Techniques and Skills in the Learning of Spoken English As a Second Language

英语口语作为第二门语言在学习中的技巧Techniques and Skills in the Learning of Spoken English As a Second LanguageContentsAbstract.1Key words.1I. The Importance and Aim of Spoken English Learning.11.1 The Importance of Spoken English.1 1.2 The Aim of Spoken English Can be Divided into Three Levels.2 1.2.1 Common Requirement of Oral English.21.2.2 Higher Requirement. 21.2.3 The Highest Requirement.2II. The Analysis and Present Domestic and Foreign Situation of Spoken Learning.3III. The Requirements and Workable Analysis of Spoken English Learning.43.1 The Key Problems That Students will Meet.63.2 Some Strategies on Spoken Learning.8IV. Techniques and Skills in the Learning of Spoken English As a Second Language.9V. Making Use of Any Changes You Can Get to Practice Your Oral English.12 VI. Conclusion.12References.13Techniques and Skills in the Learning of Spoken English as a Second Language摘 要： 众所周知，我们已进入信息化时代。而快速、高效地利用已有的信息来发展本国经济的重要性在世界绝大多数国家已达成共识,英语作为一种世界通用的语言,其重要性不言自明。我国已进行了20多年的改革开放,能够用英语交流已成为很多学生的渴望。然而在实际生活中,由于对口语,听力训练不够,一些学生音不准,口语不流利且听力太差,无法用英语进行交流。因此培养好学生的英语口语能力势在必行。本文对学生学习英语口语的重要性，以及学习口语所存在的问题加以分析,并为学生介绍了一些学习英语口语的技巧和方法。理论与实际相结合,以帮助于学生更好的学好英语口语。关键词：英语交流；口语练习；口语学习；口语策略； 口语技巧Abstract: It is well known that we have been in Information Age, and most countries agree that it is very important about how to make best use of information to develop their own economy. As a kind of international language, the importance of English is very clear. However, in daily life, because of lacking oral practicing, some students cant read correctly and fluently, they cant communicate with others in English. Improving students ability of English speaking is very necessary. This text analyzes the importance of oral English and some problems that will meet in oral learning, and introduce some techniques and ways of learning oral English to help students to learn oral English well. Key words: English communication; oral practice; spoken learning; oral English Strategies; oral learning skills. IThe Importance and Aim of Spoken English Learning 1.1 The Importance of Spoken English English is an important tool. At present, many students think it is very difficult to learn English. Maybe the time you spend on written English is much more than that of spoken English. Or you are not interested in speaking English, even you want to give it up. In fact, spoken English is a small branch of linguistic which requires suitable circumstances, but many people think their oral English is not good, because of poor language environment.In the past, English teaching in China put on stress on grammar, and paid little attention to students oral English, as a result, a lot of students couldnt communicate with others in English even after having been given English lessons for several years, recently, the whole nation is much more enthusiastic to English than before. As is well known, the education department of China has reformed outdated English teaching outline, and attached quite importance to spoken English, for English has become necessity to our social development. With the development of social economy and economic globalization, more and more people agree that communication with other countries is very important and necessary. Yet, English has become world language. So many countries emphasize spoken English and to some degree, fluent oral English will give you superiority when you are job-hunting.1.2 The Aim of Spoken English Can be Divided into Three Levels 1.2.1 Common Requirement of Oral EnglishStudents should communicate in English in the course of study. Setting a topic, let students talk about it, they should be asked to talk about the topic used in daily life with people in the countries that speak English. They should also require that they could be given a small free talk about the topic, which they are familiar with. They should have correct pronunciation and intonation, and they should use the basic talking strategies.1.2.2 Higher RequirementStudents should be able to have free conversation with people who are from the English speaking countries, and to command well the conversation strategies, and to express ones proposals、 ideas ,and to state fact、 an event or a reason and so on. Of course, they should express their thoughts clearly and their pronunciation and intonation should be right.1.2.3 The Highest RequirementFor some topics of special fields of study, the students should talk this kind of topics fluently and exactly. They should be able to summarize the long and difficult texts or speech in brief words, and to take part in the debate in the international meeting and in the experts communications. IIThe Analysis and Present Domestic and Foreign Situation of Spoken LearningSince China entered WTO, learning English has become more and more important for college students. It is very good chance for our country. China has to communicate with other counties and learn from them. In 2008, the Olympic games will be held in Beijing. Every Chinese should try his best to learn English, for every Chinese should know that. Its Chinese proud, China can show its strength and great confidence now. But in what way does China show its strength and great? Of course, communication! English is an international language, and oral English is the key point of language in communication. So, oral practicing is an urgent thing for everyone in China. English is useful for communicating information.Even among the people who received their higher education in China, we can see that they may be able to read and write well, but have limitations in their ability to speak English fluently and clearly. They lack practicing their speaking engaging, and fun contexts. We know Chinese people can learn to speak English well. For example, look at those who come to study in the USA they speak really well! So its possible! This philosophy of learning is what I call “learning by doing.” My many years of research as a learning theorist indicate that learners, young and old, cannot really appropriate information and own any new knowledge (in mathematics, sciences, technology, business, or in language arts) unless they are thoroughly engaged in hands-on activities that are real and personally meaningful to them.We learn a new language best well speaking it. However: not just speaking to ourselves! Language learners, who are interested in learning to speak the language, must have a native speaker who is listening to them, and responds to what they say in a meaningful and relevant way.In Chinese traditional teaching or study, teaching and learning all focus on grammar, they dont put stress on oral. China has to communicate with other countries, so, the notion must be changed into putting stress on spoken English. Just because of this old notion, China has lost a lot, everyone should try his best to change it.Wall Street English is known for its “English Corners” where you can pay to come to speak real English with real people so thats a good feature. I also find Wall Street English uses technology, I mean software. Although I havent tried, I do believe that using technology is important for “Learning by Doing.” If its right, it can contribute greatly to the spoken-language learning process.Nowadays, spoken English practicing is the question that everyone pays attention to in China. It is known that Chinese characters are very veiled. When they say something, they dont say directly, they are afraid to hurt other people for what they had said. They dont like losing face, because of that, they dont dare to open their mouths, thats the big problem for Chinese! Every Chinese who learns language wants to change this, he should do as Li Yang said in crazy English: “I should lose face!” this is the base of precutting oral English, so you should open your mouth to practice, and dont pay much attention to the rules of grammar. You can see some English films, listen to the English songs, and try to learn their speech Pronunciation and intonation. Of course, at first you should begin from vowels and consents, then phrases, sentence, paragraph and text. You should also practice them day-by-day, if you go on doing that, you will succeed at last!IIIThe Requirements and Workable Analysis of Spoken EnglishLearningThere are four basic skills in language learning, including speaking、listening、 reading and writing. These four parts cannot be isolated，they integrate with each other. Language learning is a hard work, but we must improve our English level. If you have good language gift, you will feel that how important reading is when you are speaking and doing more listening exercises. When you read more books, you can enlarge your vocabulary. You will learn other three skills if you practice more. If you are not good at learning, they will suggest that listening must begin from speaking. Through listening or communicating, you can practice your ability of oral English and speaking. Between listening and speaking, they are a unit, and they can improve themselves by each other. From speaking, at first, you must imitate correct tone. And then make a short general ideal or retell the contents of the material, at last you can use your own words to describe the contents of the material. For example, you have listened news about American launching a missile to attack on Iraq, you should tell some vocabulary and general idea. For example, you would say like this: last night American launched a missile attacking on Iraq. And no casualties have been reported yet. From oral speaking, you must know how to express this information. Combined with listening to the broadcast, I made a big progress by combining the extensive listening and listening. Speaking English fluency is every language learners wish. But many students are very shamed to speak, all of them know that speaking English well is based on losing face, just as teachers says: if someone lose her face at first, he will not lose his face at last. When you talk with someone and have kinds of exams, you should often try our best to learn the American or English to speak, using all kinds of medium tools, you would succeed. If you have enough confidence, you can talk with various kinds of people without feeling losing face. In my opinion, oral speaking is not only doing losing face, talking with other people, but also we must recite or do enough various kinds of exercises, you should combine these two together. At first, you recite a lot of articles, you will find it is very difficult when you talk with foreigners, Dont feel you are very useless why my oral English is so bad that even after reciting so many articles? Chatting room is also a good place to practice your oral, you will find that some people may be not have good pronunciation. Then you will find the importance of communication. Only through communication, you can speak good English only in communication; you can consolidate the articles you have recited. It is also a way of reciting article, but you must insist on reciting. Before you recite the article, you must read article as loudly as you can, as correctly as you can, so that you can improve your tone or speed, you can make some sentences, and try to retell short story using your own words. You must learn how to retell, at first, you must describe the contest and express its general idea with one or two sentences. And then, using the sentence of content changes into your own words. After a certain period, your oral English will become more fluency, if you come cross some difficult words, you can look at your content and remember it, you will also find the new words, write down these words and look up dictionary. Retelling is in one way to improve your oral English.Other people choose another skills to improve oral English, for example, to make students feel relax, they could be interested in practice spoken English. When practicing oral English , they should have enough content、significance, if they do like that, they will like speaking and want to practice. If you practice your oral English, you will find something related to your life and experience in dailylife. Encourage people to use their English to solve problems in dailylife. Invite some foreigners to take part in some activities, change the classroom into small social occasion. Encourage people to keep in touch with each other to make discuss into real content. People should practice oral English by their own words, dont worry about make mistakes, you should express ideas or talk with others in confidence. When you practice language, you should make sure language is worth communicating, let students learn something from practice. When we learn oral language, we should get involved in an oral communicative activity to do some writing or reading or listening in order to accomplish the task which the activity asks them to perform, just as Harmer points out,“there are cases where individual skills may be treated individually, the principle of integration is thought to be important.”Many people will ask: “what can I communicate if I dont find a partner”? Yes, this is the fact, but one approach is to communicate with yourself, that is just trying to make use of yourself, and your English level with yourself is the same, you just treat your English name as another one, and think out an English topic to communicate. At first, you can say anything as you like, the key point is paying attention to the feeling of oral prating, and you can make your dialogue more logical. And maybe one is speaking very exaggeratedly, that could make you feel unnatural and uncomfortable, you will fell very uncomfortable at first because of the influence of Chinese. If you are alone in classroom, you can express your feeling exaggeratedly, and then you can overcome this difficulty. What I want to say is working hard is more important than any kind of skills and methods, every language learner should insist on practicing, and this is the most important.3.1 The Key Problems That Students will Meet In China, more and more people are studying English. About 350 million people per year! But a lot of people still cannot speak English well. What do you think the key problem is?In order to learn how to speak, a person needs to practice speaking on a regular basis. Most Chinese English-learners do not practice speaking often enough. They have no good contexts for doing that. Learning to read and write can be helpful in the English language learning process, but it is not sufficient for learning to speak English. In addition, a person needs to practice listening to English speakers in order to learn how to speak. Finally, in order to speak well, people should practice listening to many different kinds of accents and pronunciations (e.g., American, British, or Australian; children, adults, or various professionals) and to different kinds of styles of speaking (street-speak, academic-speak, media-speak) and learn to respond and express themselves accordingly to fit with various contexts and situations.In communicating activity, some people have good ideas in their mind, when they want to express in oral. They cant express their opinion clearly. When student have a free talk, they can speak freely but when they are in some formal occasion, they will be not speak so fluently. All these problems may because by the following: some of them are not interested in oral English, maybe when they talk or express their opinion they feel nervous or they are not pay attention to practicing. How to solve these problems in oral English? First, we should train their oral communication. If we pay attention to encouraging students to practice. Let students want to practice their oral English, when we are training we can set up some scenes, group dialogues, tell stories, learn to sing a song and so on, use these variety methods to practice oral English. Continuously give students all kinds of chances to express, continuously give students to stimulate in new ways. To train students habit of expressing or the ability oral English. Second, correct mistakes in students oral English. At present, so many people pay attention to the ability of communication, however, they spend much time on English information to send and to communicate, when they practice their oral English, we should pay attention to every sentence, every word, if we find out some wrong in pronunciation, intonation, grammar, we shouldnt interrupt them. If you interrupt them, you will interrupt their chain of thought, effect their complete express, and some of them consider and worry about their sentence right or wrong and pay more attention to formal of language, others think about their grammar is bad to fear open mouth because of lack of confidence. At last they will lose their heart to express their opinions. However, when they practice oral English, we should encourage them to open their mouths. Of course, when they practice oral English they will have some problems, they should depend on themselves, they couldnt rely on others, they could try their best to express their ideas. Why is it so hard to get students to speak English fluently? I believe there may be several reasons: Most of the speaking activities are of the traditional types, such as reading the dialogue, reciting texts, doing translation, and the materials chosen for the students are non-authentic where students feel deadly bored instead of appreciating them and accepting them.Many teachers do not have idea about the role of speaking, nor do they know the importance of providing a natural circumstance of speaking. Some teachers only lay emphasis on accuracy without thinking of fluency, which makes students worry too much about their mistakes. Almost all-important examinations do not consist of an oral test, which causes teachers and students to neglect oral language. Therefore, in the first section of my assignment, I will introduce the current approach used in my situation in China. Then comes the second section in which I will show my understanding of effective teaching approaches by means of both reading some current language books and having the courses on language development and methodology in teaching a foreign language. In the third section, I am going to illustrate the practical steps I propose to take to make the teaching of oral language more effective, together with the procedure of a dialogue teaching. In the last section I will try to draw some conclusion from this discussion.3.2Some Strategies on Spoken Learning In order to learn how to speak, a person needs to practice speaking on a regular basis. Most Chinese English-learners do not practice speaking enough. They have no good contexts for doing that. Learning to read and write can be helpful in the English language learning process, but it is not sufficient for learning to enough if we only learn how to speak English. In addition, a person needs to practice listening to English speakers in order to learn how to speak. Finally, in order to speak really well, people must practice listening to many different kinds of accents and pronunciations (e.g., American, British, or Australian; children, adults, or various professionals) and to different kinds of styles of speaking (street-speak, academic-speak, media-speak) and learn to respond and express themselves accordingly to fit with various contexts and situations.Some people who think the major o