高梦瑶 梁满朝
(1.桂林电子科技大学,广西 桂林541000;2.桂林电子科技大学信息科技学院,广西 桂林541000)
As Jun Liu in English Language Teaching in China:New approaches,Perspectives and Standards(2007:107~122)reported,Chinese people has been influenced by the Chinese traditional culture.Accordingly,it seems Chinese people are likely to be modest,quiet in front of the society and inner minded.That’s one of the most important reasons that Chinese L2 learners have the same performance.In the Chinese traditional culture,Confucianism teaches people to be understatement,quiet and modest as well as the Taoism.When Chinese students in the classes,even though they have desire to communicate they feel embarrassed to speak loudly or directly in front of the class.Instead of having strong desire to speak and communicate,most of them would prefer to listening to others’speaking.
Besides the cultural influences,another reason is because it is extremely lacking of the speaking opportunities in English classes in China.It is teacher-centered class.Students usually listened to the teachers talking all the class.The ignoring of speaking practice and communication lead a serious situation that Chinese students lost their opportunities to communicate then they develop the habit with learning English without talking.
The last reason is the activities in classes are limited and old fashioned.They couldn’t stimulate learners’desire and passion in talking.It seems teachers were not able to apply proper speaking activity in the right place and time.Consequently,the outcome of the learners was not optimistic.
From the statement of Cook (2008:242~243),the name “audiolingual”is attached to a teaching style that reached its peak in the 1960’s,best conveyed in Robert Lado’s thoughtful book Language Teaching A Scientific Approach(Lado.1960).Its emphasis is on teaching the spoken language through dialogues and drills.
Cook(2008:247~249)also reported that the 1970’s saw a worldwide shift towards teaching methods that emphasized communication,seen as the fundamental reason for language teaching.Indeed,communicative teaching has now become the only teaching method that many teachers have experienced;it was the traditional method from the nineteenth.
There is an simple example of a part of an English class.The lesson aims to teach a dialogue about shopping and using the dialogue making communicate in the class.
At the beginning of this class,the teacher set the situation in a shoes shop,and then performed the dialogue about shopping in order to let learners have a first sense of the dialogue.After presenting the dialogue for twice,the teacher gave students handouts there are some practice on the papers.The first one was asking them to arrange the disordered sentences in to right order follow the dialogue.It’s not only a memory practice but also checking the understanding of the dialogue.If learners understand the dialogue and have a good listening capability they will easy to find the right answer.Instead of telling them the right answers by teacher,asking students to correct by themselves it’s more efficient and helpful.Then the learners were asked to read after the teacher,to study the exactly pronunciation,intonation,phonetics.
The next activity could be the performance of the dialogue the teacher inviting some volunteers to present the dialogue without the handout.By peer correction instead of teacher correction students would get more opportunities to practice speaking.Then the teacher gave them another handout,the questions on the papers were all about the shopping.Next the teacher divided students into some groups,and talked into groups about follow questions with certain notes in order to present it latter.
The reason why the teacher listed the questions was that give learners more clear topic and way of communication.Vague topic and unclear direction would harm the desire of the students.In the presentation of their work,the teacher wouldn’t interrupt them in order to let them practice fluency.However,after the activity,teacher needed to encourage them with how successfully they performed and how fluently they could talk.In this way,they would be more confident and had stronger desire to talk!
From the discussion above a conclusion could be drawn that using Audio-lingual and Communicative Language Teaching’s styles will help L2 learners to practice and study English speaking.Teachers really need to improve ways of teaching English speaking even though it is not an easy task.If that,English speaking classes in China will be more helpful and advanced!
[1]Brown,H.D.Principles of Language Learning and Teaching[M].Fifth Edition.Pearson Education,Inc,2007.
[2]Cook,V.Second Language Learning and Language Teaching,2008,Fourth Edition,Hodder Education,Hachette UK Company,London.
[3]Jun,L.English Language Teaching in China:New approaches,Perspectives and Standards,2007,Continuum International Publish Group.
[4]Ur,P.A Course in Language Teaching,2004,Cambridge University Press,Cambridge.
[5]Yule,G.The Study of Language,2010,Fourth Edition,Cambridge University Press,New York.