Teaching Approaches to Spoken English in Middle School.doc

中学英语口语教学的途径teaching approaches to spoken english in middle schoolcontentsabstract.1key words.1i. introduction.2 ii. problems in spoken english teaching.2iii. teaching approaches of spoken english in middle school.31. create a fitting language environment.32. use group work in oral tasks43. teach in english.54. encourage to speak out 55. find out a problem.56. create mistake in right way . 67. types of speaking tasks.6iv. conclusion.10references.11teaching approaches to spoken english in middle schoolabstract: this paper is aimed at the problem that exists in oral english teaching in middle school and proposes through seven approaches to solve the problem, such as dialogues and role-plays; group acting, etc. thus teachers may find the proper ways to spoken english teaching and also can improve students ability of spoken english.key words: spoken english; teaching approaches; middle school摘 要：本文针对中学英语口语教学中存在的问题，提出了创设语言环境，小组活动等七种教学途径来提高中学生的口语水平，从而达到用口语交际的目的。关键字：英语口语；教学途径；中学i. introductionspeaking is the skill that 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 hisher ability to speak fluently and comprehensibly. the aim of language course is to develop an ability to handle spoken language, what learners need ultimately to acquire is an awareness of how the language being learned is used for talking. so, the aim of english teaching is to foster the students ability to communicate with others by using english. english teaching is developing deeply as the development of new english teaching material in middle school. it has never followed the traditional teaching pattern. it focuses on the five skills that are the ability of listening, speaking, reading, writing and translating. it is the certain result of development in english teaching. the new english teaching material pays more attention to listening and speaking skills in order to improve the ability of communications by using english. therefore, spoken english teaching is paid more and more attention to. so, teachers have responsibility to prepare the students as much as possible to be able to speak in english in the real world.ii. problems in oral english teachingin china, there is not a fitting language environment for students to learn english because most of the people speak chinese. also, there are not enough english classes for the students so that they have little opportunity to contact with english. it is difficult for them to practice or review what they have learned after class. such language environment is not good for students to develop their speaking ability.at present, most of the english teachers are at the low level of oral english, and their pronunciations are not very good. they cant teach in english fluently, and that is not good to foster the students ability of speaking english.in spoken english teaching, it is necessary for students to practice more to foster their ability of speaking and listening; each student should have enough opportunity to practice. however, in most middle schools, the number of the students in each class is very big. generally, there are about fifty students in one class. it is difficult for the teacher to hold an effective activity in such a big class, and also it is difficult for every student to have an opportunity to practice, they cant improve their speaking ability.the psychological reasons of the students can also influence their spoken english. it includes the students quality, their motivations of learning spoken english.iii.teaching approaches to spoken english in middle school 1. create a fitting language environmentin china, there is not a fitting language environment for students to learn english because most of the people speak chinese. in oral english teaching, the teacher should manage to create a fitting language environment for the students. based on this theory, the teacher should pay attention to the following two aspects during the specific teaching process: 1）the teacher should know the contents of spoken english teaching, which includes the language knowledge, the imitated circumstances and the practical use. during the teaching process, teachers should try their best to create a circumstance for students to practice oral english for example, when the teacher teaches the unit: “food and drinks”, he can create a super market circumstance in classroom, and write various names of food and drinks on the blackboard, then write the sentence on the blackboard: “what would you like to eatdrink? what is your favorite fooddrink? would you like?” let students do pair-work, question and answer activities, and they can give an answer according to what they like. in such kind of way, students can learn the vocabularies and sentences; they can also improve their ability of spoken english. 2) during the teaching process, the teachers should choose the appropriate and practical topics for the practices.such topics can stimulate the students desire to speak out, so the atmosphere of the classroom can be activite. for instance, the topics “my familyfriendteacherclassmatedream” or “how did you spend your vacation?”in such topics, let students have a free talk at first, so that they can feel having something to say. and also, it is easy to develop their motivations and activity. the popular topics are the best materials for spoken english practices. teachers can take full use of the five minutes before class, and hold a free talk to organize a communication with popular topics. take examples, they can talk about some festivals, some famous persons and some important events. students can also talk about some persons and things that around them through “duty report” or “say me, say you”. also, teacher can take use of many things; such as send some messages to students. for instance, when there is going to have a medical examination for the students, teacher can tell them in english “tomorrow morning, youll have a medical examination. do not have breakfast before you have your blood tested. do not drink anything. in a word, never input. ill be expecting you at 7 oclock at the gate of the hospital. dont be late.” after that, teacher can also ask students something about the time, address and the main content of the thing”. in order to make clear about the thing, they will pay more attention to what the teacher says. 2. use group work in oral tasksin oral english teaching, it is necessary for students to practice more to foster their ability of speaking and listening; each student should have enough opportunity to practice, especially in big class. how to do that? because the first characteristic of a successful speaking task is that student talk a lot in the foreign language, this is the strong argument for using small group work because it increases the time for each student to practice speaking in one lesson.the only way to become good at a skill is to practice it. nobody expects to be good at playing basketball the first time they try even if they already know all the rules very well and have watched others play many times. the same is true of speaking a foreign language. since the students will probably not have enough opportunity to practice speaking english outside the classroom, it is teachers responsibility to give them as many opportunities in the classroom as possible.a second reason for designing speaking task to be completed in small groups is that students are often afraid of criticism or losing face or they simply feel shy about speaking in a foreign language in front of a whole class. besides, speaking in small groups is more natural, because in a real life, we spend most of our time talking to other people. if we speak to a large group of people, it is usually a more formal situation where we have spent time preparing what we are going to say. different small groups can work at different levels if the teacher groups them according to language level. it is inevitable that some students in a class will be more advanced than other students. if teachers modify a given task to make it easier for slower students and more challenging for more advanced students, then all students will continue learning and remain more motivated. even when teachers do not modify the task, students will naturally perform to their abilities more readily in small groups than in a whole class.small group work helps students learn to work cooperatively and it helps them develop interpersonal skills. when students work with others who are not their friends, they learn how to work with wider variety people and this fosters development of tolerance, mutual respect and harmony.3. teach in englishin spoken english teaching, at the very beginning, the teacher should pay more attention to the teaching of listening. because students need to assimilate more information of english before they learn oral english so that they can speak english more easily and fluently. it requires that teacher should teach in english during the course. because it is good for students to improve their listening ability, and also they can learn from the teacher how to speak english. in this way, it can stimulate students desire to speak english and they will feel more interested in english learning. maybe at the very beginning, the students cant get familiar with english teaching, even they cant understand what the teacher say. under such situation, the teacher can explain what he said by using objects, pictures, or his actions and expressions. the key is that the teacher should keep in this way-teach in english, because practice makes perfect. as time passed, students listening ability can be improved, and they have already prepared for speaking.4. encourage to speak out at the very beginning, students will be a little nervous or even be afraid to speak out, the teacher should try his best to ease their psychology pressure, encourage them to speak out and help them to speak in the right way. sometimes, may be a kind smile or an encouraged sentence can help the students to speak fluently. when the students can convey their meanings by speaking english, the teacher should give them a positive evaluation, such as “well-done! marvelous! excellent!” let the students see their advance and feel happy in english learning. the most important aspect of preparing students to speak in real life is to give them as many opportunities as possible to practice producing unplanned, spontaneous, and meaningful speech under time pressure.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. students are eager to speak, when the topic is interesting or there is a clear objective that must be reached. again great care should be taken to make sure the task is in line with the students ability to deal with the task. if the task is too easy, the students may think it is childish and thus lose interest. 5. find out a problem einstein had said, “find out a problem is more important than solve a problem.” if the teacher wants to teach students to speak well, firstly, he should encourage the students to dare to find the problems and point them out. because once there are some problems, the students can always have interest in english learning. at the same time, the teacher should organize activities and help the students to be good at pointing out question. when they cant understand the meanings, the teacher can teach them to guess. it is good for the students to improve their abilities of guess.6. correct mistake in right way it is inevitable that the students may make mistakes when they are speaking english at the very beginning. the teacher should pay attention to the approaches of correcting mistakes. when teacher finds the students have made mistakes, if the teacher interrupts them and corrects their mistakes at once, they will be afraid to speak more because they afraid of making mistakes again. so, if the mistakes that students have made are not very serious, it is not necessary to correct them. for examples, when students say “tom always does her homework carefully and” the teacher can shake his head, then the students will understand and they will say “.his homework”, now, the teacher should nod his head with smiling. in this way, students themselves can correct the little mistake. when the students say “i go to see a friend of mine yesterday after breakfast” the teacher can speak again as there is no mistake “oh, yes. i see you went to see a friend of yours” or “yesterday after breakfast you went to see a friend of yours” in this way, the students can find the mistakes by themselves and know how to correct the mistakes.7. types of speaking tasksin china, generally speaking, most teachers and students dont have a very clear aim in english teaching and learning; they have paid great attention to learning grammar and vocabulary. so, the problem of students is not having anything to say but not knowing how to say things. and this results from the lack of opportunities to speak. therefore, designing speaking activities that maximize students opportunity to speak is one of the central tasks for teachers.when teachers design speaking tasks, one important consideration is the language level of the students. if he asks them to do tasks that are above their level, they will simply become frustrated. on the other hand, it is good to give the students tasks that challenge them, because if speaking tasks are always too easy, they can also become frustrated. in successful speaking tasks, the students talk a lot in the target language. the teachers should try his best to make more opportunities for students to speak english. it is very important for teacher to encourage the students to speak out bravely. 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. students are eager to speak, when the topic is interesting. if the topic is too easy, the students may think it is childish and thus lose interest. when the teacher designs the speaking tasks, the language should be at the right level so that students can complete the tasks successfully. 1) dialogues and role-playsfor years textbooks have being used dialogues in attempt to teach spoken language to foreign language students. a problem with the way most dialogues are presented in the textbooks is that the language is not authentic and natural. completing sentences are often used in an attempt to teach students the grammar of the language; however, the natural speech of native speakers is often phrases or sentence fragments full of pauses, false starts, and repetitions. so, what can teachers do to make dialogue more communicative? first of all, turn the dialogue into role-plays, so the students can pretend they are acting as someone else. some students become less inhibited about speaking in front of a class when they are acting. look at the dialogue below: a: what time is it? b: its 3:00.why?a: oh, i need to go to the store! do you want to come?b: ok.just a minute. i need to finish this first.(take from: a course in english language teaching)after students have practiced it in pairs and a couple of pairs have performed it in front of the whole class, the teacher can ask them to perform it in different moods such as happy, irritated, bored or in different role relationships such as parent and child, husband and wife, two friends, etc. then the actual words can be varied such as “go to the post office” or “go to the bank” instead of “the store” or “i need to find my jacket or my shoes” instead of “finish this first”. finally, the teacher can get the students to make the dialogue longer by adding two or more lines.teacher can let the students make dialogue more similar to real-life, and then lead them to make a role-play. take an example, when teacher teaches the unit “shopping”, he/she can make two “situational practice”-do some shopping/ see a doctor. in order to let the students act better, students can be divided into groups (each group have four students), and choose one leader from each group to act out in turn. though this way, it can improve the students ability of oral english. in the english teaching material of middle school, there are many different famous articles. it is good for the students to know the culture of other countries. but, if the teacher just teaching about the article, it is difficult to achieve the teaching aim. for example, when the teacher teaches the unit “the necklace” and “the merchant of venice”, the teacher should encourage students to hold role-plays according to the articles, so that they can practice their oral english and also get more familiar with the background and culture about the articles and the countries. speaking cant be taught separately. it is often connected with listening. so we often speak of listening and speaking.the traditional way of listening and speaking is aural-oral method. now, the new method of two-way communication is very popu