A Study Of Chinese Students' Communicative Problems In Oral English Test

As economic globalization continues to deepen, the exchanges between countries in the world are constantly strengthened. Language is the primary means for communication, and English as an international language, has become an important tool for international communication. Being an important way of communication, spoken English attracts more and more people's attention. However, English teaching in China is still focusing on the teaching of English grammar and vocabulary, while ignoring the cultivation of students'communicative competence. Therefore, Chinese students'proficiency of spoken English is still not very high. After learning English for several years, many students still can't use idiomatic English to communicate with native speakers appropriately and effectively.English is not the mother tongue of Chinese students. Therefore, various communicative problems may inevitably appear in Chinese students'spoken English, during the actual communication with native speakers. All those communicative problems appeared in the actual communication are worthy of an in-depth analysis. The theory of Error Analysis (EA) provides a theoretical guidance for us to analyze the communicative problems of Chinese students. Error Analysis is a systematic study on errors made by second and foreign language learners, and it is an efficient analytical tool of identifying the learners'errors. As an important branch of applied linguistics, Error Analysis plays an important role in second and foreign language teaching and learning. Most researches of the scholars at home and abroad center on spoken language and the errors of second language separately, while the systematically specialized research on spoken language errors made by second and foreign language learners is much less. This thesis is based on the theory of Error Analysis, and it applies the theoretical framework of EA to analyze the communicative problems appeared in Chinese students'spoken English. It tries to analyze various linguistic problems and pragmatic problems from different perspectives, and trace back to the possible sources which cause those problems. Taking the transcribed 921-minute recordings of oral English tests of the Aston University (the examinees are junior students of Shanxi University in different majors, whose IELTS scores are more than 5.0, and they join in the 3+1program, that is, after passing the examination, students will study in Britain for a year, and then come back to get the diploma and degree of Shanxi University) as the data for a case study, this thesis tries to analyze the communicative problems, which appear in Chinese students' spoken English during the actual communication, from multi-perspectives. It not only can help us to get a full view about both the students' linguistic problems and pragmatic problems, but also can help us to explore the possible sources deeply. What's more, it can provide assistance for Chinese students' error correction so as to help them improve their spoken English. Meanwhile, it can also provide proof and guidance for English teachers to further improve their spoken English teaching.The research shows that in the context of Oral English Test, the communicative problems in Chinese students'spoken English not only occur at the linguistic level such as phonological problems; lexical problems; morphological problems; and syntactical problems, but also appear at the pragmatic level concerning actual language use. Besides, all the communicative problems appeared in this case study can be traced back to three possible sources mainly:first, the mother tongue transfer; second, the target language interference; and third the communication strategy. The communicative problems may cause certain difficulties which may affect the smooth progress of the communication, bring inhibition to the mutual understanding between interlocutors and cost extra efforts for the hearer to perceive the speaker's intended meaning. The communication still keeps on going without any break-down, though the communicative problems may affect the mutual understanding or even impede the progress of communication. It is the active and continuous negotiation that helps the interlocutors to solve the communicative problems, clear up the confusion, misunderstanding or unintelligibility, achieve final mutual understanding, and eventually contributes to the successful communication. And all those findings may shed light on China's spoken English teaching, which would be helpful to spoken English teaching and learning.