On How to Improve Rural Middle School Students’ Spoken English.doc

On How to Improve Rural Middle School Students Spoken English Abstract: In this thesis, the author makes a comprehensive study on how to improve spoken English ability of junior middle school students in Chinese rural areas, which is his personal teaching experience in spoken English teaching in fact. The author proposes a new model for spoken English teaching and a useful method to teach spoken English task-based teaching. He also supplies some other factors which is helpful to spoken English teaching. According to his study, all the factors are improved to be effective. Key Words: spoken English, teaching, improve, students 1. Introduction As we know, listening, speaking, reading and writing are the four abilities which junior middle school students must have as foreign language learners in China. There is an old saying: Chinese students can be good at English testing, but bad at speaking English. What they are learning is deaf-mute English. Whatever it means, we can see spoken English has been being a weak point to Chinese middle school students all the time, especially to Chinese rural students. Because they live in the country and have narrow field of vision. Whats worse, Chinese rural students have poor thoughts and are timid contrast to the students in cities. And they have poor English enlightening. Most of them wouldnt like to speak English in class. And they can hardly believe they can speak English well. They are not confident. As the deepening of Chinas reform and its openness to other countries and the necessity of the entry of the WTO , English , as a foreign language , is becoming more and more important. It is much more widely used not only in its written form but also in its oral form in China. Whats more English is not only a language but also a modern international communicative tool. And all kinds of interpreters are urgently needed. Spoken English teaching is now paid a great more attention. And the ninth curriculum innovation is being carried out all over the country. One of its teaching aims is centred on developing the students language abilities. So spoken English teaching is now in a quite prominent place. As a result there are more and more researches about how to teach spoken English in junior middle school and how to develop the abilities of junior middle school students spoken English in China. In fact it hasnt been a long history since people began to do a joint research on spoken English teaching in China. But there have been already many kinds of researches about it. And we can see the efficiency and get some good experiences of spoken English teaching and learning. It is believed that practice makes perfect. It seems practice is the best way to improve speaking English. But as a rural junior middle school English teacher I would say: Chinese rural junior middle school English teachers should teach students how to practise and learn and help them to have such kinds of language abilities and build an English language system in class step by step. The most urgent thing is to encourage them to speak English bravely. I think I am not only an English teacher but also an English learner. I teach what I have learnt. I remember how I have been learning English, so I should know how to teach English. During the English teaching in Chinese rural, I always pay a great attention to spoken English teaching. And the following is what I have done and what I have got. 2. Theories 2.1 The habit-formation theory The habit-formation theory comes from the behaviourist psychology and was put forward by a group of behaviourits with B.E Skiner as their representative. According to behaviourists, language is regarded as a set of linguistic habits and the linguistic habits are formed through identifying and strengthening the associations between stimuli and responses. Learning a second language means the formation of a new set of linguistic habits. 2.2 Activity Theory Activity theory provides a framework to analyze what learners do in interaction with an aim to understand their goals through action and motives through activity. It analyzes system in activity from the broad perspective of the larger social system through the eyes of the member or participants co-constructing the activity. The activity practitioner must then simultaneously focus on the activity system (learner or learners) they study through tasks and what transpires around that activity system. 3. A new model for spoken English teaching. English teaching is a course of information transmission. It makes students understand and master the new language English through communicating with teachers. It is a course through which teachers guide students to receive、deal with、preserve and use English information. It is also a course of input transform output. Given that, I propose a new model for spoken English teaching abruptly. That is intensified English speakingguided English speaking freeEnglish speaking, which is the three basic steps of spoken English teaching. 3.1 Intensified English speaking Imitation and practice Imitation and practice lay an important role in the process of habit-formation, because the behaviourists maintained that imitation will help learners identify the associations between stimuli and responses while practice will reinforce the associations and help learners to form the new linguistic habits. So it is quite important and necessary for junior middle school students to imitate English tapes, especially at the beginning of learning English. Of course they should imitate their English teachers and the key sentences in the textbooks too. They imitate others and practise. Then they can have good English habits. Those who are good at imitating can learn spoken English better and faster. Those who are not good at imitating can also learn spoken English well if they imitate more and practise more. Many famous speakers were not born speakers in the history. They became speakers after lots of practice, such as Mark Twin. Reading and reciting Reading and reciting are good ways to improve spoken English. Reading aloud can help junior middle school students have satisfied organs of speech and make them pronounce correctly and naturally. At the beginning of learning English, dialogues and passages are both suitable reading materials. And junior middle school students should read them with relevant emotions. They can neither read too fast nor read too aloud. Whats more, here “reading” doesnt mean to read to remember the reading materials. Silently reading is a bridge to think in English. When students read silently, they usually mustnt move their mouths. So they have to concentrate on the materials and are forced to think. It is an efficient way to remember things. Reciting can make junior middle school students have a great number of English material input. It is an important way to get students to have a language basic. Computers can output nothing without inputting anything. Junior middle school students cant improve their spoken English without reciting. Sentences practising Separate words are not language; they cant express abundant meanings of things. But sentences can. Sentences practicing help junior middle school students build language systems easily and quickly. The following are some methods of sentences practising: Enlarge sentences. eg. The boy has a book. The boy has an English book. The boy under the tree has an English book. The boy under the tree has an English book. He is my bother. Make sentences with the useful expressions and language points in the students book. eg. A. go to bed: I go to bed late. B. too to He is too young to go to school. Match words together to get a sentence. eg. a, there, basketball, desk, is, under, the There is a basketball under the desk. Match sentences together to get a passage. eg. a. We let him in. b. We listened to him silently. c. Later I knew that man was Beethoven himself. d. To my surprise, he talked to us and played a very beautiful sonata. e. One evening, I was playing a piece of music when a man suddenly knocked at the door. The answer is: e-a-d-b-c 3.2 Guided English speaking In this step, students are mainly to talk about pictures or we can say “ describing pictures”. They can have talks within the contents of the given pictures in pairs, groups of three or more. Picture is just like a guide .It is visual language materials. It tells them what to say. Guided speaking English should start with the easy to the more difficult. One picture describing. In this step, English teachers can use one picture for the whole class to begin the lesson. When they practise, we can give different ones to each. That is one picture is one task. At the beginning, rural junior middle school students can usually say nothing but a few words about the picture. So a few given phrases are very necessary and they are helpful to them. And teachers should set an example for the class. Then teachers get the class do that together and ask some individuals to set good examples for the class. It is a good way to let students set examples. It can make them be more confident. Then get the students to practice by themselves . While teachers go around them and help them. After that, teachers can ask more students to describe pictures. English teachers can also get the students to do some describing and identifying. Get one student to describe a classmate or a school thing , then get others to guess who or what it is? It is just like a guessing game. But students are very pleased to join in such kind of games. Multiple pictures describing (Jagsaw) Three or four pictures are suitable for multiple pictures describing. The three or four pictures carry coherent meanings which is a complete story. Teachers put the pictures on the flashcard and make the tense clear. Of course the difficulties should be pointed too. Then students usuallyworks in groups of three or four to do this job. They each get ready for one picture and describe their own pictures one by one. When the last picture is finished, a whole story is made. After they finish in groups, teachers ask some groups to give their results to the whole class. Students will be glad to see the surprising end. And they always want to make their own describing unique and charming. So this encourages rural junior middle school students to think in English and speak English more actively. It seems multiple pictures describing is more difficult than one picture describing. So to go through this step, the students must have a certain language basic. 3.3 Free English speaking Free English speaking is advanced in the three steps. Teachers begin this activity after rural junior middle school students have learned English at least for two years. And teachers usually plays roles of organizers and advisers. 3.3.1 Limited talk Say some sentences using the given phrases Students are given some phrases (usually some key language points) on the blackboard. And they use them to make sentences to form a short passage, which is something like a story. Often they do this jib individually. After they prepare for that and tell it to others in the class. Students will get pleasure from exchanging their different stories. Say some sentences with the beginning sentence (Sequels) Students are given a beginning sentence on the blackboard. And each student says one sentence in their turns of seats. The sentences should have coherent meaning and they altogether make a wonderful story. And students usually think hard in order to change the plot. It is a great incentive for students to use English and speak English. The following is an example. A: Yesterday afternoon I was on my way home. B: Suddenly I saw there were a big crow of people beside the road. C: I ran up there quickly D: To my surprise there was an old man lying . E: Topic talk Students are given a topic. And they have talks on the topic. They can talk one by one in class or in groups. Students can give their different ideas. They should be very active in this part.3.3.2 Free talk Free talk is nearly like topic talk. Students are not given a topic in this part. They should choose a topic to begin. So teachers main responsibility is to teach them how to choose a topic.Tell them what is worth talking and what is not. Topics are usually something hot spots. Such asthe war in Iraq, Sars, some famous sports stars and singers are all enjoyed by students. If they choose a right topic, they will be active to talk. 4. An important teaching method task-based teaching Shortly speaking, task is an action, in the process of doing something, learners are always in the active psychological state .It is a process of interaction. In order to complete the task, learners regard meaning as the center, drawing upon verbal and non-verbal resources to construct meanings in order to solve a certain communicative problem. In the process of completing tasks, learners actively participate in the task and interact with both teachers and classmates, building a supportive environment for language acquisition and internalization, which can be of great benefit to the students spoken English. According to David Nunan, the structure of tasks and the other factors is : GoalsTeacher role InputTASKSLearner role ActivitiesSettings So here I propose the following five tasks. These tasks are usually suitable for rural junior middle school students. Jigsaw tasks The students work in groups or pairs. They are given a chain of four pictures. They each tell a story about their own pictures which make up a whole story. Jigsaw tasks are just like multiple pictures describing. Information-gap tasks Information-gap tasks are real communication. Students have different characters, families and experiences. They want to know each other. They need to exchange personal information. Then teachers can organize different kinds of information exchanging tasks according to what the students are assigned to learn at each stage. Then students can make full use of what they have learnt to communicative and express their own ideas. The tasks can be like the following: Get students to draw their own family trees. Then ask and answer questions like: What does your father do? Where does your mother work? Get students to draw a map of their own living area. Then ask each other places and directions. Comparison-making tasks there are no two completely same leaves in the world. Things are different from each other. So teachers can design tasks like the following: The differences between Chinese food an