An Investigation On The Use Of Speaking Material Of New Senior English For China

Course books play a key role in the implementation and reform of foreign language teaching, therefore the quality of course books determines the effect of foreign language teaching. With the reform of courses on elementary education coming into practice, course books tend to be more and more diversified and modernized. New Senior English for China, being the guiding books of English in senior high school, puts its priority on improving students'ability of using language. Since its application, a lot of researches have been done to investigate the situation of its use. However, few researches involve the investigation of language knowledge, language skill, emotion and attitude, learning strategy and cultural awareness separately, which are defined in the New Curriculum Standard. The thesis is to investigate the practical use of speaking material of this set of course books and its effect in improving students' oral communicative competence, therefore providing some feedback that may be helpful for its revision and implementation.The thesis first elaborates the basic theory of course books, material evaluation, speaking material evaluation and the definition of oral communicative competence. Based on the theory above, a speaking material system is established in respect of syllabus, guiding principles, teaching content of speaking material, the arrangement of speaking material and the design of speaking activities. The research is done in two key senior high middle schools of Huhhot. The result of the research shows that there are some advantages of the speaking material:the comprehensive syllabus adopted by this set of books is in accordance with students' needs to improve oral communicative competence; the guiding principles of the material pay much attention on students' ability of using language; the teaching content of speaking material cater for students' needs; combined with reading, listening and writing material, speaking material can promote students' communicative competence; the topic of speaking material can arouse students' interest and motivation and most of the speaking activities are communicative activities. However, there still exist some drawbacks of the use of speaking material: some speaking activities are too difficult for students; the use of speaking material in a lot of classrooms is inadequate; teachers mainly focus on the usage of the language rather the use of it, therefore communicative activities and the development of students'oral communicative strategy are overlooked by many teachers.In conclusion, there should be some implementation for the speaking material's revision. Besides, teachers should change their concept of teaching speaking and try to use the material flexibly and fully to improve students' oral communicative competence.