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With the reformation of new process of teaching, it is required that the students should have the expressing ability to receive and pass information in English on real occasions. But many students often can speak well in class or on relaxed occasions, and when they are put in a serious situation, they can’t. Why? Well, it is caused by many reasons. One of the reasons is their English speaking ability is poor. So it is required that the English teachers in junior schools help to develop the student’s speaking ability.
The issue will be discussed from the perspective of an English teacher in junior middle school as follows.
The importance of speaking
1.The importance of speaking exists in the teaching syllabus
The aims of teaching syllabus stipulate that “English teaching in middle schools is mainly to train students to have a definite foundation of listening and speaking so as to attain the aim to communicate comprehensively with others.” It requires the English teachers to organize their 45-minute English class and create a living and active environment of English learning. Thus the students’ listening and speaking will be spontaneously trained and practiced.
2.The importance of speaking is reflected in the textbook.
Today, the newly compiled series of textbooks of teaching and learning, different from those old ones, which only emphasize the grammar and translation, have been used widely in our country. Those outmoded teaching approaches will have to be abandoned to use the new concept of English teaching. As a result, English teachers will have to improve themselves either subjectively or objectively so as to become a qualified English teacher in middle schools. And in the new textbooks which mostly emphasize listening and speaking according to different the stage of ages, it includes listening practice, speaking, chat, playing and acting, Audio-Vidal etc, and with appropriate pictures to help them understand and encourage them to act them out. Let them learn English unconsciously and use it freely. At the same time, the teachers also are required to organize their class using simple spoken English with gestures and expressions when it’s necessary. And the teachers should create a real situation to help the students understand and imitate better to improve the listening and speaking ability. On the one hand, the students should be also given more opportunities to speak English, and then their ability of speaking must be trained more concretely and more effectively. On the other hand, students are required to speak English when answering questions or giving their own opinions in the 45-minute class. After class, they can be required to retell the interesting stories in the textbook, or to do an interview with their classmates to give their own opinions about the story. So, surely, their speaking can be improved effectively.
3.New tests’ focus on speaking
At present, the teaching syllabus stipulates that“Examinations and tests should include writing, listening test and oral test as well.” And now you can find listening test in all kinds of tests. And many areas take the oral test as an important part to estimate the students’ comprehensive level. What’s more, now you often can find that there are many English-speaking competitions on TV and many areas also hold all kinds of speaking competitions. At the same time, there are more and more super English speakers presenting in the non-English-speaking countries.
Now, we’ve known the importance of speaking, we should try our best to better the students’ competence of speaking. How to improve students’ speaking ability during the process of English teaching in junior schools ? Here are some essential methods.
Essential methods for improving students’ speaking ability
1. Create a good language surrounding to arouse students’ enthusiasm for English learning.
(1) A “real” environment of English learning is of great help.
The traditional grammar-translation teaching method played a definite role in middle school teaching over the past decades, but this method of learning English using Chinese translation in class has not entirely catered for the new situation of learning a foreign language. We should bring the students to a full realization of the fact that learning English using Chinese translation certainly does not always help them improve their skills. But we haven’t a good language surrounding to speak English most of the time, which has always been a big problem for our Chinese learners. And we know that teaching in class is the basic form of English teaching. Firstly, the English in class should be on the basis of the students’ understanding. Don’t let the students have the room to speak Chinese. And the teachers should help them learn to think in English and encourage them to answer questions in English. To the English beginners, they often don’t dare to answer the teachers’ questions in English because of some reasons. So the teachers should encourage them with patience and make them shake the shy feeling. And the teachers should conduct their lessons in English as much as possible, so as to force the students to get used to listening speaking and thinking in English. Before a new lesson, teachers can create some situations for the students to respond and then to paraphrase a few sentences or to retell a story etc. On the other hand, for their answers, the teachers should give them proper estimate and let them have a successful feeling of getting knowledge. Then they will be glad to speak more and more. Thus the students feel in a real environment of English like those native learners. Actually in such a lively atmosphere, the students have been motivated to convey their ideas in English. Of course, it is quite clear that the students’ ability of speaking must be well and effectively trained. In my classroom, there are many pieces of paper with “English corners” on the wall. Before class, I often let them see some English films in order to feel western conditions and customs and attract their interest for English learning.
(2) The students’ high interest for English learning is needed.
As we all know, “the aims for English teaching is to train the students how to use the language, yet this kind of ability will more quickly be developed on condition that the students are greatly engaged in the English language and immersed in an atmosphere of using the language.” In accordance with the theory, an English teacher is required to observe the communication principles to make the whole class full of communication. To some extent, the students’ attention and interest are aroused and meantime the students’ speaking is effectively practiced. As a learner of English in the classroom, if he shows great interest in English learning, of course, he should listen to the teacher carefully, follow his teacher step by step, fix all his attention on what the teacher is saying and try his best to catch on. Then he is active to take part in activities; he is willing to communicate with others to show off. Little by little, his speaking ability will be definitely improved. On the contrary, the student who has no interest in learning English will be unwilling to listen to the teacher and communicate with others, then, gradually, he will be a “stranger” to English. Just as what Mr. Li Yang says that if you want to speak fluent and standard English, you must speak English loudly and crazily and change the muscle on Chinese face into that on western face. So in order to improve the students’ speaking ability, teachers should stimulate students’ enthusiasm for English learning. Let them speak as much as they can happily.
(3) Some measures for arousing students’ interest.
a.A three-minute speech before class. At the beginning of a class, students are often asked to come to the blackboard to give a duty report.
b.Give more chances to the students to do pair work, making up their own dialogues.
c.Make full use of audio-visual aids to create situations.
d.Carry out some activities, such as: Speaking/reading competition, Chinese forbidden, English corner, etc.
e.Play games. E.g. Pass the message, make more sentences as quickly as possible.
f.Modify Li Yang’s Crazy English.
2. Help the students lay a solid base of English phonetics.
If there is something wrong with a student’s pronunciation, then, obviously, he can’t understand what’s in the communication. And increasingly it will influence the student’s confidence of communication. So teachers of English should help students lay a solid base of English phonetics, which includes accurate pronunciation, good intonation, sound linking, plosive and strong and weak forms. It is proved that students with good pronunciation and intonation have obvious advantages in speaking just as a writer’s opinions can be obtained by reading between the lines, a speaker’s intention can be revealed from the intonation and tunes he uses. For example, the students of one of my classes aren’t often vigorous when I ask them to read after me, they often read slowly. Then I read loudly, and then the students read louder, too. What’s more, it is also proved that good pronunciation and tunes not only help himself develop the confidence of English learning, but also help others surrounding him try to improve their speaking ability. As the youth have a strong presented expect and most of them hope that they can speak fluent and pure English then become the focus and the admiring people to the public, which make them have a better confidence in their life.
3. Give more chances to the students to develop their speaking ability as well as the other three skills (listening, reading and writing)
In class, the students should be given more time to speak and they shouldn’t be regarded just as audiences, which will not have a good teaching effect and the student’s speaking ability also can’t be trained. The teachers should let the students take part in the class. In textbooks, there are many interesting dialogues and stories. So the teachers should let the students act the dialogue out or make another dialogue with their own words as possible as they can. And there’re some riddles and chants in textbooks. So the teachers can take the formation of competition to let the students imitate and follow the tape and see who is the winner. Next, the teachers can also arrange for the students to retell the stories, which they are more interested in. And the students also estimate their favorite ball players. In a word, the teacher can take all kinds of activities to encourage them to speak. Meanwhile, the four skills should be regarded as a whole, which influence with each other and promote mutually. To speak more, they are demanded to listen more first. For example, let the students listen to the original tape and English songs and let them imitate pure English pronunciations constantly. When their pronunciation is pure increasingly, their speaking ability will be improved comprehensively. Then, the student should write more. Writing can help the students consolidate the knowledge and strengthen their ability of understanding and memories. Last, the students should read more. Reading can help to form a good sense of language and know the western conditions and customs, then widen their knowledge. Also, reading can help them know more vocabularies and more native English. After all, semantics is consisted of words. The more words they know, the wider and easier they communicate. For example, there are two classes having been trained for two years for reading. The speaking of the students in those two classes is obvious better than other students in our English corner. So accumulating the students’ vocabulary is very necessary.
4. Accumulate the students’ vocabulary in order to speak well
During the English speaking, the communication often is interrupted by a word the students don’t know. So the vocabulary is obviously important. So during the English teaching, besides letting the students remember the words they’ve learned. What more important is to teach the way which how to remember more words, After learning the rule of spelling and pronunciation, the students should be encouraged to read and remember the words in their own way and master the links between the words, and then improve the effect of remembering words. The teachers also should encourage the students that when they do some reading, they should guess the words’ meaning according to the context. At the same time, it is also important to improve the ability to look up the words in the dictionary. If a student is rich in vocabulary, then it must be helpful for his speaking ability. What’s more, a large vocabulary is quite good for students to summarize a text. So after learning a text, students are often asked to retell it in their own words, for speaking communication largely depends on the quality of one’s organization and summation. We can say that the words are the building materials of language. There will be no buildings if there are no materials. What’s more, the rich vocabulary also has an influence on the reading, the translation, the writing and the listening. We can say that the rich vocabulary is the basis of speaking English well.
5. Enlarge the students’ background knowledge
Language is an important carriage of culture. There are close links between them, when you learn a language, you must know some knowledge about the culture, and then you can understand and express some meaning correctly. So the new syllabus presents a new demand that know the world correctly and strengthen the understanding to English countries’ culture. According to it, the teacher should both grasp the textbook as usual and know the culture of English countries reflected in the textbook carefully during their English teaching. When the students can do it after the teachers, they can get the basic knowledge and communicating ability by the training of listening, speaking, reading and writing. For example, in our textbook, the sentence “Can you help me?” can be answered with “Yes, certainly, sure, surely and of course.” But these answers have different meanings. The answer of yes is comparably impolite, while certainly is more polite. Sure or surely are often used in American English. And of course has the meaning of a little fool. So when you communicate with the elder people, you must pay more attention to the use of words. From the above, we know that it’s more important to use the proper language on different occasion besides teaching the students the words and sentences. So it’s necessary to know the background knowledge about the culture of English countries. If the students know more, then their speaking ability will be affected less. And it will promote the speaking communication then push the speaking ability to further development.
Above all are only parts of the ways. Their own hard work and studying ways also can’t be ignored. Conclusion
It is quite clear that speaking is very important to both the English teachers in middle schools and their students. As a teacher of English, we should flexibly carry out the five-step teaching approach to improve the quality of 45-minute class, get a way to explore new and effective teaching methods and to take an active part in English teaching innovation. At the same time, as students, they should be aware of the importance of cultivating their speaking ability in their daily studies.
In conclusion, like building a house, learning English takes some time, so don’t be impatient. Remember, Rome was not built in a day. With the help of the teachers, as long as students command a good knowledge of English grammar, and do more oral and listening practice, the speaking ability of students is surely to be greatly improved.
The issue will be discussed from the perspective of an English teacher in junior middle school as follows.
The importance of speaking
1.The importance of speaking exists in the teaching syllabus
The aims of teaching syllabus stipulate that “English teaching in middle schools is mainly to train students to have a definite foundation of listening and speaking so as to attain the aim to communicate comprehensively with others.” It requires the English teachers to organize their 45-minute English class and create a living and active environment of English learning. Thus the students’ listening and speaking will be spontaneously trained and practiced.
2.The importance of speaking is reflected in the textbook.
Today, the newly compiled series of textbooks of teaching and learning, different from those old ones, which only emphasize the grammar and translation, have been used widely in our country. Those outmoded teaching approaches will have to be abandoned to use the new concept of English teaching. As a result, English teachers will have to improve themselves either subjectively or objectively so as to become a qualified English teacher in middle schools. And in the new textbooks which mostly emphasize listening and speaking according to different the stage of ages, it includes listening practice, speaking, chat, playing and acting, Audio-Vidal etc, and with appropriate pictures to help them understand and encourage them to act them out. Let them learn English unconsciously and use it freely. At the same time, the teachers also are required to organize their class using simple spoken English with gestures and expressions when it’s necessary. And the teachers should create a real situation to help the students understand and imitate better to improve the listening and speaking ability. On the one hand, the students should be also given more opportunities to speak English, and then their ability of speaking must be trained more concretely and more effectively. On the other hand, students are required to speak English when answering questions or giving their own opinions in the 45-minute class. After class, they can be required to retell the interesting stories in the textbook, or to do an interview with their classmates to give their own opinions about the story. So, surely, their speaking can be improved effectively.
3.New tests’ focus on speaking
At present, the teaching syllabus stipulates that“Examinations and tests should include writing, listening test and oral test as well.” And now you can find listening test in all kinds of tests. And many areas take the oral test as an important part to estimate the students’ comprehensive level. What’s more, now you often can find that there are many English-speaking competitions on TV and many areas also hold all kinds of speaking competitions. At the same time, there are more and more super English speakers presenting in the non-English-speaking countries.
Now, we’ve known the importance of speaking, we should try our best to better the students’ competence of speaking. How to improve students’ speaking ability during the process of English teaching in junior schools ? Here are some essential methods.
Essential methods for improving students’ speaking ability
1. Create a good language surrounding to arouse students’ enthusiasm for English learning.
(1) A “real” environment of English learning is of great help.
The traditional grammar-translation teaching method played a definite role in middle school teaching over the past decades, but this method of learning English using Chinese translation in class has not entirely catered for the new situation of learning a foreign language. We should bring the students to a full realization of the fact that learning English using Chinese translation certainly does not always help them improve their skills. But we haven’t a good language surrounding to speak English most of the time, which has always been a big problem for our Chinese learners. And we know that teaching in class is the basic form of English teaching. Firstly, the English in class should be on the basis of the students’ understanding. Don’t let the students have the room to speak Chinese. And the teachers should help them learn to think in English and encourage them to answer questions in English. To the English beginners, they often don’t dare to answer the teachers’ questions in English because of some reasons. So the teachers should encourage them with patience and make them shake the shy feeling. And the teachers should conduct their lessons in English as much as possible, so as to force the students to get used to listening speaking and thinking in English. Before a new lesson, teachers can create some situations for the students to respond and then to paraphrase a few sentences or to retell a story etc. On the other hand, for their answers, the teachers should give them proper estimate and let them have a successful feeling of getting knowledge. Then they will be glad to speak more and more. Thus the students feel in a real environment of English like those native learners. Actually in such a lively atmosphere, the students have been motivated to convey their ideas in English. Of course, it is quite clear that the students’ ability of speaking must be well and effectively trained. In my classroom, there are many pieces of paper with “English corners” on the wall. Before class, I often let them see some English films in order to feel western conditions and customs and attract their interest for English learning.
(2) The students’ high interest for English learning is needed.
As we all know, “the aims for English teaching is to train the students how to use the language, yet this kind of ability will more quickly be developed on condition that the students are greatly engaged in the English language and immersed in an atmosphere of using the language.” In accordance with the theory, an English teacher is required to observe the communication principles to make the whole class full of communication. To some extent, the students’ attention and interest are aroused and meantime the students’ speaking is effectively practiced. As a learner of English in the classroom, if he shows great interest in English learning, of course, he should listen to the teacher carefully, follow his teacher step by step, fix all his attention on what the teacher is saying and try his best to catch on. Then he is active to take part in activities; he is willing to communicate with others to show off. Little by little, his speaking ability will be definitely improved. On the contrary, the student who has no interest in learning English will be unwilling to listen to the teacher and communicate with others, then, gradually, he will be a “stranger” to English. Just as what Mr. Li Yang says that if you want to speak fluent and standard English, you must speak English loudly and crazily and change the muscle on Chinese face into that on western face. So in order to improve the students’ speaking ability, teachers should stimulate students’ enthusiasm for English learning. Let them speak as much as they can happily.
(3) Some measures for arousing students’ interest.
a.A three-minute speech before class. At the beginning of a class, students are often asked to come to the blackboard to give a duty report.
b.Give more chances to the students to do pair work, making up their own dialogues.
c.Make full use of audio-visual aids to create situations.
d.Carry out some activities, such as: Speaking/reading competition, Chinese forbidden, English corner, etc.
e.Play games. E.g. Pass the message, make more sentences as quickly as possible.
f.Modify Li Yang’s Crazy English.
2. Help the students lay a solid base of English phonetics.
If there is something wrong with a student’s pronunciation, then, obviously, he can’t understand what’s in the communication. And increasingly it will influence the student’s confidence of communication. So teachers of English should help students lay a solid base of English phonetics, which includes accurate pronunciation, good intonation, sound linking, plosive and strong and weak forms. It is proved that students with good pronunciation and intonation have obvious advantages in speaking just as a writer’s opinions can be obtained by reading between the lines, a speaker’s intention can be revealed from the intonation and tunes he uses. For example, the students of one of my classes aren’t often vigorous when I ask them to read after me, they often read slowly. Then I read loudly, and then the students read louder, too. What’s more, it is also proved that good pronunciation and tunes not only help himself develop the confidence of English learning, but also help others surrounding him try to improve their speaking ability. As the youth have a strong presented expect and most of them hope that they can speak fluent and pure English then become the focus and the admiring people to the public, which make them have a better confidence in their life.
3. Give more chances to the students to develop their speaking ability as well as the other three skills (listening, reading and writing)
In class, the students should be given more time to speak and they shouldn’t be regarded just as audiences, which will not have a good teaching effect and the student’s speaking ability also can’t be trained. The teachers should let the students take part in the class. In textbooks, there are many interesting dialogues and stories. So the teachers should let the students act the dialogue out or make another dialogue with their own words as possible as they can. And there’re some riddles and chants in textbooks. So the teachers can take the formation of competition to let the students imitate and follow the tape and see who is the winner. Next, the teachers can also arrange for the students to retell the stories, which they are more interested in. And the students also estimate their favorite ball players. In a word, the teacher can take all kinds of activities to encourage them to speak. Meanwhile, the four skills should be regarded as a whole, which influence with each other and promote mutually. To speak more, they are demanded to listen more first. For example, let the students listen to the original tape and English songs and let them imitate pure English pronunciations constantly. When their pronunciation is pure increasingly, their speaking ability will be improved comprehensively. Then, the student should write more. Writing can help the students consolidate the knowledge and strengthen their ability of understanding and memories. Last, the students should read more. Reading can help to form a good sense of language and know the western conditions and customs, then widen their knowledge. Also, reading can help them know more vocabularies and more native English. After all, semantics is consisted of words. The more words they know, the wider and easier they communicate. For example, there are two classes having been trained for two years for reading. The speaking of the students in those two classes is obvious better than other students in our English corner. So accumulating the students’ vocabulary is very necessary.
4. Accumulate the students’ vocabulary in order to speak well
During the English speaking, the communication often is interrupted by a word the students don’t know. So the vocabulary is obviously important. So during the English teaching, besides letting the students remember the words they’ve learned. What more important is to teach the way which how to remember more words, After learning the rule of spelling and pronunciation, the students should be encouraged to read and remember the words in their own way and master the links between the words, and then improve the effect of remembering words. The teachers also should encourage the students that when they do some reading, they should guess the words’ meaning according to the context. At the same time, it is also important to improve the ability to look up the words in the dictionary. If a student is rich in vocabulary, then it must be helpful for his speaking ability. What’s more, a large vocabulary is quite good for students to summarize a text. So after learning a text, students are often asked to retell it in their own words, for speaking communication largely depends on the quality of one’s organization and summation. We can say that the words are the building materials of language. There will be no buildings if there are no materials. What’s more, the rich vocabulary also has an influence on the reading, the translation, the writing and the listening. We can say that the rich vocabulary is the basis of speaking English well.
5. Enlarge the students’ background knowledge
Language is an important carriage of culture. There are close links between them, when you learn a language, you must know some knowledge about the culture, and then you can understand and express some meaning correctly. So the new syllabus presents a new demand that know the world correctly and strengthen the understanding to English countries’ culture. According to it, the teacher should both grasp the textbook as usual and know the culture of English countries reflected in the textbook carefully during their English teaching. When the students can do it after the teachers, they can get the basic knowledge and communicating ability by the training of listening, speaking, reading and writing. For example, in our textbook, the sentence “Can you help me?” can be answered with “Yes, certainly, sure, surely and of course.” But these answers have different meanings. The answer of yes is comparably impolite, while certainly is more polite. Sure or surely are often used in American English. And of course has the meaning of a little fool. So when you communicate with the elder people, you must pay more attention to the use of words. From the above, we know that it’s more important to use the proper language on different occasion besides teaching the students the words and sentences. So it’s necessary to know the background knowledge about the culture of English countries. If the students know more, then their speaking ability will be affected less. And it will promote the speaking communication then push the speaking ability to further development.
Above all are only parts of the ways. Their own hard work and studying ways also can’t be ignored. Conclusion
It is quite clear that speaking is very important to both the English teachers in middle schools and their students. As a teacher of English, we should flexibly carry out the five-step teaching approach to improve the quality of 45-minute class, get a way to explore new and effective teaching methods and to take an active part in English teaching innovation. At the same time, as students, they should be aware of the importance of cultivating their speaking ability in their daily studies.
In conclusion, like building a house, learning English takes some time, so don’t be impatient. Remember, Rome was not built in a day. With the help of the teachers, as long as students command a good knowledge of English grammar, and do more oral and listening practice, the speaking ability of students is surely to be greatly improved.