An Investigation Of Reasons Contirbuting To Senior High School Students, Poor Oral English Communicative Competence

With the development of society, English has been a quite significant tool in thedevelopment of both individuals and nations as a whole. Almost every one desires tobe able to speak fluent English. However, most senior high students become mute orstammered when communicating with others in English. Many teachers and scholarsattribute this phenomenon to students’ insufficient vocabularies, nonstandardpronunciation and intonation, lack of communication skills and English teachers’unsatisfactory oral English, etc. But the author does not think these reasons are themain reasons explaining the problems, but the negative washback of NationalMatriculation English Test (NMET) does. Why senior high students are not weak inreading, writing and grammar? The answer can be found in the effects of NMET.To a great extent, NMET can determine whether or not senior high students canenter their ideal universities. Therefore, teachers, students and parents cannot affordto neglect NMET. In view of the current position and importance of NMET, thisthesis attempts to figure out the fundamental reasons causing poor oral Englishbased on the investigation of negative effects of NMET on English teaching andlearning.In order to study the reasons resulting in poor oral English communicativecompetence among senior high school students, this thesis adopts questionnaires andclassroom observation.176students from two senior high schools are invited to dothe questionnaires and two classes are chosen as the observation objects. One issenior grade one and the other is grade three. Both the questionnaires and classroomobservations are conducted in two different schools separately in Changsha andShaoyang.The data from the investigation indicate that many senior high school students’oral English is poor and the NMET exerts great negative washback effects on oralEnglish teaching and learning among senior high schools. The test-oriented teachingand learning is obvious, which is more serious in senior grade three classes. WhatNMET tests, to a large extent, determines the teaching content and methods ofEnglish classes. And lots of NMET simulation and past paper constantly appear inthe class, especially in the senior grade three classes. As is known, NMET placesparticular emphasis on the written ability (reading, writing and grammar). OralEnglish which is not included in the test is ignored as much as possible. Additionally,the entrance target and urgency of time force teachers to teach English against the law of language learning, which results in that the vivid English classes becometedious knowledge infusion and repeated drills. The great pressure from NMETrenders teachers indifferent to the development of students’ oral Englishcommunicative ability, which again makes students lack the opportunity andmotivation to practice oral English. As a result, the senior high school students’ oralEnglish communicative ability is rather unsatisfactory. Just imagine if oral Englishwere a part of NMET, teachers and students would pay an equal attention to oralEnglish as reading and writing and the problem of poor oral English among mostsenior high school students would be solved.Finally based on the results of the investigation, the author puts forward somesuggestions and hopes these suggestions can be helpful to English teaching andlearning.