A Survey to Oral-English Teaching in Rural Junior Middle Schools1
黄冈师范学院
本科生毕业论文
论文题目：A Survey to Oral-English Teaching in Rural
Junior Middle Schools
2011年4月20日
郑重声明
本人的毕业论文（设计）是在指导教师张纪英的指导下独立撰写完成的。毕业论文（设计）没有剽窃、抄袭、造假等违反学术道德、学术规范的侵权行为，本人愿意承担由此产生的各种后果，甚至法律责任；并可以通过
网络接受公众的质疑。
特此郑重声明。
毕业论文作者：
2011年4 月20 日
黄冈师范学院外国语学院本科毕业论文（设计）开题报告
论文题目 A Survey to Oral-English Teaching in Rural Middle Schools
2010年12月
Abstract
With the globalization of the world economy and frequent international communication, English has become an international language and a very important tool in communication. Oral-English teaching and the training of speaking ability of English draw the attention of experts and teachers．In 2003, The New Curriculum Standards for Common Junior Middle Schools states clearly that the teachers must cultivate the ju nior middle school students’speaking abilities: exchanging information, bringing out questions and expressing their own opinions and suggestions on their familiar topics in their daily life. However, oral English teaching in rural junior middle schools has often been neglected．The main reasons for this are that rural middle schools have no requires for students’ English speaking ability. Meanwhile, the students’poor foundation of English and timidness in character prevent students from speaking English．In addition to this，the quality of English teachers is another problem. All this leads to the current situation in rural junior middle schools and poor communicative competence of the students．
As to the current situation of rural students, this paper starts with the problems of the rural oral English teaching in common junior middle schools according to the findings of linguists and the teaching experience in a rural middle school of the author．Efforts have been made to analyze various causes that have hindered oral English teaching and to explore some possible strategies from the aspect of the classroom teaching. Through the review of the traditional grammar-translation teaching approach, the thesis tries to present the necessity of transition of the Task-Based Language Teaching (TBLT) which is available to junior English classroom teaching approaches. Language experts and foreign language educators tend to agree that TBLT in the classroom is very important. Hence the purpose of this thesis is to survey the principles of TBLT and to explore the effective ways of implementing those principles in junior oral English teaching.
Key words: oral-English teaching; rural junior schools; Task-Based Language Teaching
摘要
随着世界经济全球化，各国人民之间的交往空前频繁，英语已成为一种国际性的语言，是国际交流十分重要的交际工具，口语教学、口语能力已备受关注。我国2003年《普通中学新英语课程标准》对初中学生的口语能力还作了明确的规定“……能就日常生活中的各种话题与他人交换信息并陈述自己的意见”，然而目前农村普通中学英语教学忽视了口语能力的训练，农村中学生的英语口语能力相较于城市学生要薄弱的多。其原因是农村学校对学生口语能力没做要求，再加上农村学生英语基础较差，性格内向，羞于启齿，农村教师自身素质不高，农村教学环境差、教学设备不全，因此农村中学英语口语能力的培养存在很大的问题，学生的口语交际能力不尽人意。
根据农村学生的现状，本文在语言学家的研究成果上，根据本人曾在农村中学进行教育实习的教学经验，分析了农村普通初中英语口语教学的现状及存在的问题，且从课堂教学方面提出了提高学生口语能力的教学策略。多年来，任务型教学已在外语教学实践中产生了重大影响，语言学家和外语教学研究者都一致认为在课堂上采用任务型教学法极为必要。本文对传统的英语教学法进行梳理和对比，通过问卷调查及实例分析的方式，较系统的阐述了任务型教学法在初中英语口语教学中运用的可实施性及具体的实施过程，希望从理论和实践两方面为提高初中英语教学质量，促进任务型语言教学的实施提供必要的理论支撑。
关键词：农村初中；英语口语教学；任务型教学法
Contents
Introduction (1)
I. The current situation of oral-English teaching in middle schools (2)
1.1 Speaking requirements in China’s middle schools (2)
1.2 The poor speaking ability of rural junior middle school students (3)
Ⅱ. The reasons leading to the poor ability of speaking English for the rural junior middle school students (4)
2.1 The reasons related to English teachers (4)
2.1.1 The shortage of English teachers in rural areas (5)
2.1.2 Low academic quality of English teachers (5)
2.2 The reasons related to the rural students (6)
2.2.1 Lack of motivation (6)
2.2.2Poor foundation (7)
2.2.3Personalities of rural students (7)
2.3 The environment of learning and teaching English in rural middle
schools (8)
Ⅲ. The possible solutions to those problems (8)
3.1 The implementation of oral-English teaching in rural middle schools (9)
3.1.1 Training the teachers (9)
3.1.2Offering advanced teaching facilities (9)
3.2 The application of Task-Based Teaching in oral-English teaching (10)
3.2.1What is Task-Based Language Teaching (10)
3.2.2How to integrate Task-Based Teaching in speaking class (11)
Conclusion (12)
Bibliography (14)
Introduction
Jeperson(London，1904)，a famous linguist once said：“Language is the connection of souls.” That is to say, language is the means by which people communicate with each other. One learns the language in order to express one’s thoughts and feelings, to seek and give information, to establish social relations，to promote friendship and understanding, etc. One’s communicative competence, especially the speaking ability is getting more and more important nowadays. This then requires the language learners develop their speaking ability of this language. In our country, English teaching has been implemented for many years and speaking has been included in the National Curriculum Standards for English teaching in schools for the past twenty years. However, in reality, our students still have many difficulties in speaking English in daily communications, though they may have grasped the linguistic language and the grammar very well. Also, they hardly have the time and the opportunities to communicate with each other in English both at and after class, which results in students’poor speaking abilities. And this is more often to see in rural middle schools. In rural areas, both teachers and students think it is neither realistic nor necessary to teach or learn speaking. English teachers have paid all their attention to students’reading and writing skills, while have neglected speaking skills. And the most important reason for it is that they think the purpose of teaching English is to make the students pass the exams．So gradually many school students, especially those in the countryside are located with a whole set of grammar rules and crammed with various meanings and uses of a word，but have few chances to get their English employed communicatively. As a result，students get bored and soon forget most of the irrelevant meaning and uses, which have overfilled their heads. Worst of all, their ability to speak English is very poor. They become horribly "deaf" and "dumb" in communication after three years of English study like that. Therefore，how to develop students’ speaking ability has become a great challenge to our teachers．
What the author intends to focus on in this paper is why English teaching in rural junior middle schools is not effective to develop the students’ speaking ability and how to develop the ability of oral communication of junior middle school students in rural areas. The paper provides a possible way from the aspect of the classroom teaching in rural settings-----the
Task-Based Language Teaching (TBLT) mode of oral English and it is also The New English Curriculum (2001) stresses in teaching English, to enhance the students’ speaking ability. The author hopes that it will attract more attention of people from all the fields especially from the government officials to rural middle schools.
The paper is divided into three chapters．Chapter One deals with the brief history and development of oral English teaching at home and abroad and the development of oral English teaching in common junior middle schools．In Chapter Two，the current situation of oral English teaching in rural junior middle schools is stated according to rural students, rural English teachers and the learning and teaching environment. In Chapter Three, some strategies are made from the aspect of the classroom teaching in rural junior middle schools，that is, to use the task-based language teaching mode of oral English. Meanwhile, some details are shown to demonstrate how the mode can be used in the classroom teaching.
I. The current situation of oral-English teaching in middle schools
In the year of 2001，Ministry of Education promulgated the New National Criterion for English Course which advocates task-based approach in EFL teaching of the middle school, and advocates experiencing, practicing, participating, communicating and cooperating. So that the students can obtain a sense of success by achieving a goal．Besides，it presents new requirements for English teaching in our country．In the following text, the author will first describe speaking requirements in New Standard for English Curriculum, and then describe problems in rural junior middle school classrooms.
1.1 Speaking requirements in China’s Middle School
According to New Standard for English Curriculum，English should be taught from Grade Three．It describes nine levels of speaking ability from primary school to senior middle school．For students wanting to move to junior middle school，they should meet the level II requirements．For students wanting to move to senior middle school，they should meet the level V requirements. Let’s read what speaking requirements are in China’s junior middle school．
Speaking requirements in junior middle school (Level V)
1．Being able to offer information of simple topics；express simple opinion and suggestion and take part in discussion．
2．Being able to communicate with others and finish the tasks altogether．
3．Being able to have appropriate self-correction when expressing．
4．Being able to ask for information and help effectively．
5．Being able to make up a dialogue according to the topic．
6．Being able to perform a short play in English．
7．Being able to have clear pronunciation and intonation during the speaking activities．1.2 The poor speaking ability situation of rural junior middle school students
Before moving to discuss this point, there is something must be mentioned about the author of this paper. The author herself is from the countryside and had received her primary and secondary education in rural schools which gives her a really true look into the students’ psychological problems in learning English. And, being an English teacher in Lukou Middle School in Huangzhou District which is located in the countryside for three months during the internship last year, the author got further understanding about the current English teaching situation of rural junior middle schools. According to her internship experience, the author have observed her oral English classroom for many times, and she finds that there are many problems occurring in rural junior middle school oral classroom and students there have more difficulties in speaking English than those city ones, which are:
①Learners desire to express themselves, but when it comes to a certain topic, idea or
opinion, they can speak few sentences while they have more words in Chinese;
②Learners often give out stumbling, hesitating speech;
③Teachers complain students are not willing to cooperate with each other and with their
teachers during communication activities, s ometimes they won’t say anything;
④Learners who are active in character, or who have a good basic knowledge are willing
to speak, while those who are not good at English, dare not to speak and practice less in class;
⑤Learners show great interests in certain communication tasks and they are always
ready to speak at this time, but in some other occasions they have few words;
⑥Learners can get good marks in translating sentences but may not do well in
communication activities;
⑦Learners express their opinions through translating what they think in Chinese into
target language, which results in many pragmatic mistakes during communication;
⑧Learners hardly communicate with each other and with their teachers in English
because they don’t find the atmosphere of speaking English.
As we all know, most of the present rural middle schools still adopt or partly adopt the traditional grammar-translation teaching approach. This approach has many deficiencies that leads to the problems happening in oral classroom. The traditional oral classroom pays too much attention to language forms and grammatical rules, however, little attention to language abilities and communicative competence. Learners in such a direction study grammatical rules and vocabulary mechanically, whereas they cannot correctly apply what they have learned to the real communicative situations. And most of the vocabularies they have learned in class have no way of using in practice. So, gradually, they become timidder in speaking English at any time. And relatively, their ability of speaking English is getting poorer and poorer.
Ⅱ. The reasons leading to the poor ability of speaking English for the rural junior middle school students
For years, oral English teaching in China, especially in middle school, has long been stressed, but it is still a weak link in English teaching. Most of rural junior middle school students can hardly speak a simple sentence fluently. According to the findings of some scholars and the investigation and interviews the author have done to her students during the internship, she has found out that the main reasons lie in the teaching methods that teachers adopt, the students themselves and the rural environments they set in. And these reasons will be discussed and analyzed respectively in this chapter.
2.1 The reasons related to English teachers
In rural areas the main source of learning English for students depends on their English teachers and the textbook. The students touch English almost under the English teachers’guidance and mainly depending on the teacher’s behavior. Therefore, in some degree the
teachers’quality equals the students’English level and the English teachers control the students’ English learning. The responsibility and task of English teachers in rural areas are much heavier than those in the city. The low English speaking ability of rural junior middle school students are partly due to their English teachers’problems---shortage of English teachers, low academic level of English teachers and inappropriate teaching methods.
2.1.1 The shortage of English teachers in rural areas
The shortage of English teachers is a big problem in rural areas. In our country, people with a relatively good command of English can easily find jobs in almost every enterprise because of the sudden increase of need for English talents that is partly due to the open-door policy and consequently China’s wider and deeper communication with western countries. However, in rural areas, the living and working conditions are much poorer than those urban areas, so most of English talents are unwilling to go to work in rural areas as English teachers. For another, the average material rewards to rural English teachers also reduce the appeal of English teaching in rural areas to the fullest extent. Due to the humble material rewards, rural English teachers suffer from the very low social status. Therefore, the lack of English teachers in rural middle schools is a big problem. For example, in the author’s apprentice school--- Lukou Middle School in Huangzhou District, there are 11 classes in whole, but only 7 English teachers are on the job. Some teachers teach 2 classes with 70 students every class. Some English teachers are not English majors, but because of shortage of English they had been trained or forced to teach English. The author’s supervisor teacher in this school once majored in art during her university learning.
2.1.2 Low academic quality of rural English teachers
The shortage of English teachers brings the problem of low quality of English teachers in rural middle schools. The low quality of English teachers of rural middle schools lies in low academic level, poor linguistic and teaching ability of teachers, and rare chances of further study.
In rural areas, the low academic level of English teachers shows seriously. According to one investigation to Qichun County, only 8.2% of junior English teachers first graduated from four-year undergraduate normal universities and majored in English. And these teachers are now going to retire at once. In Lukou Middle School where I apprenticed last year, there are
seven English teachers, only two of them first graduated from four years normal universities; three from three-year professional college of our school; and two even self-educated themselves of English. The low academic level of English teachers consequently results in the poor linguistic knowledge and poor traditional grammar-focused English teaching method for students in rural schools, which largely influenced the students’English learning especially their speaking ability. For instance, students in the author’s class during her internship in Lukou Middle School, storing very small amount of English words and pronouncing rather poorly make them dare not to speak out their opinions in class, because they don’t want to be laughed by me and their classmates, though they can get pretty high marks in the exams each time.
2.2 The reasons related to the rural students
English teaching is by no means the job exclusively related to English teachers, but to some larger extent, the students-focus job. Students themselves are more responsible for their poor performance in speaking English. In rural schools, the oral-English learning has been overlooked by rural students severely for many reasons. Among them, lack of motivation, poor foundation and personalities of rural students are the top three.
2.2.1 Lack of motivation
Generally, there is lack of a clear and correct purpose of learning English for rural students. Since for students in rural areas, most of them don’t have the desire of receiving education, not to mention oral-English learning. This is because their parents have no much anticipation for their performance in study. They are sent into schools only to kill the time or to wait to grow up, and then take over their parents’ plow when they are old enough. If they don’t want to work in the fields but want to “go out”from their undeveloped, poor countryside to have a bright and beautiful future, a large mount of them will choose to work as immigrants in the developed east and south areas. The author once interviewed her students during her internship on “what is your dream when you grow up? And how long will they stay at school?’’ 50% of them said they would drop out of school to take a humble job in the city when they finish their junior school time. Another 40% would help their poor parents with farm work and might stop their education at anytime. Only a very small mount of them dreamt of entering universities in order to get a decent job. Therefore, they don’t think much
of their study and show their reluctance to learning. Besides, students in rural areas take it for granted that it’s useless of learning English, not to mention improving their oral-English because many teachers won’t try their best to stir students’ interests in speaking English, they just pour the dull theorical knowledge into the brains of students. Then students lose their interest in English step by step without strong motivation.
2.2.2 Poor foundation
As we know, English teaching has been reemphasized and taught at the primary schools from grade three in the city. However, most of primary schools in the rural areas have not set up English course. Maybe, several schools indeed set up English course to catch up with the trend in the city, but actually, it is totally overlooked by other teachers. In rural schools, it’s not hard to see a phenomenon that English course is usually took its place by some other teachers like the math teachers or the Chinese teachers. Thus, rural students lost the chance of accessing English which result in the poor foundation of English knowledge for rural junior middle school students. And thus the poor and limited English foundation of the students directly prevents them from the output of English. Taking the Junior Two class I taught in Lukou Middle School for instance, there are 66 students altogether, in my first class quiz, 8 students can not write the word “student”correctly; 50 students cannot pronounce 48 phonemes completely and correctly. Only a few can express them in simple English. During the author’s interview to some students after class, she found more than 80% students want to speak English, but they can do nothing, they don’t know what to say and how to say since their English foundation is so poor.
2.2.3 Personalities of rural students
We know that language is used to communicate with others, since one’s speaking ability has much relation to his or her characters or personalities. Krashen(1981) pointed out that person’s personality had great influence on learning foreign or second language. Confidence and enthusiasm are critical factors in oral language development. An extroverted student would actively perform in class and contact with other English speakers. Thus they can have more chances to practice oral English. On the contrary, the introverted nature students would lose many opportunities to use the language and their introverted nature has become the obstacle for them to acquire target language.
Most of students growing up in the remote undeveloped countryside are usually introverted, simple-hearted and timid in communication compared with students in the city. Especially when they speak English, they always feel nervous, unconfident and inhabitable. So they cannot actively take part in oral English class, and they become tongue-tied and intend to keep silent. Just as John Rosenwald ever said: “Chinese students’personality is introverted and bashful. When I ask them questions, the students always lower their head in a silent way and class is deadly still.”(戴军熔, 1999)
2.3 The environment of learning and teaching English in rural middle schools
Language environment has great influence on the improvement of speaking ability. Chinese people learn English as a second language, and English is taught in a non-English environment, in which the main medium of the language is through written form, and therefore students learn it passively without adequate practice using. Moreover, the current education system pays more attention to students’ marks but less to their oral output. In rural schools, teachers and students even think it is not necessary or waste of time to foster speaking ability.
As for society environments for rural English teaching, the national policies for developing English level and some advanced teaching equipments can hardly get touch to the far remote countryside schools. Moreover, the financial condition of rural students whose parents are mostly poor farmers is not good enough to afford the extra high fees of improving their spoken English. So, the only medium that rural students touch English is in the classroom taught by the low quality-English teachers. In a word, the environment of learning and teaching in rural junior middle schools awfully hinders the rural students’ oral- English improving.
Ⅲ. The possible solutions to those problems
Since we have discussed in the previous chapter the main problems of oral English teaching in rural junior middle schools, this chapter will find the possible solutions or strategies to meet those problems for oral English. Obviously, English teaching in our country has a long way to go to meet the requirements although great achievements have been made
these decades，especially in terms of the teaching of speaking, both teachers and students seem incapable of action for it, little progress has been made in it these decades especially in rural middle schools. How to make up for the deficiencies, and which is the best approach to meet the needs and conditions of rural students so as to improve their competence in oral English communication?
3.1 The implementation of oral-English teaching in rural middle schools
Recent years, oral-English teaching has been heavily emphasized by the nation in urban schools and it indeed has made great progress. But in rural schools, oral-English teaching is still a big problem needed to be solved. To solve the problem of the rural schools, our nation should do something to help the English teachers with their academic improvement and to the environment of the rural school students.
3.1.1 Training the teachers
From the discussion we held in the previous chapter, the author figure out that English teachers play a very important role in helping improving students’ oral English learning. As to the shortage of English teachers for rural schools and the low quality of rural English teachers, the government should put forward more privileges to rural schools and teachers financially and academically. The author think that rewarding teachers who are willing to work in the rural areas with much money and some other awards (which is called “资教” in Chinese) is a good way to attract teachers to rural schools. And as to the low academic quality of rural English teachers, the related authorities should provide them with more academic training and future study. The policy “training the rural teachers in local normal universities and sanding normal graduating students to teach in the rural schools”(which is called“国培计划”in Chinese put forward in 2010) is an efficient way of solving the above problem. The author herself was an exchange graduating student teaching English for three months in Lukou Middle School last year. The performed very well in that school and learned many teaching experience during that time. And she thinks this policy is good for both the rural teachers and the graduating students.
3.1.2 Offering advanced teaching facilities
In the remote rural schools, students learn English only from their teachers with chalks and blackboard that is so boring and in accessible to the real English context. They show no
interests in English learning, not to mention the oral communication. Accordingly, multi-media popularized in urban schools is pretty good and useful to help teachers with their teaching in class. And this is the job of the government to make it a reality. Of cause there are many other advanced teaching facilities are also very good to help teaching.
3.2 The application of Task-Based Teaching in oral-English teaching
We all know that the teaching method or approach play a crucial role in teaching a language. As the development of our country, some useful and modern pedagogies of English teaching have been applied in the city which helps both teachers and students a lot in English learning and oral improving these decades. In rural schools, however, English teachers still use the traditional grammar-focus teaching approach in English teaching which has little help on students’ oral ability. Through the author’s learning and teaching experience, she thinks task-based language teaching approach may be an effective way to teach speaking in rural junior middle schools. With the implementation of the Educational Reform in China, the curriculum and teaching approaches have also changed a lot to meet the need of foreign language teaching reform. The new English Curriculum (2001) stresses Task-based Language Teaching shall be one of the main learning approaches for the Chinese students to study English in the English classes. The following chapter is going to discuss about two main questions: what is task-based teaching and how to integrate it into oral English teaching class.
3.2.1 What is Task-Based Language Teaching
Task-Based Language Teaching (TBLT) approach has been discussed and advocated throughout the country by EFL teachers since the publication of the new English Curriculum Standards (Ministry of Education, PRC, July 2001). It is a new pattern of the Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) in development. As a new shape of CLT, TBLT is the extension of CLT but not its substitution. It transforms the basic concept of language application into practical classroom teaching approach. Its rational dates back to the cognitive psychology that has had profound effect on basic education. It lays more emphases during the teaching process on students’ subject position and the utilization of the real word situations．It tries hard to be humanistic, student-centered and make a point of communication．All these characteristics of TBLT distinguish itself remarkably from the traditional language teaching. Before we discuss how to integrate TBLT in oral English teaching, we firstly should take up a