Speaking Teaching in the Middle School

Teaching Speaking in Rural Middle Schools Chen Hua ABSTRACT: This paper mainly deals with the problems of speaking classes in rural middle schools. First, it mentions the speaking problems existing in those poor areas in China. After some analysis of some of the causes, the paper turns to its main purpose and tries to present several ways and procedures with some examples and certain survey. The main part of the paper discusses several ways and procedures concerning how to improve rural middle school students’ spoken English. At the very beginning, the students' confidence must be built up. Meanwhile, the teacher should realize the importance of teaching speaking and also try to find some new and effective ways to train the students to speak well. Specific methods are also presented in the paper. KEY WORDS: Teaching Speaking Middle School Rural Areas Methods 教学谈话在乡下的中学 摘要：这张纸主要地处理 在乡下的中学中说 班级 班级管理量化考核细则初中班级管理量化细则班级心理健康教育计划班级建设班级德育计划 的问 题 快递公司问题件快递公司问题件货款处理关于圆的周长面积重点题型关于解方程组的题及答案关于南海问题 。 首先，它提到那说问题在中国的那些贫穷的存在。 在一些因素的一些 分析 定性数据统计分析pdf销售业绩分析模板建筑结构震害分析销售进度分析表京东商城竞争战略分析 之後，对它的主要部份的纸旋转企图而且试着去用～呈现一些方法和程序一些例子和某调查。 纸的主要部份关于该如何改良乡下的中学学生口语的英国语讨论一些方法和程序。 在真正的开始，学生的信心一定被建立。同时，老师应该了解教说的重要以及试着去找一些新的和有效的方法训练学生说得好。 特效药方法在纸中也被呈现。 关键词：教学谈话 农村中学 方法 “Excuse me, my speaking is poor.” ---- We often hear such kind of remark from the students coming from the rural areas. With the development of society, people begin to pay more and more attention to English speaking, especially to teaching objectives. However, speaking English may be a great problem to the students and even to those students who are good at reading, writing and grammar in rural middle schools in China. The students find the most difficult thing in English study is to speak English, so they seldom try to speak it. Some students always make a lot of mistakes if they have to speak English, so as to make the listeners confused. I think the problem results mostly from the lack of strict training. The teaching method rather than the students should be largely blamed for. Some teachers in the rural areas think that since the students can’t follow what they hear, and their speaking incapability doesn’t affect their marks in the exams, it is unnecessary to force them to speak English as it will slow down the speed of teaching. Obviously, spoken English and written English are related closely. Just laying more importance on one side than on the other will definitely affect the teaching quality and the improvement of the students’ English level. Speaking is very important in English study and in training the students’ ability to use English. Even if a student may be good at listening and understanding, it doesn't follow that he will speak well. “A discriminating ear does not always produce a fluent tongue.” (Geoffrey, 1980) There has to be training on the productive skill of speech as well. It is particularly important to the students in the rural areas. So it is the time to solve the speaking problem in those areas so as to improve the teaching and learning levels. Only in this way can the students make great achievement in their near future. This article tries to analyze some causes concerned with the problem mentioned above and present some ways to solve these problems. Encourage the Students to Speak English. As some students may cherish such kind of concept that it is unreachable to exchange ideas and learning experiences in English among middle school students, they cannot do but lament over their insignificance before the vast ocean. Apart from this kind of awe mood, there may exist another type of disposition, that, in their viewpoint, speaking English is not so casual as speaking Chinese as they may have difficulties in thinking and expressing their ideas in English. They are afraid of being sneered by others when speaking bluntly or making mistakes. So it is up to the teacher to help them to build up their confidence in dealing with all these difficulties. The teacher should encourage them to open their mouth boldly to speak without fearing whether they will make mistakes or not. He must give the students such impression that it is normal and also permitted to make mistakes in speaking English as we Chinese often make language mistakes in speaking our mother tongue. Such a simple reasoning is easy to arrive at, but many students in rural schools fail to understand it clearly. We make mistakes because we are human beings and learners; otherwise, we are either too wise or super. Teachers must make all this clear to the students. Only with great self-confidence do the students try to speak and gradually improve their spoken English. Teachers’ Awareness and Creativity Teachers must be well conscious that the guiding principles of English teaching is to meet the need of our county’s economic development, to improve the students’ ability to use the English language, and to prepare students for their future jobs in which English is necessary. However, sometimes the students cannot follow the teachers in English class, and they are not willing to speak in English, either. As a result, the teachers must be aware of their duties and be responsible to their students. A good and qualified teacher must be patient, selfless and devoted to his career, making efforts to encourage the students to speak English and to practice speaking among students. This may have great influence on the students. Here is a good sample: A Middle School in Gaochun has taken this method for two months. The result is very satisfactory. All the students, no matter what grade they are in are encouraged to speak English at any time at school. Prepared presents are given to those who do well during this activity (who speak most actively). Those who forget speaking English may be punished by telling a joke or story in English or sing an English song. All the English teachers also joined in the speaking program and talk in English with each other. Most of the students are motivated and very active. They went to school earlier than ever. If you go to the school, you will hear English almost everywhere: in the classroom, in the playground and even on the way. In order to make the students not only dare to speak, but also speak well. The teachers often spend a lot of time talking with them, helping them if necessary. They also play the part of correcting mistakes in grammar or pronunciation. The teachers also encourage the students to speak after the tapes. In the meantime, they also try to speak Standard English. The students of different grades are also taken out for picnic once respectively during this period. The beautiful nature gives students great inspiration. Now and then they ask their teachers how to say some things they see. Everyone can imagine how interesting and helpful such kind of activity is. Table 1 The percentage of the students approved Criteria Very Good Good Just So So Bad Percentage 82.5% 8% 6.5% 3% Table 2 Students’ attitude towards the program Advantages Disadvantages 1. Improve speaking, listening 1. Somewhat difficult And pronunciation 2. Make a lot of mistakes 2. Build up self-confidence 3. Time-consuming 3. Interesting and helpful 4. Language limitation 4. More effective than the old ways 5. A little nervous 5. Helpful for writing and reading From these two forms, we can see clearly that this experiment is quite successful in general. Undoubtedly, it is really a good way to improve the students’ spoken English, especially in the rural places. The result is obvious and quick as well. If this method can be taken seriously and in the meantime, some difficulties can be dealt with properly. This method should be promoted and widely adopted. Start from Listening and Imitation It has been pointed out earlier that “there is much in common between the receptive skills of listening and the productive skills of speaking” (Geoffrey Broughton, 1980). Listening and speaking are connected closely with each other. As we all know, the first step that the infant learning to speak begins with listening to what others say and then imitating. English learners must follow the rule step by step: from the simple to the complex, and from phrases to sentences and then to paragraphs. Only when they have understood the flow of the speech do they know what to say and then how to say something in English. Thus the students are willing to speak, and they are stimulated to speak naturally. In the teaching process, the teacher should give the students chances and build up their confidence to speak boldly and frequently. First, the students must be trained to listen to English and try to understand the meaning as possible as they can. Usually, the students in the rural areas are poor at their pronunciation and most of them have speak English with strong accent influenced by their dialect as some teachers teach them that way or are not successful in correcting their pronunciation. Certainly the circumstance is also a facet. To tackle this hard problem, tapes are of great help, for the speed, the pronunciation and also the speaking style are quite standard. Secondly, the students may be directed to read after the tapes so as to imitate the standard pronunciation and the way of speaking English. As infants in learning speaking, here, imitation, which is the main means to learn to speak, plays a very important role in training the beginners to speak English. The intonation, the standard pronunciation and the way of expression can also be learned from imitation. Our Chinese students, especially the students’ intonation and pronunciation in the countryside, are greatly influenced by their dialect, which causes Chinese-styled English. Consequently, it is quite necessary to teach the Middle School students to speak correct and even Standard English from the very beginning. Some students do speak a little English, but rather poorly. To have a good command of sentence structure is of great importance for beginners in their understanding of the content as well as in their making of more similar sentences. Give the students sentence structure and let them practice, and thus they can learn more so as to improve their ability to use the language freely. Take these sentences as an example: Effective Techniques A successful speaking activity needs efficacious methods. All too often, past teaching techniques have led to a very passive understanding of the language, but no capacity to use it. Nowadays, many modern instruments are used in the classroom in big cities, but many of the rural schools cannot afford for these expensive things. Even if those who do have these ‘luxury’ machines and the students could produce perfectly adequate responses in class when given a clear stimulus, they are incapable of dealing at all convincingly with the social situation when they listen to Englishmen talking together for the first time. Therefore, we must adopt these stages in class: controlled, guided and free oral production. (Geoffrey Broughton, 1980) The speech produced by the students should be tightly controlled at first, then there should be less rigorous guidance. At last, the students are given freedom to produce utterances appropriate to the situation. This progression applies to each teaching point at all levels of achievements. It is clear that at beginning stages, there will be heavy emphasis on controlled and guided practice whereas at advanced levels, the practice of speaking should be freer and freer, especially to the students in rural areas. First, they must be controlled to speak, then guided to speak, and at last they can be encouraged and permitted to do free oral work by them naturally. Controlled and guided oral work is needed and free oral production is certain. Here this paper is trying to analyze the three proved effective speaking teaching stages mentioned above. I、Controlled Oral Work Controlled oral work is a very useful method in teaching the beginners to speak, as they must be directed to learn to speak first. The teacher should give the beginners clear directions and their activity is conducted accordingly so that they can cherish the basic idea of what they are doing and why do so at all. Thus they may begin to imitate and then comes excellent free oral production. For example, the teacher, in a Middle School, can begin his or her first English class like this: 1. Give a short self-introduction. 2. Ask some students simple questions: (1)“What’s your name?” (2)“How old are you?” (3)“Where are you from?”(“Where do you come from?”) … 3. Then ask the students to do chain work with these questions among themselves or make a simple self-introduction according to these questions. 4. The teacher may help them where necessary and correct some mistakes popped now and then. Of course, this is only a very easy way in training speaking in controlled speaking production. This method is quite simple and the students can follow easily. However, if the teacher always adopts such kind of training, the students may lose interest in it when their curiosity is gone. So, here the paper will continue to talk about another way of oral training, that is, guided oral work. It is much freer, somewhat interesting and independent as well. II、Guided Oral Work In many rural areas, though there does exist some training in speaking, it is always strictly controlled by the teacher. However the teacher controls the class, the result is not pleasing. Get half the result with twice the effort. It will be quite beyond the students to structure so tightly all the utterances demanded of the students without making errors. Practically, it is impossible to do so, and mistakes themselves can teach a lot. It seems that making mistakes and learning from their correction is a natural part of the learning process, so too great rigidity in controlling may well be counter-productive. Guided oral practice aims to give the students a limited freedom to use and practice what they have learned, yet still be subjected to some restraints. In general, it is best to provide a general situation and the content of what is to be said, but allow some freedom in the mode of expression. Here, role-playing is a useful technique for this purpose. One way to practice speaking is to give the students a topic and some requirements and also set up a role-playing situation. As in the case of receiving some guests, the class may have well learnt several polite phrases to welcome and give help to the guests if there is a need: “Welcome to our school” “Welcome to Beijing…” “This way, please.” “Let me show you the way to…” “Would you like to…?” “May I take you to … ?” “Is there anything I can do for you ?” They have also learnt some suitable response: “Thank you.” “Thanks a lot.” “Many thanks.” “It is rally very kind of you.” “Yes, please.” “No, thanks.” Then the class is divided into two big groups: one is the “students”; the other is the “guests”. Desks may place in different directions and represent different places, such as, the school gate, the library, the teaching building, and the dining-room, … The teacher controls the situation in this activity, but allows variety of this kind. This would not only avoid the distraction from the topic, but also can pave the way for further freedom and thus the students can really learn something. The other way to practice oral work in a guided way is to use the so-called “information gap”. In this activity, two speakers have different information making up a whole. As they have different information, there is a “gap” between them. Here, “ ‘describe and Draw’ is a very popular information-gap activity” (Jeremy Harmer, 2000), where one student has a picture which he or she must not show to his or her partner. All the partner has to do is to draw the picture without looking at the original when the one with the picture gives instructions and description. In the meantime, the one who draws the picture may have to ask questions for the sake of his drawing. “Describe and Draw” consists of many of the elements of an ideal speaking activity. It is highly motivating if used properly. As the picture has to be completed, language communication must be taken. As it is an English class, the students may be eager to ask questions in English in order to fill up the picture. In this activity, they may forget whether he will make grammar mistakes or not. In this way, the students can speak freely and also get a good chance to practice speaking without being afraid of any unnecessary thing. If the activity involves more than one student, the teacher should remember to change the students’ roles so that every student can have a chance to describe the picture or draw the picture. Here is an example of information gap activity. ----First, the teacher divides the whole class into four groups: Group A, Group B, Group C, and Group D. ----Then he or she gives each group one of the four pictures. After the four groups all get their pictures, the teacher gives them some instructions and then the activity begins. All the groups must memorize as much information as they can about the pictures that they get: for example, who is in the picture and what they are doing. They can talk about the details concerning the pictures within their groups, raise and answer questions. When the time for preparation is up, the teacher collects all the pictures and then picks up one student from each group to form new groups. This time the group is much smaller---only consisting of four students. At the same time, there are more groups. Then the teacher tells the students of each group that each of them in a group has seen a different picture but the four pictures are connected with each other. In fact, the four pictures tell a story. Their task is to work out the story with the help of these four pictures they have seen. Then the students have to talk to each other about the pictures and try to come up with a whole story. After that, the teacher asks each group to present their final stories. They may have different versions of stories. Then the teacher can re-show the four pictures to the whole class. This method of teaching the students to speak English is really good and practical. It gives the students confidence and chance to improve their speaking. Undoutedly, the teacher should help the students if there is a need and correct mistakes if any during their preparation and presentation, too. III、Free Oral Production Although guided oral work may make it easy to make dialogues, it is not effective if always used in the same way. To the students at high levels, a change is needed for the sake of their improvement. In rural schools, the students seem to be more obedient and humble than those in urban areas. So if the teacher doesn't give them freedom in speaking, they will not demand it. Then there will be no creative work at all, let alone the motivation of students' initiative. As a result, it is important that a student should be able to naturally produce something of his own after he has practiced what has been presented to him in various more or less controlled situations. As the students have been trained to speak first, they feel that they now have basic machinery to say what they want rather than what they are channeled to say. And then the teacher should give them freer oral production instead of always the controlled or guided work. However, this is not an easy thing to accomplish, and it calls for considerable creative thought on the part of the teacher in providing situations and communicative ways of the language they have learnt. Free oral production can generally adopt several kinds of useful methods: 1、Free Conversation Free conversation requires the students to understand and remark what happens around. The topic can also be set. This kind of conversation is comprehensive and vivid. It can be simple, complex and interesting as well. The teacher' role in this activity is to remind and correct mistakes in time and technically. There should be more students-centredness in any work done in this free conversation. A plot-supposed free talk, a title-set free talk and a imitated situation free talk are also effective and good. In the activities, the students control the whole conversation and the teacher's duty is mainly to help and correct mistakes in time and properly as well, too. Here the imitated situation free talk is mostly appreciated as it is more vivid and practical in the rural schools. Here is a good sample: A teacher takes her students to the field to have an English class and divides them into two groups: one plays the role of the interviewers; the other the interviewees—peasants. (They are working in the field.) Then the interviewers begin to ask the "peasants" about what they want to know. It is an advantage that the students in the rural areas know more about the crops. Through such kind of activity, the students may know even more. Of course, the result is satisfactory. It is not just good for their speaking, but also good for them to broaden their perspective and enrich their knowledge. The teacher is by all means clever, full of creativity and also well formed. Here, the paper insists that this kind of activity is especially useful in the rural areas. 2、Questionnaire and Survey It has been proved that “questionnaire and survey are another efficient way to train speaking by provoking conversation and opinions exchanging.” (Jeremy Harmer, 2000) In this kind of activity, the students may be encouraged to plan the questionnaire themselves. Take “ Watching TV” for example. The teacher asks the students some questions like: 1) Do you like watching TV? / 2) What kind of programs do you like best? Write down some names of the TV programs the students mentioned. Of course, the teacher can also add some more names that are not mentioned. (Movie, advertisement, TV series, news broadcast...) After that, get the students to work in pairs to plan any questions concerning TV programs for their questionnaire and go around helping and correcting mistakes. After preparation, the teacher gets the students to go around the class, asking other students questions and also writing down what they say. While the students are surveying, the teacher should listen carefully and prompt where necessary. After surveying, the students tell the class about their result and some information about watching TV. Surely, the students can be given freedom to choose or decide their own topic. However, many teachers take it for granted that the class should be quiet and organized. In some rural areas, this phenomenon is ever more universal. To some extent, they're right. But they forget one important thing that only an active class can arouse the students' interest and therefore receive an unexpected result, especially truth of an English class. The old opinion in teaching English may strangle the students' initiative, vitality and imagination in the cradle. In the long run, the students may become lazy both physically and mentally, let alone the training them of their speaking fluency. So, at proper time, the students should be permitted and given opportunities to get up and walk around the class, talking to other classmates, which has many advantages. It not only varies the structure of class period, stirs up the students' interests and makes them more active, but also allows them a bit physical movement and provides a favorable variety of interaction. A successful class does not only mean how well a teacher controls the class and how well he spreads his knowledge, but also means how successfully the students' activities are conducted. Various types of speaking activities in class and out of class are greatly needed to improve the speaking ability of the students in rural schools. 3、 Role-play Accordingly, role-playing is another kind of useful method in practicing speaking. This kind of activity has been widely used in big cities, which is known to all. However, it is necessary to be introduced and encouraged in the countryside. Like free conversation, role- play also has three forms of activities: (1) set up a title: (2) supposed plot; (3) created a similar situation. Take the first for example, the teacher can give the students a title like "Snow White", or "An Interesting Journey." Then the remaining task is up to the students themselves to finish. Here, the students are given a wide scope of imagination. They prepare the plot themselves, then rehearse and at last give their presentation during the class. Role-play has been proved earlier a good and effective method in training the students' ability to use English, especially to Speak English. It will receive even good result in the practice process among the students in the countryside. In conclusion, the awareness of the necessity to improve students’ spoken English and the appropriate attitude of both the teachers and students towards the learning process are required in teaching speaking programs in the rural areas in China. As all know, good start is half done. So, listening as well as imitation plays an important role in the speaking teaching. Besides, the most important thing is the adoption of efficient methods in teaching practice. Starting from controlled oral work to free oral production is an effective procedure in teaching speaking in rural middle schools. With more attention and good ways mentioned in this paper, the speaking problems existing in the middle school in the rural areas will certainly be solved in the near future. BIBLIOGRAPHY 1. Bright, J. A. and Me Gregor, G. D. (1970) Teaching English as a Second Language, Longman. Chaplen, F (1975) Communication Practice in Spoken Language, Oxford University Press. 2. Geoffrey Broughton and Christopher Brumfit (1980) Teaching English as a Foreign Language, University of London Institute of Education. 3. Jeremy Harmer (2000) How to Teach English, 外语教学与研究出版社。 4. 王曾选 杨大契 （1987）《中学英语教法讲话》，河南大学出版社。 5. 胡春洞 （1990） 《英语教学法》，高等教育出版社。 6. 李庭芗 王武军 王永年 （1999）《英语教学法》， 高等教育出版社。 Mines, yours, his, hers, ours, theirs? Is this new bike Are those new bikes PAGE 10 - -