An analysis of the problems and insufficiency in oral English teaching 英语口语教学调查与研究

An analysis of the problems and insufficiency in oral

English teaching

Introduction

Senior high school " English Teaching Syllabuses (陈道明: 2002) " proposes the main purpose of English teaching is to improve the ability to communicate in English, especially the innovative spirit and practical ability. With the development of global economy, English has become a kind of international all-purpose language, that is to say, it is an important political and economic resource. The basic goal of learning English is to communicate with it. Therefore, speaking ability is the main skill in English learning.

In recent years, with the efforts of the teachers, foreign language teaching in most high school has made great progress. Meanwhile, students’ listening, spea king, reading and writing skills are generally improved. However, in the vast rural areas, high school English level is still lagging behind. Although many students have learned English for many years, they still can not speak English fluently, even to say a word when they meet with foreigners. As a result, there is the prevailing phenomenon of high marks but dumb English. After joining WTO, the single reading talent has been far from meeting the needs of modern society. Students in Rural high schools fail to reach the goal of communication in English and obtain information in English.

Based on the current situation, the author conducts an investigation among teachers and students in Baoding rural senior high school. The investigation takes Juncheng senior high school as the sample, using a questionnaire as the main instrument to collect data. At last, the author analyzes the problems and insufficiency in the oral English teaching, meanwhile, gives suggestions to improve the current situation.

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I. Literature Review

A. The Importance of Oral English

There is no denying that the process of global economy is being accelerated constantly when we entered into a new century. Countries all over the world expand constantly in economy, culture, science, diplomacy, traveling etc. Profound changes taking place in our society asks for more unprecedented, urgent and enormous demand for English talents. Therefore, the demand of new age is far greater than that demand the talent who is just good at written English.

English is not only a tool of learning, but also a kind of international all-purpose language, that is to say, it is an important political and economic resource. Listening, speaking, reading, writing and translating are the five basic skills of learning a language. And the final goal of learning a language is to master the five skills. The basic goal of learning English is to communicate with it.

But influenced by exam-oriented education in our country , generally speaking, the second skill ¨speaking” is the we akest part in English studying, and also a serious problem for middle school students, and even for the college students. Students continue to memorize grammar and sentence patterns for a long time, so students' brain has become a warehouse that is used to store vocabulary, sentence patterns and language knowledge, and they find it hard to communicate with others in English. So they often ask how to improve the spoken language. Another phenomenon often shows that several more outstanding students keep silent in the classroom. The students with worse foundation become auditors; they do not participate voluntarily. Many students go to universities to study but still can not say several English

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sentences. So it is imperative and urgent to improve teaching meth ods and students’ interpersonal skills of oral English.

B. Current Situation of Oral English Teaching

The purpose that we study English is to communicate fluently with others. So fluency, accuracy and appropriateness are important in oral English study. That is to say, we have to pay much attention to practical communicating ability instead of only focusing on the grammar. So it needs us to know the rules of speaking, and the cultural characteristics as well, to express correctly and to use right styles under different situations or on the special occasions.

Due to the influence of the old English teaching system and the language environment, Chinese students could not practice oral English and improve their ability of spoken English. In the old English teaching system, teachers always play the main roles in classes, and they focus on paraphrasing text and language points. Though they do some oral practices in classes, these are not enough to improve students’ability of spoken English. Students can understand English grammar, vocabulary and intonation clearly, but their ability of oral English is still poor. Maybe they can say the simple English but can not express themselves correctly. A nation-wide investigation shows that only 5% graduates in China think he or she can speak English fluently.

There are many students have troubles with oral English. Some students are considered the best one in his or her class, but they dare not to speak English when he or she talks with the foreigner who comes from an English-speaking country. The reason is that he or she is not used to speaking English when he or she talks to others. The students can not express what they want to say clearly when they talk with others in English and people around him or her can not understand what he or she said. Such situations are not useful to the improvement of students’ oral English. So there is no admitting to delay improving the ability of students’ oral English. We must find the effective methods to solve the problems as soon as possible.

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II. Research Design and Methodology

In order to find out the problems and insufficiency in the oral English teaching, the author conducts an investigation among teachers and students in Baoding rural senior high school. This chapter mainly introduces the research design.

A. Research Questions

This quantitative study was designed to address the following questions:

1. How about the oral capability of English teachers?

2. How about the learning situation of oral English among students?

B. Research Subjects

Participants for the investigation are 20 teachers and 100 students chosen at random from the Juncheng High School in Tang county, Baoding, Hebei province. The teachers and students from Grade One are prepared to take part in the questionnaire investigation in order to acquire information of oral English on teachers’ part and students’ part.

C.Instruments

The investigation uses questionnaire as the main instrument. The investigation consists of two questionnaires. The first one contains 10 items, which are all be multiple-choice, aiming to make teachers evaluate their oral English teaching objectively. It involves the following contents: the educational degree of teachers, the time distribution of different skills, the present teaching situation, the teaching resource and auxiliaries. The second questionnaire with 6 items is used to investigate

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the current situation of students’oral English. It contains the attitude toward oral English, the current level of speaking, the difficulties of oral English study and the causes leading to the situation.

D. Data Collection and Data Analysis

During the investigation, the teachers and students were very cooperative and careful. There were twenty teachers participating in the investigation. And teachers’feedback was all considered to be effective. Meanwhile, we collected 100 pieces of paper among students, of which two was invalid for the lack of answers to some questions. The rest of the feedback was considered to be effective and the valid rate is 98%.

Firstly, the author collected all the data of the investigation. And then descriptive statistics listed the percentage of each choice. Finally, affective factors should be analyzed. In this way, the author obtains the final results shown in the following tables.

Table 1 The Educational Degree of Teachers

According to the above survey, we find many serious problems. 70% teachers (about 14 persons) graduate from colleges. Teachers with bachelor degree reach about 4 persons (20%). Besides, there are 20% teachers who only receive technical secondary education. The present English teachers' educational level is not high, that is to say, the number of teachers with high degree is rare.

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Table 2 The Time Distribution among Different Skills

In the survey, most teachers pay more attention to grammar(32%), vocabulary(30%), and writing(19%) teaching. They do not have much time spending on oral English and listening skill. Some teachers say current teaching materials content more difficult. In the teaching, in order to drive teaching plan so that there is no time to spend on oral English teaching. At the same time, exam doesn't test speaking ability, so under the guidance teacher only pay attention to what will be tested. So there is less time that is distributed to oral English.

Table 3 The Present Teaching Situation

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From the data, we can easily find that English information source of teachers is narrow. 51% teachers’ knowledge is only limited in the learning at the student age. In addition, only 15% teachers have further study plan to update their knowledge. Because time flies, changes happen at anytime, and new things emerge constantly. Obviously, English is developing with ages. How can old knowledge keep up with the new age? So there is a long way to enrich the knowledge of rural school teachers.

As to the scientific research ability, judging from the questionnaire survey results, only 18% teachers often participate in research activity. It shows that the rural middle school English teachers' scientific research consciousness and scientific research ability are generally poor.

As to teaching language, 26% teachers teach lessons in English as much as possible. Only under the condition that the students couldn't understand, teachers will use Chinese to have further explanations. 32% teachers usually use English at first. Then explain in Chinese. 42% of the teachers mainly use Chinese in class. Therefore,

in the rural middle school English class, the teaching language also cannot guarantee

in English. This phenomenon accounts for two aspects. On the one hand, teacher’ ability needs to be improved. On the other hand, students' English foundation is not good so that they can not grasp the teacher. Two aspects restrict the improvement of teaching language in the rural high schools.

As to the relationship between teachers and students in class, 53% teachers think classroom should be teacher-centered and teaching should be the main part that controls everything in the classroom. Obviously, these teachers are influenced by traditional education idea. Only 26% teachers think students are the center and teachers should adjust the lesson according to the conditions of the students.

In addition, only 13% teachers often organize the activity to create speaking circumstance. Most teachers run teaching task of more than 3 classes, so that they think the teaching task is too heavy to have energy to organize some teaching activities to develop students' speaking ability after class. A number of teachers emphasize the school hardware and software facilities all outdated lacking of

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speaking conditions and atmosphere, so that they can’t carry out activity to practicing speaking.

Table 4 Teaching Resources

As to the teaching resources, the survey finds that most rural high school in Hebei province uses the new curriculum. 74% teachers prefer reference materials with the textbook as supporting material. Teachers using reference material from online resource accounts for 10%, and borrowing reaches 12%. Editing material by the teachers is nearly zero. Current edition of high school English textbook is more difficult than the old from vocabulary, reading, communication patterns etc. While the new edition put more emphasis on training comprehensive ability from listening, speaking, reading and writing ect. To accomplish the teaching assignment and achieve the default teaching effect, only a textbook is far from the goal. It should be supplemented by supporting materials and advanced electronic equipments.

Table 5Teaching Auxiliaries

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As to the teaching auxiliaries and helping means in the rural middle school, in everyday teaching, about 74% teachers use recorder as the main teaching tools. Choosing speech room and courseware teachers are 10% and 12%. Choosing network is only about 4%. Teachers said they face difficulties to multimedia applications during the teaching and have bigger problems in control the teaching material and using teaching methods. Most teachers also say they seldom refer to network, newspapers, broadcasting television and other media in preparing process. The figures show that becau se of restriction of the rural middle school, the English teachers’ ability of using modern teaching resource and equipment is still backward.

Table 6 The Learning Condition of Students

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From the above table, we find that only 21% students regard speaking as an important skill. 46% students can not recognize the importance of oral English and 45% students show less interest in learning spoken English. So we can see that students ignore the oral English learning. Because of the lack of interest, from the above findings we can easily discover that 52% students are not satisfied with their oral English and lack confidence. Having learned five or six years of English, most students only can speak several sentences, even can not open the mouth.

New teaching concept advocates the target language teaching. The data shows 15% students can understand parts of the English teaching, which reflects that students are lacking of solid foundation of English, which is worth our attention and earnest ponderation. What is more, only 47% students admit that school seldom organizes activity of oral English. It reflects that school lack speaking environment. At the same time, there are still quite a number of students (about 52%) are afraid of making mistakes, or too timid, leading to dare not speak English. So the physical obstacle plays a role in practicing oral English.

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III. Results and Discussion

A.Outdated Educational Concepts

The most important factor is the Chinese education system, which just severs for examination. As a matter of fact, most teachers, parents and students detest the examinations because it does not do good to the improvement of English in real sense.

O n the teachers’ part,the standard of the teachers’ working effect is marks. So in order to achieve high marks, teachers just focus on examinations and students also serve for this purpose. As a result, most teachers pay more attention to grammar(32%), vocabulary(30%), and writing(19%) teaching. They do not have much time spending on oral English and listening skill. Because there is no examination or test on speaking, so teachers and students pay little attention to oral English practicing. They prefer to spend all of their time in grammars, reading, writing and listening to get good marks in examinations, thus speaking is neglected in class. After class students prefer doing homework. In this way, after years of learning, there is no great improvement of oral English.

On the student s’ part, 46% students can not recognize the importance of oral English and 45% students show less interest in learning spoken English. As there is no concrete demands in spoken English at all, many students have a vague understanding toward English. They just want to get higher scores in the entrance

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exam so that they can get chances to enter universities and change their destinies completely. Gradually, they develop “Mute English”without recognizing the importance of speaking.

B. Poor Teaching Conditions

In most Baoding rural high schools, teachers’ability is limited. 70% teachers graduate from colleges. Teachers with bachelor degree reach only 4 persons (20%). Besides, there are 20% teachers who only receive technical secondary education. From the data, we can find the present English teachers' educational level is not high. They are still carrying out the old traditional education method, which will not only make a bad influence on students’ speaking, but also an obstacle to listening. Under that principle, teachers play a main role in English class. They speak too much for grammar explanation taking up most of the time. Students, who are given few chances to open their mouth to speak a sentence, just make full use of their ears to listen to the teacher’s boring talking. In this case, students will lose their interest in English studying, or give it up.

The fact that 42% of the teachers mainly use Chinese in class will give a bad effect on students’listening, meanwhile abate students’desire for speaking. Some teacher excuse that most students can not catch up the meanings of what they say if they speak too much in English. In fact, with the curiosity of learning, students will try their best to g et the teachers’ meanings. When they confront some difficulties, they will ask others for help. A recent research shows that speaking English should take up 70%, so more English is required in English class.

At the same time, the large number of students in a classroom affects the chance of speaking oral English. There are always more than 40 students in a Chinese classroom, but in the west countries there are just 20. So more students in the same room means less time for each to practice oral English and less opportunity to speak. In order to finish the task of teaching there is no time for the oral English practicing. Some teachers have realized the importance of speaking, but because of time limit they have no chance to do any practice in oral English.

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