Oral Practice Design And Learner's Interest

Many students do not like doing oral practices , due to teacher's poorly-designed oral practice activities . It is hypothesized that learner's interest in oral practice can be increased by well-designed oral practice exercises based on some communicative language teaching principles . In designing the exercises , teacher should consider four aspects: 1) the purpose of speaking, 2) students' need in practice , 3) students' motivation and 4) students' audience when they are speaking .In this thesis, Chapter One discusses the drawbacks existing in several traditional teaching methods in improving the students' communicative competence , these methods include oral presentation , narration , question-and-answer , pattern drills , storytelling and dialogue making . These traditional teaching methods are teacher-centered with the focus on the knowledge impartation . They are ineffective in stimulating students' communicative competence ,which leads to the loss of interest and confidence .In Chapter Two , the author proposed three main characteristics of CLT : 1) everything is done with a communicative intent; 2) activities in the communicative approach are often carried out by students in small groups; 3) it's a learner-centered approach . And the active effects ofCLT on motivating students to speak English were discussed .In Chapter Three , some basic principles of designing oral practice were discussed . Firstly , the students should know the purpose of speaking . The most important thing that teacher should consider when he designs oral practice is that different students have different motivation . The teacher needs to know about his students . He needs to know their occupation , attitude , educational background and their needs . As to the teacher , the author quoted Nolan's four key teaching principles , and proposed six different roles that teacher can adopt in class .In Chapter Four , the author designed several modes of oral practice ( role-playing , debate and brainstorming ) , discussed the relationship between the design and learners' interest . Also the author proposed that different groupings and seating arrangement have much to do with learners' interest.In the last chapter , an experiment on two different classes were reported . The results obtained from the experiment were analyzed . It confirmed that learner's interest in oral practice can be increased by well-designed oral practice.