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1、How to Improve Students Oral English ExpressionAbstractEnglish as a tool for learning and communicating has an increasing application in contemporary China. However, the current oral English teaching situation is not quite satisfactory. For most college students, listening and speaking, occupying th
2、e predominant place in daily communication, have become the biggest barrier in English learning. Drawing on relevant theoretical and empirical researches in the fields of linguistics, pedagogics and psychology, this paper elaborates on the basic principles of how to improve oral English and proposes
3、 some effective learning and teaching strategies, aiming at improving students oral communicative competence.The main contents of this paper are as follows: Firstly, this paper reviews the relative studies in the recent decade, expounds the background. Secondly, according to topic, the subjects were
4、 presented with four probe method: the lexical phrases and spoken language proficiency of English majors; active vocabulary and learning of students oral English; Chinese EFL learners oral communication strategies and learning of students oral English; cooperative group work and improvement of stude
5、nts speaking ability. Based on the analysis, each part draws a conclusion. Finally, the paper discusses some limitations and future research directions.Key words: oral English; lexical phrases; active vocabulary; cooperative group work摘 要英语作为一种国际语言已成为各个国家学习和交流的工具，在当代改革开放的中国英语也得到越来越广泛的应用。对于大学生而言，其口语交
6、际能力的培养尤为重要。然而现实与理想总有一定的差距，当代中国大学生的口语表达能力却不尽如意，在日常交际中所占比重最大的“听说”能力已成为大学生英语学习的最大障碍。本文通过借鉴语言学、教育学、心理学的相关理论与实践经验，向大家阐述了当今学生口语学习中出现的各种问题及原因，进而提出了提高学生英语口语表达的必要性和有效方法，旨在有效提高大学生的口语交际能力，改善当今中国英语口语学习的现状。本文主要包含以下内容：首先阐述研究背景，总结国内外研究现状；其次，针对主题从词汇短语与英语专业学生口语水平的研究，积极词汇与学生口语学习的研究，中国大学生口语交际策略与英语口语表达的研究，小组合作训练与学生口语能力
7、的提高等四方面做了探索总结，然后得出了结论。最后提出本次研究的不足及未来的研究方向。关键词：英语口语；词汇短语；积极词汇；小组教学Table of Contents. Introduction4. Literature Review62.1 The Lexical Phrases and Spoken Language Proficiency of English Majors62.1.1 The definition of lexical phrase62.1.2 The significance of lexical phrases72.2 Active Vocabulary and St
8、udentss Oral English92.2.1 The definition of active vocabulary92.2.2 The use of active vocabulary in China92.3 Chinese EFL Learners Oral Communication Strategies and oral English102.3.1 Some knowledge about communication strategies102.3.2 The use of communication strategies122.4 Cooperative Group Wo
9、rk and Improvement of Students Speaking Ability122.4.1 Some knowledge about cooperative learning122.4.2 Introduction of an experiment13. Application153.1 Major research findings and Implications153.2 The limitations and Recommendations for further study15. Conclusion16Words Cited17Acknowledgements19
10、iii. IntroductionThe teaching of English has always been focused on the four main areas: listening, speaking, reading and writing. In China, it is a long time held tradition that a great emphasis is put on the teaching of grammar with an view of meeting the demands of different kinds of examinations
11、, for example the College Entrance Examination and the post graduate entrance examination, CET4, CET6 and so on. It is admitted with no doubt that Chinese English learners really do a very good job in English examinations. At the same time, they are also good at listening to some English materials,
12、proficient in producing excellent English articles and even understand the elusive English passages much better than natives do! However, it is acknowledged that most Chinese English learners are confused by such a fact that even if they study English for more than 6 years or maybe longer relentless
13、ly, even if they score high in different kinds of English examinations, when they are pushed into a real time situation which requires them just to open their mouth to say something, what they can merely do is to scratch their head, only to find that they can not come up with anything appropriate. E
14、ven if something is uttered, it is later turned out to be something non native which is known to all as Chinglish, such as “you go or no go,you no go I go” and so on. Such a non native expression, of course, is not the ultimate goal of English teaching and learning.With the development of corpus lin
15、guistics and psychological linguistics, many researchers are able to study a large amount of real time communication data and through their researches, they revealed that lexical phrases or similar structures are ubiquitous in language and play very important role in native speakers output whether i
16、n spoken or written form. These structures actually make up a large proportion of any discourse.In China, researches into the study of oral English are grabbing many researchers attention and a lot of experiments are conducted to reveal the relationship between lexical phrases and language productio
17、n,whether in spoken form or in written form. Some representative and pioneering researchers into the lexical phrases in China do indeed present a much wider horizon and their researches are really inspiring. Such as Wei Naixing ( 2002 ) conducted a corpus-based research to examine the verb collocati
18、ons. Pu Jianzhong ( 2003 ) studied the colligations, collocations and chunks in the vocabulary teaching. Literature Review2.1 The Lexical Phrases and Spoken Language Proficiency of English Majors Lexical phrases are gradually gaining wide attention from the researchers all over the world. A word is
19、known by its company. The relationship between words is helpful for foreign language learners.2.1.1 The definition of lexical phrase Although lexical phrases has already aroused great interest in the filed of applied linguistics, there is still no consensus about the definition about it maybe due to
20、 its diversity. The diversity lies in the length. It can be long ( no news is good news ) or short ( Help! ); it can be fixed ( By the way ) or non-fixed ( to some extend; to a great extent); its meaning can be conventionalized ( rain cats and dogs ) or further derived based on grammatical rules ( i
21、t seems to me that ) etc. In addition, while doing the specific experiments, researchers will only focus on only one or two feature of lexical phrases to agree with their own researches. Therefore, many researchers adopt different kinds of concepts to describe the same structures which take the same
22、 role in discourse though. The most widely accepted and used definitions are advanced by Nattinger and DeCarrico and Wary.“we defined lexical phrases as form/function composites,lexico-grammatical units that occupy a position somewhere between the traditional poles of lexicon and syntax;they are sim
23、ilar to lexicon in being treated as units, yet most of them consist of more than one wore and many of them can, at the same time, be derived from the regular rules of syntax, just like other sentences.”(Nattinger&DeCarrico,1992:36) Nattinger and DeCarrico emphasized the pragmatic nature of lexical p
24、hrases and assigned particular functions to lexical phrases.In their opinion,lexical phrases are not similar to frozen forms or other conventionalized forms because lexical phrases are used to carry out certain functions, such as greeting,expressing gratitude and so on.Wary(2002:9), however defined
25、her lexical phrases in this way:“ a sequence,continuous or discontinuous,of words or other elements, which is, or appears to be,prefabricated,that is stored and retrieved whole form memory in the time of use, rather than being subject to generation or analysis by the language grammar.” Warys definit
26、ion stressed that such a sequence should be stored and retrieved whole from memory from the psychological linguistic aspect. Of courses, there is also other researchers work out the definition of lexical phrases, to name just a few. 2.1.2 The significance of lexical phrasesThe significance of lexica
27、l phrases in EFL can be summarized as follows:1. Avoiding mother tongue interferenceBased on the SLA research, what Chinese English learners use most during the process of English learning is interlanguage (Yan, 2003), such as the misuse of lexical phrases of “all the furnitures” and “go to abroad”
28、in the present paper. The misuse of these lexical phrases is the result of interference from mother tongue. In addition, Granger (1998 )has stated that mother tongue is important in acquisition and accurate use of collocation in second language. However emphasizing and adopting lexical phrases teach
29、ing can help the learners abandon the traditional way of learning vocabulary, which refers to memorizing the pronunciation, the spelling and its literal meaning of each word. Gradually, learners will develop the ability to memorize and use the word associations.While using the lexical phrases, the l
30、earners should also pay full attention to the self reflection and self monitor to block the mother tongue interference away. Just as M.Swan (2005) has put it, the more sensitive the learners are to the differences and similarities between L1 and L2, the more likely they are to adopt efficient vocabu
31、lary learning strategy.2. Improving learners fluencyPawley and Syder (1983) has already pointed out that such lexicalized stems did do good to the native-like selection and fluency. While producing output, especially spoken production, the internalized lexical phrases in learnersbrain can help the l
32、earners save precious cognitive resource, which turns out to be so limited. In this way are learners able to improve their oral fluency. Skehan (1995) has also suggested that by using a huge number of lexical phrases learners can improve their ability to select native-like vocabulary.3. Improving le
33、arners ability to use the languageLanguage is used and learned for the aim of social communication and human interaction. As we have discussed before, Widdwoson (1989) defined language competence as the knowledge of language analyzability and ability to access different language forms. The former co
34、ncordance research made by Alterberg (1998), Erman and Warren (2000), Foster (2000) and other researchers has confirmed that in real time and natural communication,what is used most is not single word,but lexical phrases which carry a very important role of social and pragmatic functions. Nattinger
35、and DeCarrico (1992) have classified lexical phrases into 3 categories in terms of functional perspective: social interaction, necessary topics and discourse devices. That is the reason why we say master these lexical phrases can help the learner to increase their communicative ability.4. Enriching
36、learners storage of second languageLexical phrases convey various information such as historical background information, unique cultural customs about second language and so on ( Nattinger & DeCarrico, 1992). Knowing and mastering a large number of lexical phrases in second language can open the doo
37、rs to beautiful and bountiful world of second language for learners, thus enriching students storage of second language and improving their language learning process.5. Making learners more confidentAs English and Chinese belongs to different linguistic systems, learners find it difficult to learn E
38、nglish and use it in the way as natives do. Besides, the flexibility and complexity of lexical phrases (Pu, 2003) makes it difficult for Chinese learners to choose the proper English forms to make use of freely in real time communication.Frustrated and disappointed by such inability, learners may fe
39、el too reluctant to open their mouth to produce any output.As time goes by, the learners will become less and less motivated and gradually lose any interest in English learning. The understanding and mastering of such internalized lexical phrases offer a lot of confidence to learners as they can be
40、obtained immediately whenever they need them. It is so convenient and useful.2.2 Active Vocabulary and Studentss Oral English2.2.1 The definition of active vocabularyThe so-called active vocabulary in English is what can be used in the actual process. The vocabulary heard will be understood easily (
41、 in a normal speed ), want to say and then can say, want to write and can write it out. And passive vocabulary are generally refer to the encountered in reading. After a short time to think according to the context and then we can be sure of its meaning. Now the vocabulary of the examinee is usually
42、 passive vocabulary. And what really be able to be used is the active vocabulary.2.2.2 The use of active vocabulary in ChinaAs a component of language proficiency, lexical ability is an essential foundation to language learners, and a flurry of scholarly work in the last several decades has confirme
43、d its importance to the academic world as well as language teaching (e.g.Coady & Huckin 1997, Nation 1990, 2001, Schimit & McCarthy 1997, Singleton 1999 etc.).Lexical ability should be reflected not only by vocabulary size and knowledge but also by effective use of vocabulary, namely, vocabulary is
44、not usually learned by its own sake. “An important aim of vocabulary program is to bring learners vocabulary knowledge into communicative use” ( Laufer & Nation 1995:308 ). Most researches on vocabulary acquisition are based on this principle: learners who use a relatively high-level words or advanc
45、ed words are more likely to possess higher language proficiency than those who use low-level words or basic words ( Daller et al., 2003 ), namely, language learners who use varied and sophisticated vocabulary in their oral or written discourses are more proficient learners with higher lexical abilit
46、y. In another words, lexical ability is a good predictor of learners language proficiency.However, a problem concerning active use of vocabulary can be usually found in college students compositions: college students are confined to a rather limited selection of active vocabulary: they always avoid
47、picking out comparatively higher-level or advanced vocabulary ( e.g. college English band 4 and band 6 vocabulary ) and tend to employ comparatively lower-level or basic words ( e.g.The high-school-level words ), which exerts a negative influence on students vocabulary variety, sophistication and ri
48、chness in writings.Recently, the College English Curriculum Requirements ( For Trial Implementation ) was issued by Ministry of Education. In this new syllabus, 6,674 words are collected based on three different levels of lexical ability,among which it is emphasized that students should have a good
49、mastery of 2,354 active words that are formulated based on Nations three levels of word base lists and strict quantitative analysis. According to the authorities, the 2,354 active words are extremely useful in written and oral English and the indicator of such language competence as writing and speaking ability. Therefore, it