The Application Of Promoting Secondary School Students’ Oral Capability Through Role-play

In the background of the current compulsory education in China,a serious problem prevails in secondary school teaching,that is,teachers focus more on grammar than students’ oral capability.Little attention is paid to the oral language teaching,especially in secondary school classes,and therefore,there is no doubt that students are often messed up with various kinds of problems while speaking English.Factors like unsatisfactory learning environment,few opportunities to practice speaking English in class,students’ own personality and psychological issues have made it worse for them to enhance their oral English capability.In general,there are abundant literature on role play teaching in China at present,however,most of them are mainly focused on the application of oral teaching activities in primary or junior middle schools,and few are related with that in secondary schools.Therefore,this thesis tries to concentrate on the feasibility of role play teaching in secondary school English classes.In order to testify whether role play could improve students’ oral speaking capability,the author directed students in China Secondary School to adapt the texts in Senior One English textbook(Shanghai Oxford Edition)into different types of role playing activities and performed an experiment which was designed to answer the following two questions: 1)Can role play teaching in secondary school English classes improve secondary school students’ oral proficiency? 2)If it can,what is the specific influence in terms of oral capability factors?The experiment was carried out between Class(5)in Senior One in China High School as the experimental class and Class(6)in Senior One as the contrastive class.The experiment started from beginning of September 2016 till the end of November 2016,covering a period of approximately 3 months.In the experimental class,role play teaching was used to assist oral English teaching,while in the contrastive class,regular teaching methods were conducted through reading texts,making dialogues and group activities.During the whole process,quantitative data were collected through questionnaires,oral pre-test and post-test as well as qualitative analyses through classroom observation.Through the experiment,there are two main findings: Firstly,the oral capability of the students in the experimental class has been significantly enhanced,which could be best manifested by students’ improved pronunciation,intonation and more vivid body language,more importantly,their enlarged vocabulary.Secondly,students in the experimental class are more active in oral activities than the contrastive class students,and they are more confident and courageous to show themselves while playing roles.Meanwhile,it is also realized there are some practical problems during the process of role play teaching,for example,the planning of time and the evaluation of students’ performance in oral activities,which still need to be further explored.In view of this,some specific suggestions and strategies are put forward to better strengthen oral English teaching in secondary schools in China in the end.