A Study On The Current Situation Of And Countermeasures For Oral English Teaching In Rural Schools

The 21 st century is an age of information. International political dialogue and trade contacts, the spread of information and technology in the world, the sharing of resources and education all consider English as the main media tool. English as one of the most important information carriers has been widely used in all fields of human life. Many countries take English Education as an important part of citizen’s quality education, and place it in a prominent position in national development. Not knowing or understanding foreign languages will become a great obstacle to the development one’s life. Therefore, in order to better adapt to the rapid development of the era and the society, learning and mastering at least one foreign language, especially English, has become one of the basic requirements of the citizens of our country in 21 st Century.In China, the oral English teaching plays a significant role in the education links of fundamental English. With the influence of traditional teaching model and many other factors, there are a great many problems existing in the process of fundamental English teaching. The problems remain for a long time and can’t be solved effectively and even worse especially in rural area. According to a survey of some schools, the author finds that in primary schools, students study English from Grade 3, three or four lessons a week; in junior middle schools, students have six or seven lessons a week; in senior middle schools, students have eight or nine lessons a week. The time that each student who spends on English in primary school and middle school is accumulated over 1600 hours, but the effect is not obvious. Though lots of students have learned English for ten years, they still can’t communicate with others in English when the graduate from senior middle school. "Dumb English" has become synonymous with them. This is extremely inconsistent with the investment of the national financial resources, time, manpower and material resources, the students learning time and efforts.The reason, for a long time, is that high school and college entrance examination only pay attention to the students’ listening and writing exams, but ignore the check of students’ oral English ability, which are all under the pressure of the Examination-Oriented education. Some foreign language teachers are too much emphasis on grammar and vocabulary to explain and impart knowledge, while ignoring the cultivation of students’ comprehensive ability to use language. The students’ English abilities cannot keep up with the development needs of the knowledge and information era. Traditional foreign language education hasn’t adapted to the requirements of modern society.Nowadays, with the development of China’s new round of curriculum reform of basic education, new curriculum advocates of reform of English course is to change course in English too much emphasis on grammar and vocabulary to explain and impart knowledge, ignoring the cultivation of students’ comprehensive ability of using language, emphasizing the course from the student’s learning interest, life experience and cognitive level, the development of students’ comprehensive ability of using the language. The language learning process helps the students to form positive and affective attitude, active thinking and practice, to improve the awareness of intercultural communication and the form of the independent learning ability. It’s obvious that cultivating students’ English ability in all-round way is a question can’t be ignored. But the cultivation of students’ Oral English communicative competence is an indispensable part to develop their English ability in all-round way. Though now our country is recognizing the importance of oral English, the cultivation of students’ oral English ability is more and more important, students’ ability to communicate with others in English is becoming stronger and stronger, rural junior middle school students’ oral English communicative competence is rather weak. So, according to the special environment and teaching conditions, how to improve students’ oral English communicative competence and make them be far away from "dumb English", and narrow the gap between the students in a city and village. This is the problem I am considering these years.Through this research I describes and analyzes the differences of the objective and subjective teaching conditions of schools between the urban and rural areas, and find out the restricting factors of oral English teaching in rural areas through the test, questionnaire survey and interview with the local English teachers, including the influence of traditional English teaching model, the professional quality of rural English teachers and the limitation of rural teaching environment, then puts forward the relative strategies of improving oral English teaching level and several root-solving strategies. It is known that English teachers stand at a predominant position in the process of English teaching, therefore the English teaching quality in rural area is closely linked by the professional level of rural English teachers which depends on self-development of teachers. Hence, in certain sense, the essence of the development of spoken English teaching in rural area exactly equals English teachers’ self-development which is considered as the main point to be discussed in this paper. The last part of this paper discusses the self-development of the English teacher in rural areas, and provides main effective ways for their self-development. In addition, the policy and material support of government and education institution are also necessary, and the educational training and teaching communication between the urban and country schools can be the auxiliary ways to develop the spoken English teaching in rural area.