How to Improve the Oral English in Middle School in China 1. Introduction Chinese people all know that English is very important for the future development of China. “With the accession of China to the WTO and other international organizations, international Sporting events, for example, the successful bid for 2008 Olympics, and Shanghais bid for the 2010 World Exposition, English is looked by Chinese leaders very important .At the point of their view English is a kind of communicational tool which can help preparing Chinas future educated citizens. Because it continues its opening up internationally and lets them become increasingly global leaders. ”(張民合, 2003:2) Compared with the old published English book in senior and junior school, the stress of todays English book is in speaking but not in writing or examination. It is good for Chinese middle school students. What is the goal for learning a foreign language? It is for communication, but not for taking examinations. I agree with that Chinese government has spent a lot of money on holding a range of English tests. Such as TOEFL, TPT, TEM-8, CET-6 etc. But holding these texts is kind of measure to force Chinese students to learn English. Because leaders know how important English is in the future. But in #China not only many students misunderstood it, but also plenty of teacher and students parents. They focus on the scores. As a result, a large number of Chinese students can achieve high scores in English tests but can not speak fluent English when they face a foreigner or speak to their classmates. This is a common phenomenon in China. This essay focuses on finding the problems which cause Chinese students can not speak English out and ways to solve them. 2. The Present Situation of Oral English in Middle School 2.1 On the Part of Teacher http:/www_okarticle_com 2.1.1 What Is Teachers Teaching Aim? What is the aim for an English teacher? Definitely, it is communication. “Communication is the process of sending and receiving massage,” (Randy Fujish, 1999:2) It is true. Students nowadays are willing to receive massage rather than talking in other words sending massage. Chinese middle school students learn English very hard, but only in how to deal with exams. If asked to speak something about themselves those high marks obtainers can not speak completely or correctly English. It is no use for the development of a student. And if we take a close look at the actual English teaching situation in middle school, we would find an odd phenomenon that almost English teachers only pay attention to how to improve students test scores but not on the practical use of English-speaking. Although they have realized that their aims of leaching English are not so good, they still have reasons: the education department controls the judgments, in which whether a teacher is qualified or not, based on marks students get in exams We live in the modern society in which everything changes very fast. Education is not an exception, especially English. Just compared the English book now with that several years ago, we could find clearly that the stress of todays is on speaking and active teaching rather than irrigating teaching. If we pay attention to the teaching methods that teachers use now, things are not that good. Most of teachers take English teaching as translation and grammar teaching, which orders teacher as a giver and student as a passive receiver. Teachers try their best to analyze passages to students, who only need to remember or write note down. In order to improve test marks teachers ask students to familiar with grammar and to recite vocabulary mechanically and do a lot of exercises. But they do not concern about oral English teaching, which, in turn, makes students spoken English very poor. Perhaps many students only can speak some simple greeting words. Such as “Hello” “How do you do?” “What is your name?” They can not use decent English to express themselves and take conversation with others. In a word students are receiving the passive English.# Besides, in English lesson teachers play the leading role and what students have to do is listening. Students have little time to think or to digest what they have leant. As teachers worry about their students cannot understand well, they spend a lot of time in analyzing the grammar structure, word formation, and translation of reading comprehension, dialogues and exercises. Students have no time to understand by themselves and ask questions about which part they are not clear, even have no time to put what they have learnt into practice, thus, English lessons become to the translation lesson, grammatical lesson, recited lesson and writing lesson. Gradually, students hold an opinion that oral English is not that important and then learn English passively and mechanically. At last they have not any interests in English and fear oral English very much. Moreover, teachers teach little about the culture of English speaking countries. It is too bad for an English learner. As is known to us language is produced by culture, and a transfer of culture. So people can not learn a foreign language without having any knowledge about its culture. Apparently teachers do not realize how important culture is. Culture influences the ways of word formation, sentence expression and the way of thinking. If teachers do not introduce it to students, how can students speak in Englishs way, think in English even write in English? Only in focusing on words study, can teachers never make a hit in their teaching road. 2.1 On the Part of StudentFor most students oral English is a headache thing. Due to the wrong way of teaching methods, many students have lost patience in learning English, especially oral English, some students say frankly that in English class, teacher order them to listen carefully about what teacher said and write down all the notes which appear on blackboard, and recite words and passage. It is no use for them to improve oral English, they do not review those notes because they dont know what they are and can not remember words because they dont know how to use them in a correct situation. Some students feel shy of speaking English when there is no one talking with them or no an English speaking environment. If they speak English with someone, friends and other classmates will make fun of them. As influenced by Chinese culture, plenty of students are not willing to express themselves when face others. And according to the traditional way of Chinese thinking, everyone should be modest. In other words, if someone is good at some field, he had better not show his talent before people. But they ignore that English comes from the other countries where people are very outgoing and like to show his advantages. They are different from Chinese. So, Chinese student should try to use the way of English speaking people used to speak English. 英語(yǔ)畢業(yè) Some students would get nervous even fear when they think they are about to speak English .It is common in #China. A high school student said that: “Once I want to speak English with my friend and after hearing I say: what are you do this afternoon?” My friends laugh at me and said: “You are poor in English and it is a wrong sentence expression.” I feel so embarrassed. Some students can not continue a conversation with their partners. One reason is they dont understand what their partners say. The other reason is they dont know how to choose a suitable topic to discuss. There is a great number of students who are only familiar with some expressions, such as “hello” “how do you do” “whats your name” “where are you from?” Excepting these they do not know how to use English to describe what they want to say. 3. Some Advice for Teacher to Improve Students Oral English Oral English teaching orders that teacher should teach actively. Teachers instruct actively by demonstrating skills, conducting participatory activities, and reviewing when necessary. They teach their students rather than expecting them to learn merely from interacting with curriculum materials. However, as indicated, teachers do not put stress just on grammar or vocabulary. Here are some advices for teachers to improve students oral English. 3.1 Changing New Teaching Methods. Teacher could change to use other ways, which is different with the old teaching methods, to teach in order to make their students interested in English. As it known that it is impossible for someone who can understand a language when he only listened once. The ability of speaking fluent English does not live with birth. There is no any short cut for a language learner. If students want to speak English well, they have to through the process of listening, imitation, analyzing, memorizing and so on before they can speak English out naturally and fluently. Acquisition which means learn something spontaneously is the key for oral English teaching. It is different from the grammar study or word meaning study. In a word oral English teaching should be meaningful and interesting. Besides, teacher could ask students some questions. But asking questions is not teachers teaching aim, but a way for cultivating students imagination. For example, on a topic of life about the future, teacher could start like this: “Can you imaging what our life will be like tomorrow? When we do some shopping, we can merely stay at home waiting. If we are ill, we wont have to go to a doctor or a nurse, can you guess how?” 3.2 Creating English Speaking Environments. Teacher could create some English speaking environments, in order that let students have more chances to speak English. Teachers usually pay attention to asking students to recite massages, reading texts to create an English-speaking atmosphere for a long time. Because influenced by mother tongue and being lack of practice, this method just has little help in developing students oral English after class. So teachers should not only teach activity in class, but also hold some programs after class. Such as holding English week, English corner, and English radio program and so on meanwhile, teachers also can start some activities according to the textbook. There is a number of text sections chose from some great novels in Europe, such as The Necklace, The Merchant of Venice and so on. When teaching these kinds of lessons, teachers could ask some students to take roles play and the rest student to be judger. 3.3 Cultivating to Think in English. Teachers could cultivate students to think in English. In this process of teaching, teachers should try their best to give lessons in English and plus a little Chinese which can avoid student to comprehend English in Chinese and help them to improve their listening ability and familiar with English. Furthermore teachers should encourage students to use English-Chinese dictionary at the beginning, then change into English-English dictionary. It is useful to help them to know how to choose a word to use in correct way. In addition for some sentence patterns or some words, which can not be understood by English, even by Chinese, teachers should ask students to learn them by heart and review them as many as possible. For example, I could not agree with you more, which means I totally agree with you. For this sentence, teachers could use Chinese to translate it to students and give them some other examples about the similar sentence expression. 3.4 Introducing English Speaking Countries Culture to Students. Teacher could introduce more English speaking countries culture to students and teach English songs and English movies to them. Different counties have different ways of thinking and doing. Teachers have to let students know what those differences are. For example if someone asks: “Does the color of my sweater match with my hat?” In fact they do not match each other. English speaking people would say: “Wow, they do not match, and look oddly.” But Chinese people say: “they match each other very well or they look great.” Just look at this simple example we can know that English-speaking people are more frank and they are willing to tell the truth. But Chinese people are influenced by the fear that if he tells the truth, his friends would anger with him. So, different ways of thinking cause different expression. It is necessary for teacher to tell those differences to students. There are many ways teacher can use to make students known the culture in English speaking countries. By teaching English movies, for example, after watching English movies, students can listen and watch what the actor and actress talk about and perform. They can point out where the differences are to students. Learning English song, students can know how English speaking people express their feelings. Through these kinds of ways, students will know more about the #culture shark with foreigners, and then can speak to their classmates in a proper way. 3.5 Teaching Students to Use English in a Useful Way. Teachers should teach students how to use English rather than how to improve English test scores. Which needs teachers know a lot of knowledge, such as the newest English expression, sling, fashion, science, sports, and music and so on? Because these are the things that students interested in. Besides, teachers can try to make friends with foreigners in order to know more about the original sentence expressions. 4 .Some Advice for Students 4.1 Be More Confidence Confidence is mostly the well-known power of positive thinking. If you think you can do it, you usually can do it.（Stephn E. Lucas, 1995:10） Many Chinese students are lack of confidence when they are speaking English. The reason for it is that they are embarrassed, and do not want to lose face, they think that their spoken English probably is not that great and so on, especially they have the fear of making mistakes. The first step of being confidence is to conquer shyness. I agree that shyness is still believed to be the biggest obstacle for many Chinese students. It is generated by Chinese culture. Most Chinese students are willing to speak oral English with other students from overseas. But when the opportunity comes, they may just close their mouth because they have few experiences of speaking with strangers in English. They do not know how to start the conversation and how to let it go on. So the keys to conquer shyness are: First, just relax yourself and take a couple of deep breaths before you start to speak. Second, choose a topic that you are familiar with, which can help you to continue the conversation. Third, make eyes contact with the one you are talking with. The second step is to conquer the fear of making mistakes. In other words, no one is perfect. “You should not try to banish all your fear and your nervousness. You need a certain amount of fear to give a good talk.”(Hamilton Gregory, 2002:30) So students should give themselves the permission to make mistakes. #“If you are not failing everyone in a while, you have living too cautiously.”(Stephn E. Lucas, 1995:55) One of the primary stumbling blocks to our personal growth is our fear of making mistakes or looking foolish in the eyes of others. But are not mistakes an important part of the learning process? It is the truth to learn something. Edison, the world wide known famous scientist, is suffered from millions of failures caused by mistakes. But he was full of confidence and achieved success at last. Learning to speak English is not an exception and its full of bumpy. If you do make a mistake during a conversation, that is no catastrophe. It is a good development to your spoken English. You have realized where the mistake is. In the next time you may not make the same mistake again. 4.2 More Practice http:/www_okarticle_com Practice is the key to improve oral English. How do we practice Oral English? To find a partner with the same English level or higher than you to practice with. With more practice, you may find that speaking is not so hard. Another way is to take part in an English speaking community. I think that English corner is the best place to go. The greatest benefit of English corner is to meet other English learners who are at the same level, get their phone numbers, and arrange to meet with them every now and then to talk in English. You should never speak to him in Chinese. If you do think that the foreigner in China or other good Chinese English speakers are ready to magically improve your English just by listening to them, you are wrong. You must have conversations with others at your own English level if you are going to improve your oral English. One student said: “I have gone to English corner for three times during my university life. Every time I tried my best to speaker English, and every time was a test for me, now I am a senior, and is doing my work, I think I will go to English corner more often in the future. Its really useful no matter you talk with foreigner or Chinese, to talk is courage. http:/www_okarticle_com 4.3 Speaking to Other Chinese Students If you are studying English, chances can be found when you talk with the other Chinese students have around the same level of English as you. This person is your opportunity to have an English conversation! In fact, Chinese students have enormous opportunities to have conversations in English because lots of Chinese students in every city in China is working English vocabulary. Whenever someone says that he do not talk in English because his spoken English is so poor”, as a matter of fact that their spoken English is not poor because they do not talk in English, and their spoken English is so poor because they do not talk in English. The reason is that they do not want to lose face, and they think that their oral English is too bad. Furthermore least 1000 words which, believe it or not, is enough to communicate a great deal of thoughts. # Some Chinese students often say they have nothing to talk when they speak to another Chinese student or it is too hard to talk with other Chinese students in English because it feels “weird”. In other words, they feel as if they can only talk to foreigners in English. Actually there is a fact that English-speaking foreigners are too few to find in China, and they live far away from China, Furthermore they do not all want to spend their time talking to strangers in English. So the best way to practice students oral English is to try to speak to Chinese students as much as possible. In addition Chinese students also hold this opinion that if they talk to Chinese is like something that they are talking in Chinglish with each other. But they misunderstood that they will suddenly start speaking in perfect English if they talk to a foreigner and the foreigner is going to correct their mistakes and they will remember all the mistakes that foreigner does correct. In fact that foreigner probably wont correct any of their mistakes, or very few of them. In fact, the mistakes foreigner does correct they will probably make again. For example students confuse to use “he” and “she”, in stead of, “I very like something” instead of “I like something very much”. Actually there are many benefits of talking in English with other Chinese: Firstly, it helps those remembering new words and sentences patterns easier and keeping them from forgetting words and sentences they studied a while ago. Secondly, it helps their listening comprehension because they will have to practice listening to what the other students are saying. . Thirdly, it gets them into a good study habit and both of them and their partner can benefit by supporting and encouraging each others English study. Fourthly most im