A Study On The Causes And Countermeasures Of Spoken English Obstacles In Rural Junior High Schools

National English curriculum standards of compulsory education emphasizes the development of students’ basic English listening, speaking, reading and writing skills, preliminary formation ability to communicate with others in English. The new junior high school English textbooks are now focused on the cultivation of students’ listening and speaking ability, so as to improve students’ communicative competence in English. However, the current situation of oral English teaching is not ideal, especially in the rural areas. Most rural schools concentrate on training the ability of reading and writing and testing, which obviously runs counter to the current situation of globalization and foreign exchange. So it urgently needs to present an in-depth investigation and study of rural junior high school students’ oral English to find out the feasible way.This study is based on the theories of Krashen’s Input Hypothesis, Swain’s Output Hypothesis and Nattinger and Decarrico’s Chunks of Language. 324 students and 12 English teachers from 3 rural junior high schools in Gaomi County, Weifng City, Shandong Province are selected as the research subjects. Classroom observation, questionnaire and interview are employed to collect data. It aims to ascertain the following questions:1. What are the spoken English obstacles in rural junior high schools?2. What are the causes of spoken English obstacles in rural junior high schools?3. What are the effective countermeasures to overcome the obstacles?The study result shows the phenomenon of spoken English obstacles in rural junior high schools is very common, which mainly reflects in the following: English vocabulary is not rich; pronunciation and intonation is not good; the culture of the Anglo American countries is limited; lack of confidence and feel timid, nervous, anxious when speaking English; lack of the opportunity and the situation to practice spoken English and so on.By analyzing the study result, the causes of spoken English obstacles in rural junior high schools can be summarized as follows. The subjective reasons are the root causes of the obstacles, which include the following: 1. most of the students, especially boys, are not very interested in learning English; 2. the motivation of students’ English learning is mostly instrumental rather than integrative; 3. lack of awareness of the great importance of spoken English; 4. lack of good learning strategies and learning habits; 5. insufficient understanding of the culture of English-speaking countries; 6. psychological quality is relatively poor and lack of self-confidence and experiences of success. The objective reasons make an impact on spoken English obstacles from the various aspects: firstly, poor art of teacher’s asking questions, evaluation of the orientation deviation, single forms of classroom activities, more Chinese of English classroom language and lack of patience and guidance on Ss’ error etc., all of which affect students’ spoken English ability; secondly, lack of English learning environment inside and outside school and the English test system is defective; lastly, the level of parents’ educational quality in rural areas is generally low.It can be clearly seen from the above investigation and analysis that students’ overall level of spoken English in rural junior high schools is low and the phenomenon of spoken English obstacles is very common. In view of the above problems, this thesis respectively puts forward some countermeasures from these four parties: the school and education administrative departments, teachers, students and parents. Overcoming obstacles on school and educational department’s part includes the following: 1. strengthen teachers’ training and improve teachers’ professional quality; 2. strengthen language environment construction; 3. expand the teaching material and increase oral English lessons; 4. reform the English test system and improve the status of speaking. Overcoming obstacles on teacher’s part includes the following: 1. pay attention to input and output, promote language chunk teaching and strengthen the good basic skill of language; 2. create a relaxed learning environment, care about the students’ emotions and help them overcome the psychological barriers; 3. design multidimensional interactive teaching and cultivate students’ cooperative spirit; 4. raise the professional level and improve teaching methods; 5. develop students’ interests, penetrate the western culture and stimulate students’ oral output motivation. Overcoming obstacles on student’s part includes two aspects: from the concept aspect, students should be aware of the importance of spoken English; from the practical aspect, on the one hand, students should pay more attention to the learning of basic knowledge; on the other hand, students should participate more in oral English training activities. At last, parents should provide some material and mental support for students’ learning English.