【英语论文】英语专业外教口语教学成效性研究（英文）.doc

Teaching Effect of Foreign Teachers Oral Classes for English Majors英语专业外教口语教学成效性研究Bibliography12Appendix I 13Appendix II15Appendix III171. Introduction  We study spoken English in order to make oral communications, so this order of importance of oral English study should be followed: Fluency, Accuracy, and Appropriateness. We can tell from the above that students have to pay more attention to practical communicating ability instead of only laying emphasis on the grammatical correctness. This is also what the foreign teachers always do in oral classes. They keep on reminding the English learners not to be afraid of making mistakes when speaking in a foreign language. Everyone makes mistakes. If a person dare not speak out what he wants to express, he will never find out the mistakes. Then he will not make any progress at all.  Practicing oral English with some partners together is a very effective method .Oral English class is a good place because students can exchange English study experience, widen their sight and improve interest in English guided by the foreign teacher. Foreign teachers not only ask the students to speak English in class, but also talk about or discuss some interesting events all over the world to inspire the students' interests. During this course, foreign teachers always try to force their students to think in English naturally .Anyway, thinking in English is a great way to improve the oral English of any English learner.We can tell from the above that oral English classes mean so much to the English learners especially the English majors. However, here exists a big problem. Even if most of the English departments arrange some oral classes for the English majors, the students' oral English level is still very low. That is to say, the classes did not give the effects as we expected .In this paper the researcher wants to find out the problems, the reasons of the problems and the approaches to solve the problems as well so as to make full use of the oral classes to improve English majors' oral English.2. Survey design2.1 Subjects In order to do this study well, the researcher divided the subject into two parts: students group and foreign teachers group. This arrangement means to get more specific information from different people involved in this study. The students group has 80 members in all. And the foreign teachers group has 5.2.1.1 Foreign teachers groupThis group is made up of 5 foreign teachers from Xiaogan University. Four of them are male teachers, one female. These teachers are from Canada, America and Australia. The average age of these teachers is 25 years old, 80% of them having no similar experience before they came to China. All of them had received the university education in their own country although not majored in English teaching. 2.1.2 English majors groupThis group is made up of the students from our English department. There are 80 persons in all involved in this study and 30 of them are freshmen, 30 of them are sophomores, 20 are senior students. The average age of these students is 20.5. And 75% of them are female students.2.2 InstrumentThere are two questionnaires in the study: one for the foreign teachers; the other for the students. (See Appendix I, Appendix II) Each of them consists of 20 items which aim to get some information about the foreign teachers classes. The questions focus on oral English classes including many different aspects. The respondents are required to tick off one choice from the four choices given.Before I made the questionnaire, I had read four types of the related material such as the designing of questionnaire, giving out process, as well as the analysis of the results. The questions involved focus on the oral English classes including different aspects. Some of them came from the conclusion of several English learners discussion and some from the professors suggestion.These questions have close relationship with the Xiaogan Universitys oral English classes. It is more reasonable because the subjects are also from this university, which made every part of the study relate with each other well. I also did a pre-survey before I gave out the questionnaires formally.2.3 Data collection In order to make sure the questionnaire is suitable for all of the students, I emailed to 10 English majors in Xiaogan University including 3 freshmen, 4 sophomores and 3 seniors. All these students said there was no problem for them to answer the questions.   I also emailed to one of my foreign friends one copy of foreign teachers' questionnaire .He pointed out some mistakes and corrected them.  After that, I started to give out questionnaires. For the students' part, I copied 95 pieces of paper and gave them to the foreign teachers in our school .They promised to do me the favor to ask their students to answer the questions. It took a week for me to get the respondents. But I got back only 86 copies, with 6 answered dissatisfied. So I only use the rest 80 copies to get the results. For the teachers part, I emailed to the five foreign teachers in our school .All of them answered the questionnaire very carefully. It only took me 3 days to get back the feedbacks. All of these questionnaires were answered as expected.3. Results and analysisResults of the students questionnaire are reflected in Appendix III.As to the foreign teachers' questionnaire, I didn't make a table to show the results because there are only five teachers available in our university. The main results are shown below.Three of them do not have such teaching experience before.All of them don't like to use the text book our department offered in class because they said the text book is not so useful.All of them think that the students' English is not as good as they supposed to be .Sometimes the students can not even understand what they are talking about in class. This made the lesson-preparation-step very difficult.Four of the foreign teachers are basically satisfied with the students' attendance to class. They are also satisfied with their schedule. They said they don't have a lot of trouble in their daily life in China.3.1 Problems In general, the survey results show the present situation is satisfactory. However, 4 major problems have arisen from the survey. Problem 1: Lack of classroom interactions. This problem can be reflected in question No. 15 Are there a lot of interactions in oral classes? (A a lot B not many C a few D very few) The statistics of this question are shown in figure 1. Figure 1: classroom interactionA 11.25%B 45%C 32.5%D 11.25%This figure shows that 88.75% of the English majors do not think there are enough interactions in class. Oral English class is one kind of special class to the students in some way. The point is that students expect to improve their spoken English during the period of taking class. However, there are not enough interactions in our foreign teachers' classes as expected. This means students can't communicate with their foreign teachers in class, let alone communicate with each other.Problem 2: Passive learning pattern of students. This is shown in question No.13: Are you active in the activities? (A very active B active C not active D no interest)The statistics of this question are shown in figure2. Figure 2: classroom activityWe can tell from the figure 2 that most of the students don't think they are so active in class. This is a big problem for both the foreign teachers and the English majors. On one hand, teachers are always dissatisfied with the inactive students. They might lose heart in teaching day after day since their students are not active in class. On the other hand, students will feel very bored if they do not put themselves into this class. Since so many students are not active, others will lose the enthusiasm as well, followed by the bad effect of oral classes.Problem 3: High amount of teacher talk in class. Please look at question No 16: Does the teacher speak more English than students? (A much more than B more than C less than D much less than) The statistics of this question are shown in figure 3.Figure 3: teacher talk in classThe figure above shows us that 50 percent of the students think the foreign teachers speak English more than students in class. This is actually against the main aim of this oral class. Our aim of taking oral classes is to improve the level of students' spoken English. Even though most of the English majors have studied English for 7 or more years, they haven't really spoken the second language out .But the teachers still speak more English than students even in this special class. This problem deserves to get everyones attention. We should try to find out the causes of this serious problem. Otherwise, the students will always treat the oral class as one kind of special listening class instead.Problem 4: Learning attitude problem. This problem is a serious one for both students and teachers. We can tell from the question 19: Are you satisfied with your own studying attitude in oral classes? (A very satisfied B satisfied C basically satisfied D unsatisfied) The statistics of this question are shown in figure 4Figure 4: students learning attitudeThis figure shows 46.25 percent of the answers are not satisfied with their own studying attitude in oral class at all, which is a big surprise for both our English majors and the teachers. Such a great number of students are not even satisfied with their own attitude, no wonder the foreign teachers got so disappointed. What is worse, as I researched, all of the foreign teachers are affected greatly by the studentsattitude. This problem deserves to be paid most attention to because attitude is a key point. If we can help students to have a good studying attitude, other problems will be solved easily.3.2 Analysis of the problemsFirstly, the most serious problem is the attitude of both students and foreign teachers.We can analyze this by comparing the two subject groups. Question for foreign teachers: Does students studying attitude affect your own teaching attitude a lot? (A a lot B not much C some D none)Question for English majors: Does oral classes quality affect your studying attitude a lot? (A a lot B some C very little D none)The results are given in figure 5 to show the differences of similar questions between students and foreign teachers.Figure 5: Comparison of students and teachers attitudes Most of these teachers care a lot about the students' studying attitude in oral class because they think students' attitude affect their teaching attitude directly. All of the teachers I interviewed told me that when they first came to Xiaogan University, they decided to teach very well. But after a few days, they changed their mind because of the students attitude in class. They said they felt losing heart greatly. They supposed the students would be very enthusiastic but they are not. This made them very upset for a while. Then after that, they started to get used to the “lazy students”. This is completely opposite to the students opinion. The students seem not to care so much about the quality of the foreign teachers classes. Most of them do not think this stuff could affect their studying attitude. But here exist a horrible situation, which is most of the students are not satisfied with their own studying attitude toward this course, as we mentioned above. This has affected the whole teaching and learning process greatly.Here it is necessary to analyze the reasons of this problem. When I was giving an interview to a senior student in our department, she seemed exited because she wanted to talk to me something about our oral classes, especially the seniors foreign teachers class. I got that this is the first year of our department to give seniors oral classes. They used to give students oral or writing English classes until they are juniors. She said the attitude of having foreign teachers classes changes as time goes. Seniors care more about their future or higher education after they graduate from this university. Few people pay attention to the classes. Since foreign teachers classes are easy to pass at the final examination, they dont have to worry about going to classes so seriously. They would rather save more time to get ready for the interviews or other exams. This senior said almost all of her classmates do not want to take the oral class at all. They do not really care about taking these classes. When I asked her whether she knew the importance of spoken English or not, she nodded. She said it is too late to realize this when they are already seniors. I also asked the similar questions to some freshmen and sophomores, they said they thought the foreign teachers classes are different from other classes. They feel relaxed in these special classes because the teacher is not as strict as Chinese professors. The main problem of them is that they ignored the main task of this course while they were enjoying the interesting teachers character.Secondly, as we mentioned in 3.1, most of the foreign teachers don't have such teaching experience before. They don't know much about Chinese students English level as well, which might cause great trouble when they prepare the lessons. If they don't try to learn about the Chinese studentsbasic situation or something about the oral classes in Chinas colleges, it will be very difficult for them to prepare or give good lessons as our wish. Please look at the table 1:Table 1: Statistics of classroom interactions and teacher talkHigh amountMedium amountLow amountVery low amountTeacher and student interactions11.25%45%32.5%11.25%Teacher talk28.75%50%18.75%2.5%Most of the English majors think that the amount of interactions between foreign teachers and students is low. And 78.75% of students think the foreign teachers talk much more than themselves in oral classes.Oral English class aims to help the students to practice their spoken English. However, the teachers speak more English in class than the students. This has close relationship with the lack of interactions, too. If there are not enough interactions in class, most of the students might stay calm in the classroom without giving responses to the teachers questions, and then the teachers will have no choice but talk a lot by himself in order to get the lesson moved on. This leads to the fact that teachers speak more in class than students. Oral class is different from listening class. We arrange oral class and invite foreign teachers to teach for the purpose that the students can speak out the second language as the teacher does instead of just listenin