A Study Of Oral Activities In Chinese College English Textbooks:How Do They Facilitate Fluency Development

While a body of literature has examined English as a foreign language(EFL)textbooks,there is a paucity of research investigating how oral activities in EFL textbooks facilitate second language(L2)oral fluency development.The rationale for this study is that oral fluency,a central goal of L2 learning,has not received sufficient attention in L2 pedagogy and EFL textbooks.Therefore,the main purpose is to examine how activities in Chinese college English textbooks(CCETs)explicitly provide facilitating learning opportunities for fluency development.The study adopts a qualitative approach to investigating the features of fluency scaffolding provided in oral activities in Book 1 of ten sets of CCETs,and four Books of a set.The findings are two-fold.First,fluency scaffolding of oral activities in Book 1reveals that most CCETs are characterized by the uneven distribution of scaffolding-free activities and scaffolding-providing activities.Scaffolding-free oral activities usually involve personalization,comprehension,and opinion questions.Scaffolding-providing oral activities incorporate not only mono design but also the hybrid design which provides a higher intensity of fluency scaffolding.Overall,fluency scaffolding incorporates pre-task planning time,task repetition,formulaic language,sample,and consciousness-raising elements.Secondly,most oral activities in Textbook A provide at least one type of fluency scaffolding.Across four Books of Textbook A,the total number of oral activities is decreasing while the percentage of scaffolding-free activities undergoes a rise-fall pattern.Across oral activities in a unit,the distribution of fluency scaffolding is closely associated with unit structure and fluency scaffolding develops in a zigzag pattern.Hybrid fluency scaffolding usually occurs in oral activities with active learner engagement,high cognitive demands,and heavy workloads.The study supports the view that fluency is a neglected construct(Rossiter et al.,2010)in most EFL textbooks and provides implications for EFL teachers’ adaption and textbook compilation of oral activities.