence; try to design some oral activities to improve the students ability on the “grammar exam” .2.2.4 questionnaire survey:i des

30、igned one questionnaire and distributed to my students before conducting the research and required that they finish it within 20 minutes. all of them, 22 students, returned their questionnaires that were left anonymous. when all these data came in, i made some statistical evaluation. the result show

31、ed that 100% of the students thought the oral practice was important and that about 80.5% of the students thought oral practice was quite necessary for their future development, which indicated that the students have been fully awarded of the importance and necessity of oral practice. but they might

32、 encounter difficulties, such as the language level is higher than the students, so they lost their confidence and interest.3. results of problem analysis: after making the above analysis, ive got the result that inadequate teaching design is mainly responsible for students lack of interest in oral

33、practice. so in my future teaching, i will try to improve my oral work design through adding some items to improve the students pronunciation, giving them more encouragement and more detailed instructions for their speaking topic, etc.iii. project objective and hypothesis 1. project objectivethe pro

34、ject objective is to enhance learners interest in oral practice.2. project hypothesisit is hypothesized that learners interest in oral practice can be enhanced by well-designed oral work.iv. project rational1. the purpose and importance of teaching speaking in english course“speaking is the skill th

35、at the students will be judged upon most in real-life situations. it is an important part of everyday interaction and most often the first impression of a person is based on his/her ability to speak fluently and comprehensibly.”(wang & cheng , 2000) soas a teacher，i would like to give speaking the p

36、urpose of communication, making it as close to real-life as possible. it is my responsibility to help students to improve the ability of speaking in english both in classroom and in the real world outside the classroom.2. communicative approach in teaching speaking since 1960s, communicative languag

37、e teaching (clt) has developed into a comprehensive teaching and learning methodology. so in todays teaching, the goal of clt is to use language for communicative purposes. to our english teachers english teaching focuses no longer on the mastery of grammar structures and vocabulary, but on a more c

38、omprehensive training of communicative competence.2.1 ppp model“ the ppp procedure has come in for considerable criticism over the last few years, especially as a model for teacher trainees to follow.” (harmer, 2003) the procedure of an oral lesson aiming at teaching new language items can be ideali

39、zed into three stages known as the ppp model. follow the ppp model, the new language should first be presented to the students in meaningful contexts and make sure they understand what it means and how it used, that is the first stage presentation; then students practice the new language on the foll

40、owing stage; finally students are given the opportunity to integrate the new language items with the old through activities that give free and extensive expression aimed at developing fluency. that is the last stage production.2.2 communicative speaking activities littlewood (1981) divides communica

41、tive speaking activities into two types: functional communication activities and social interaction activities. for beginning language students, littlewood points out that it is necessary to also include what he calls pre-communicative activities, which are more structural and allow the learner to p

42、ractice the forms of the language.2.3 the learners roles and responsibilitiestricia hedge (2002) pointed out that one of the perspective on learner- centeredness is “ encouraging learners to take on a greater degree of responsibility for their own successful learning, not only by contributing to cou

43、rse or activity design , but also by continuing their learning outside class, at home, or in self-access facilities.” what is language? i think that language is the art of speaking. so when you are learning english, you are a person, who is learning by doing it; you are a person, who is working by u

44、sing it and you are a person, who lives in it. make english study a part of your daily routine, the same as eating or brushing your teeth. mere exposure to english will not enable you to speak english. speaking english will teach you english!2.4the role of the teacheri will let the students know tha

45、t as a teacher in speaking classroom, im not just a teacher the person who just gives you knowledge, i have many roles in one. jeremy harmer says, “within the classroom teachers role may change from one activity to another, or from one stage of an activity to another. if we are fluent at making thes

46、e changes our effectiveness as teachers is greatly enhanced.” (harmer, 2003) so teacher is playing different roles at different times. in the ppp model, i should have greater control at the presentation stage and often act as a demonstrator. at the practice stage, i am expected to be an organizer, a

47、 conductor and a monitor. at the production stage when the situation is more student-directed, i should play the role of a stimulator and a helper. in learner-centered teaching, “that is teaching which makes the learners needs and experience central to the educational process.” (harmer, 2003) so “if

48、 (the teacher) is indeed wise, he does not bid you enter the house of his wisdom, but rather leads you to the threshold of your own mind.” (gibran, 1991)3. successful elements of speaking classa successful speaking class shows the following characteristics:1) your students talk a lot in english. “ i

49、n successful speaking tasks, the students talk a lot in the foreign language.”(ur, 1996)2) the students participation is even. “ whether the task takes place among the whole class or in a small groups, a successful task should encourage speaking from as many different students as possible.” (ur, 199

50、6) 3） the students motivation is high. “ research has shown that motivation is one of the most important variables in successful language learning. teachers can do a lot to increase and maintain the motivation of students by the types of tasks that they organize in class.”(ur, 1996)4）the language us

51、e should be an acceptable level. “ in a successful speaking task, the language is at the right level. the task must be designed so that students can complete the task successfully with the language that they have. (ur, 1996) 4. the role of good lesson planning“lesson planning is an art of combining

52、a number of different elements into a coherent whole so that a lesson has an identity which students can recognize, work within, and react to ” (harmer, 2003) as for teachers, lesson planning is not optional, it is essential preparation for teaching. it is a matter for the teacher what to teach, and

53、 how. (davies, 2002)a good lesson plan follows the principles of variety, flexibility, learnability, and linkage. (wang & cheng, 2000) that means teachers are expected to plan some different types of activities in order to keep students interest in learning with high motivation, and never monotonous

54、; and to adopt different methods and techniques rather than to be a slave to one methodology. the lesson plan should be neither too hard nor too easy. doing things that are beyond or below the students coping ability will diminish their motivation (schumann, 1999). language learning needs recycling and reinforcement, so the stages and steps should be planned to be linked with one another.v. project research1. research design 1.1 objectivesthe objective of this research is to increase