An Investigation Of Speech Planning Use By Vocational College Students

The high demands for oral communicative competence and the status quo of EFL learners' speaking ability are promoters of the research in the area of oral English teaching. The use of planning in spoken English has been the focus of much work in language research. However, previous studies have merely investigated the effect of planning on language proficiency in terms of accuracy, fluency and complexity. There are still research gaps in this area.The present study is intended to explore the actual practice of speech planning use and give a clear description of differences between high and low proficiency level groups.On the basis of theoretical rationale and a review of previous studies, the present study was conducted with both quanti(?)and qualit^(?)analysis. Firstly,154 students were identified to be the participants of the present study, and they were grouped into three proficiency levels based on their oral test scores from PETS 3. Then, data was collected mainly through a 46-item questionnaire, and partly by means of semi-structured interviews. The statistic data was analyzed by SPSS (14.0).It is found that the participants have formed the consciousness of speech planning. They always or almost always use speech planning in language performance. In terms of different spoken discourses, participants plan monologues more frequently than dialogues. From the perspective of different aspects of speech planning, participants tend to plan linguistic knowledge in both monologic and dialogic discourses. It may be interpreted that the familiarity to the task, the difficulty of the task and human's limited capacity processing have the impact on speech planning use. It can also be revealed that high and low proficiency level groups have a command of speech planning skills in different degrees and there is a large gap between participants at different proficiency levels. High proficiency level group uses speech planning more frequently than low proficiency level group. The two groups have different preferences to the use of speech planning. Higher group takes linguistic knowledge into account. Lower group is liable to concern content.In the end, the present research indicates some pedagogical implications yielded from major findings, and its limitations as well as suggestionsfor future studies.