A Research On Application Of Genre Circle Activities In College Students’ Oral English Learning

Genre circle activities are group learning activities and they are designed in light of the theoretical underpinning for the holistic approach towards foreign language teaching.Under the guidance of the teacher,students reproduce discourse contents,experience and reflect on the discourse meaning construction process through role playing,thus activating and internalizing their language knowledge,developing their language skills,and improving their comprehensive quality.The researcher attempts to implement genre circle activities in college students’ oral English learning,aiming to explore the effectiveness of conducting genre circle activities in oral English learning.The research questions are as follows:1.What are the effects of doing genre circle activities on college students’ oral English ability?2.What are the significant differences in oral English ability development between the college students who partake in genre circle activities and those who do not?The research took argumentation circle,exposition circle,and narrative circle as examples to carry out an 8-week teaching experiment.A total of 73 first-year students from Guangxi Normal University was recruited as participants,who are all art students.37 of them were arranged together as a class.They were randomly assigned to the experimental group.Other 36 were assembled together as another class.They were assigned to the control group.The two intact classes were randomly selected before their first English class.Students of the experimental group took part in genre circle activities.They read the text,and then they share their reading by role playing,while those of the control group only read the text.The research instruments include oral tests and reflection journals.Before the experiment,students in the two classes took the pretest of speaking.After the experiment,they sat for the posttest of speaking.Following the prompts given by the author,students of the experimental group wrote reflective journals.Two English teachers scored participants’ oral performance in terms of three commonly used criteria: oral delivery,language use,and content development.The scores assigned by the two raters were averaged to make a participant’s final grades for the speaking tests.The author performed the paired-samples and independent-samples t-tests for participants’ scores.The data from reflective journals were coded in light of three themes: students’ attitude towards applying genre circle activities in oral English learning,students’ perceptions on their improvements after doing genre circle activities,and students’ suggestions on designing and organizing genre circle activities.The results from data analysis show that implementing genre circle activities has a positive effect on college students’ oral English ability（p=.002）.By doing genre circle activities,students not only improve their oral English ability,but also enhance their ability to cooperate and build their confidence.As to the differences in oral English ability development between the experimental and control group,prior to the experiment,there is no significant difference in oral delivery（p=.132）and content development（p=.219）.The two groups are approximately equivalent in oral delivery and content development.There is a significant difference in language use（p=.034）.The experimental group displays a higher ability level in language use.After the experiment,there are significant differences in oral delivery（p=.005）,language use（p=.000）,and content development（p=.000）.The experimental group’s ability in oral delivery,language use,and content development is significantly higher than the control group’s ability in those.There are three pedagogical implications on implementing genre circle activities in oral English learning.First,the teacher is expected to read the text carefully and select genre materials which are suitable for narrative circle,description circle,exposition circle,argumentation circle,or instruction circle.Second,the teacher should provide cases for each type of genre circle activity so that students imitate.Third,in the process of assessing students’ performance in genre circle activities,self-assessment,peer assessment,and teacher assessment should be combined.And students are told what they have achieved and what they need to work on next.