Appendix I 17
Appendix II 18
Bibliography 19
Acknowledgments 20
I. Introduction
With the rapid and better development of economy and the deepening of cross-cultural communication, new and higher requirements are put forward to the oral English learners. Many researchers have made all kinds of investigations on oral fluency in English teaching and learning, most of whom have made excellent achievements.
In recent 12 years, the study of spoken English has gradually moved from the introduction to digestion and application. On the basis of absorbing and digesting the latest theories of oral English, combining with the characteristics of Chinese learners of English, the researchers are committed to building a theoretical model for the development of Chinese English learners’ oral English. From the thinking and psychological process, this thesis explains the characteristics and the development oral laws of Chinese English learners’ oral English. Zhang Wenzhong made a breakthrough on the research of oral English fluency. He established a theoretical model to explain the development of the second language oral fluency in a foreign language classroom with external learning factors (Zhang 2). Later, Zhang Wenzhong found the 4 laws in further qualitative analysis of the quantitative data (Zhang 3).
The study abroad such as the foreign researcher Leeson gave fluency a specific definition in the first language field. Another important theory was put forward by Fillmore, he identified four different things as criteria for judgment of a person as a fluent speaker (C. J. 79). His definition of fluency was from the point of language production. Brumfit believed that fluency should be described as a rapid and effective processing ability when speaker actually produced a sentence and focused on interaction (C. 84). Now, many researchers both at home and abroad add more supplement to it and complete it constantly.
In the past time, many scholars have paid a lot of attention to the second language
acquisition, and have been made great progress in the research. But the spoken language data is more difficult to collect, record and analyze than the written language materials. Therefore, the study on the oral expression of the second language learners at home and abroad is still relatively weak, both in breadth and depth, it has larger development space. Oral English is a kind of ability to use language to express ideas and to communicate. The ability of people to communicate in English is far from what is expected. In practical teaching, a lot of teachers express that there are the following situations appearing in the teaching process :
Some senior high school students’ written examination are very good, but their oral English is very poor. Students’ reading, writing and translation ability is much higher than that of oral English. In communication, some students concept quite well, but when it comes to expressing what they want to say, they scratch their heads, expressing incompletely, and mixing with Chinese, which is a phenomenon that can be detect such as these, which are easily observed, senior high school students’ oral English is very poor, what a shameful situation it is. Many senior high students are in great need of in English, but they do not have enough confidence to communicate in English but they do not have enough self-confidence to carry out effectively oral communication in particular.源!自`优尔~文)论(文]网[www.youerw.com Oral fluency practice is far from satisfaction which surely hinders the development of overall English competence. Senior high students’ examination results are inconsistent with their practical application ability of English.
This research adopts questionnaire, interview, and comparison analysis methods to analyze the development in senior high students’ oral English fluency, the factors what affecting senior high school students’ oral English fluency are found, and the relative countermeasures are put forward. The thesis will be pided into five chapters. Chapter I is Introduction, which gives a brief historical review and point out the significance of the this research. Chapter II analyzes the factors that influence English oral fluency. Chapter III designs the experimental studies and carries out the data analysis. Chapter IV makes some teaching and learning countermeasures. The fifth chapter is the conclusion.