The Effective Teaching of Oral English in Middle School.doc

the effective teaching of oral english in middle school 1. introductionoral communication is a special social activity. the final purpose of foreign language learning is to communicate with the native speakers. speaking is the fundamental need of communication. so speaking is one of the most important skills in english language teaching. in the 21st century, with the social life and economic life of globalization of information technology chinas opening-up process is accelerating .china and other countries will have more and more co-operation. in addition, this requires our country to have more people who have wealthy specialty knowledge, higher accomplishment of information and higher english level. among them, oral english is very important. but the present english teaching in middle schools is far away from realizing this goal. in china, most middle school students have poor oral communicative ability. “dumb english” is perplexing most english teachers and students of high school.apart from the problems teachers have, the environment is also an important problem, because of the unawareness of the importance of speaking, students dont have enough chances to practice their oral english. the lack of atmosphere is the most important reason of their poor oral english. as everyone knows, “practice makes perfect!” without practice, how can they become perfect? because of that, students dont have the habit of speaking. when they are acquired to speak, many problems appear, such as: their hands and feet are trembling, the tune of their voice is changing, the sentences are in disorder. many of them just recite instead of speak. students themselves are blame for their poor oral english. because of the actualities of chinese teaching, the requirements of oral english are much less than grammar, listening, reading and writing. so many students dont pay enough attention to it. for example, when students are asked of the four skills-listening, speaking, reading and writing, which one is the most important, many will choose reading and grammar without any hesitation. few students will choose speaking. another investigation shows that only 1% students communicate with others in english after class, most students communicate in english once in a while, some of them never. this shows that the students themselves dont pay enough attention to oral english. the status of oral english needs to be enhanced.2. the main problems in teaching oral english in middle school2.1 poor language learning environmentlanguage is an integral part of culture, and it is the carrier of culture. the dominant thoughts and values are from the west where is taken as the center of globalization. chinese language isnt the source of modern civilization and difficult to become the carrier of modern culture. so china must be open to converge on the world. therefore, chinese language which was learnt with great difficulty is far from enough, foreign language learning turns into a compulsory course for all the intellectuals. it has had special difficulties for chinese to learn western languages, in the case of the great differences between western language and chinese language. comparing the differences between western languages, some are only equivalent to our various vernaculars, so the westerners learn other western languages are much easier than us.when people learn a language, it is equivalent to configure a complex system of thinking in the brain. our mother tongue is growing quietly with the brains thinking ability at the same time. yet the process of learning a foreign language is much more complex. it seems that learning a foreign language is just to learn how to pronounce another kind of sound and how to write another kind of symbol. but according to the depth of thinking, foreign language learning is to build a completely new set of thinking in the brain which is distinct from the mother tongue. the formed thinking system of the mother tongue, moreover, puts up a strong resistance which makes a separate system of thinking almost impossible to be built up independently in the brain.so the process of learning a foreign language has only one way: that is, with the help of the mother tongues thinking, switch it into the thinking of foreign language, and acquire this ability by practicing switching repeatedly. finally, a thinking system of foreign language would be formed, as a result, thinking of foreign language achieves a soft landing instead of landing directly. this is the process that no matter whether you are willing to, or whether you feel it subjectively, which cant be detoured as long as you want to learn foreign languages. so the most difficult for the people learning a foreign language is not to switch different symbols, but to switch the thinking between foreign languages and the mother tongue. if the foreign language were similar to the mother tongue, studying would become easier; to switch ways of thinking is very easy.thereby, many difficulties during our english learning are because of thinking switch. in order to solve this problem, in the researching areas of english teaching have to discover this problem seriously and attach great importance to it, spend time to find a solution to it, of course. if we havent paid enough attention on this issue, just do some browse and repeat of the symbols in textbooks during english studying, then the frequent failure in using the language will greatly hurt the students enthusiasm and confidence. 2.2 poor quality of language teachersits a comprehensive project to train up cross-cultural awareness. fundamentally speaking, its a cultivation of cultural quality. students language and cultural input in learning process rely mainly on the english teaching materials, class-teaching and impart by english teachers. this shows that english culture cultivation of english teachers is particularly important. the way to improve for them is to take professional training, also english cultural courses learning, in order to create conditions to improve english teaching. english teachers should also update teaching concepts and handle the relations properly between language teaching and cultural teaching.english teachers quality has great impact on students spoken english, but now their spoken english is lagging behind because the spoken english exam isnt included in the national college entrance examination. if a teachers spoken english is not very good, how can he help his students to improve their spoken english? the quality of english teachers is the key in english teaching which impact directly on the english quality of students. then as english teachers we should firstly continually strive to improve our quality in order to adapt to the modern english teaching better. english teachers are demonstrations of english knowledge and capacity, proficient skills of english listening and speaking are essential basic elements to english teachers. english teachers should first have good feeling of language, standard pronunciation, and speak fluently. besides, english teachers verbiage should be elegant and easy to understand, that would increase students knowledge and develop their capacity in the relaxed and happy atmosphere of english learning. english solid basic skills is the carrier of english teachers academic charm and personal charm, thus senior middle school english teachers must have wealth of basic knowledge of english and proficiency language skills.language teaching disjoins from culture has impact on the cultivation of communicative ability. the traditional teaching ways didnt attach great importance to the social cultural background of language but purely pay attention to the structural analysis of language and the knowledge teaching, that is to say, the training of spoken english and listening skill are neglected, so the traditional teaching ways make the students be very good at deaf and mute english, they cant listen to it and speak it well. what is worse, some of the students will be the future english teachers, maybe they will still teach their students spoken english in the traditional teaching methods.therefore, during the process of senior middle school english new curriculum standards put into practice, the key to success is how could our english teachers deal with this reform and extensively improve our own quality. we will have to establish the concept of lifelong learning, update the knowledge structure constantly, also develop our professional competence and knowledge capacity to meet the challenges better, and to adapt to the english curriculum requirements for modern social development. learning english is a lifelong process and teachers should be a model for lifelong learning.2.3 test-oriented teachingour senior middle school english teaching has taken the national college entrance examination as a center for a long time, with the purpose to get high scores. our english teaching work displays utilitarianism hues obviously, while ignoring its humanities purposes. students are often confined in the learning process which is scheduled by teachers, this kind of boring repetition has greatly dampened the enthusiasm of students in learning english. our extended test-oriented education has cultivated many students who are proficient in grammar but listening and especially speaking are very bad. students are short of chances to practice spoken english. the chances that they practice it are only in english schoolrooms, and teachers only pay more attention to the reading, writing, grammar learning and listening skills, because spoken english is not included in the national college entrance examination, and they think grasping these skills can help the students to pass the national college entrance examination easier.as a vicious circle of the test-oriented education, foreign language teaching system teaches english as knowledge rather than ability, it causes serious errors in foreign language teaching what put emphasis on words recitation and grammar analysis but not listening and speaking. this often causes that lots of people who have learnt english for 10 years or even 20 years couldnt communicate in english. many people cant understand why they recite a lot of words and grammar rules but still dont know how to use them. actually, study english is just the same as study swimming. it is no use studying the knowledge of swimming very well, the key is to practice in the water.an english language expert named l. g. alexander who is well-known all over the world has opened a troubleshooting column on the 21st century. once he was asked a question that whats the difference between attributive clause and appositive clause. he answered immediately that got the difference wouldnt improve your english, but increase knowledge about english at most. after given a brief example, he even concluded: from this we can see that there is no attributive clause in english, at least i do not know.the traditional educational system restrains the development of spoken english teaching. if you go to denmark, holland, norway and sweden, etc, you will find that the students from these countries can speak english very well, fluently and in large vocabulary. their native language is not english, but why can they do it so well? there are many reasons but the most important one is that they have advanced educational system of foreign language. most of them learn english when they are very small, they dont emphasize on the grammar excessively but on the communication of language and the fluent expression. likewise, in some asian countries such as singapore, malaysia, the communicative ability is attached great importance to, too, so almost young people in these countries can speak english very well. as for china, the test-oriented educational system makes lots of active and creative students be the inanimate bookworms. although their english grammar is better than the students in the english-speaking countries, their spoken english is not as good as the students from the developing countries. this is like a person who wants to play piano, learned a lot of music theory but didnt pay attention to practice. knowing how to perform a piece of music is one thing, and performing it fluently is another thing. the former mainly involve in reciting fingering, and this can be done in a few minutes, while the latter is related to long-term repeated practice.in short, chinese people learning english as doing a research, their knowledge of english grammar makes foreigners surprised so much, and the questions they ask even make language experts astonished. unfortunately, at a critical time there are few interpreters in such multitudinous theory-talents. maley who is an englishman had taught in china made the following assessment: most of chinese students take language itself as a purpose to pursuit of its knowledge, but ignore that language is an instrument for communication. they study very hard, yet their aspect is wrong.3. the effective ways to teaching oral english in middle school3.1. increasing students interest in speaking englishpeople in general have the notion that learning a language has something to do with speech. when we say mr. so-and-so is good at english, people will naturally think that he can speak english well. the same is true of the students. they come to school to study english with the strong conviction that they come to learn to speak it. children after their first english lesson display an obvious sense of satisfaction when they say “goodbye” to each other in english and their attitude towards english is very positive and favorable for learning, and their attitude is greatly encouraged by the family and community when they are found to be able to say something useful in english, by this, the motivation of study is formed. a correct motivation plays an important role in language studying. only with the correct study motivation shall the students have a correct and overall cognition about english studying, in order to remain high hope of success, strong self-confidence of study and active behavior of studying. although the high school students are shouldering the burden of entering a higher school, as educators, the teachers should guide them to form correct motivation to study english actively. what shouldnt they do is taking the examination as the ultimate goal, they should stretch their teaching to a higher degree. 3.2. cultivating students correct studying habitsas everybody knows, we have various ways to gain information, of which reading is a very important way. with the information, we can express our ideas freely, and the speaking ability can be improved. to enhance students oral english, it is necessary for us to cultivate students correct reading habits first because with good reading habits, students can get as much correct information as possible in the shortest which they can express themselves effectively. some students have very bad reading habits. for example, some like pointing at the material with their fingers or pens when reading while some others like analyzing an article sentence by sentence in their first reading. with these bad habits they read very slowly and cant get a general idea of what they read even if they have read it over. although it is difficult for students to change these bad reading habits, teachers should try their best to help them. teachers should help the students to develop good reading habits, which will not only help them recall what is read more easily, but also enrich their knowledge. in order to develop a good reading habit, we must give some different directions and requests according to different students situations, help them to heighten their confidence, and develop a good reading habit gradually in class.there are many ways to help students form a good reading habit. first, we can help students to choose correct methods and useful materials before their reading in class. on one hand, we can teach students to use different ways to read (general-comprehension reading, skimming, scanning, careful reading) and on the other hand we can make conscious efforts to help students use various reading skills in their reading as much as possible and improve their reading speed. for example, we must ask students to understand the main idea of the reading material first; then, ask them to understand the organization of the material, and after reading it, grasp the authors main idea revealed in the material. the students must learn to understand and analyze the main information and details supporting the theme, and learn to read between the lines. in this way, they can improve their thinking ability and improve their reading skills.second, teachers can familiarize students with the commonly used reading skills. teachers can come to a conclusion from daily oral english studying, the goal of which is to understand the material. so the reading skills are the abilities to understand the reading material and grasp its useful information as soon as possible. the time each person spends on reading depends on the ways of reading. in the authors opinion, the first paragraph is very important, sometimes it is the main part of the article. they should not care much about the individual words or expressions that they dont understand. it doesnt matter when students meet some complicated sentences difficult to understand. what they need to do is just to continue reading it. after reading over the whole material, they will find that many problems they meet at the beginning can be solved without any difficulty. what is the most important thing in reading comprehension is to understand. in order to guarantee students understanding of the reading material accurately, the teacher must explain some useful and difficult