Imitation-Reciting-Retelling Strategy In Adult English Learners' Oral Competence Development

With the society developing increasingly and the competition intensifyinggradually, learning English is no longer the students' patent. Millions of adults fromall trades and professions join in the English learning group. Specially, since China'sentry into WTO and China's success in winning its petition for holding the OlympicGames in the Year 2008, the number of adult English learners increases swiftly. Beingable to understand and speak English in communication becomes the goal of theseadult English learners. Unfortunately, little research is made about adult Englishlearners at home, in particular, scanty research on adult English learners' speakingability. Therefore, this paper attempts to offer them help to develop their Englishspeaking ability.This paper consists of five chapters.The first chapter deals with adult English learners' characteristics. The adult is aspecial learning group and their age decides their distinctive learning style. It isindicated that age has an obvious effect on forming and employing language learningstrategies and learners' physiology, psychology and learning environment vary withage. Advantages and disadvantages for adult English learners are analyzed in thischapter. It is hoped that they can show their strong points and hide their weaknesses inthe process of developing their oral English competence.The second chapter concerns with related theories, which are employed to guideadult English learners' speaking ability development. Krashen's hypotheses areborrowed: Input Hypothesis reveals how important to input linguistic knowledge, andthere will be no output without input;Affective Filter Hypothesis shows that inlanguage learning, especially in language output, enough motivation and confidence isnecessary;Monitor Hypothesis brings us to reflection that in conversation, themonitoring function of grammar rules is limited by instant utterances. In order to savetime for monitoring, a large number of robotized language knowledge should be input.Swain's comprehensible output hypothesis is also introduced in this chapter. Outputcan make learners come into notice, self-examination and self-reflection. In order todevelop English speaking ability, it is vital for learners to practice a great quantity ofoutput. Extended from Swain's output hypothesis, the two gaps hypothesis isillustrated: to leap over the gap between learners' linguistic knowledge and themeaning they want to express, and bridge the other gap between learners' presentEnglish speaking ability and the native-like English speaking competence, languagestructures in different sizes are the key point.The third chapter is an investigation. The author attempts to help adult Englishlearners find a way to develop their oral English competence through the investigationinto high-level English learners' learning experience. After the study and analysis, it isfound that among the different learning strategies high-level English learners employin their oral English ability development, imitation, reciting and retelling arehigh-frequently employed by them. And through further investigation and interview,the specific methods high-level English learners utilize to exercise these threestrategies are made clear. In this way, adult English learners obtain practicaldirections.The fourth chapter clarifies the imitation-reciting-retelling strategy theoretically.Imitation, reciting and retelling strategies have their own theoretical backgrounds,contents, processes and benefits. Moreover, imitation, reciting and retelling strategiesare interrelated and interdependent to form an integration: imitation strategy is mainlyused to imitate pronunciation, intonation and grammar rules. Learners imitate Englishthinking patterns unconsciously in the learning process at the same time. Imitationhelps learners lay a solid foundation to develop their speaking ability;reciting strategyis mainly used to recite vocabulary, idioms, sentence patterns and texts. It helpslearners increase their confidence in speaking, atomize their linguistic knowledge andbreak away from Chinese thinking;retelling is used to create new language formsaccording to the original texts. Learners can use their own words to express what theywant after they reanalyze and reorganize the original text. Retelling is the rudiment aswell as the prerequisite of free talk. Persevering in retelling over a long period of time,learners will acquire more language knowledge, their own English thinking modes,and accuracy and fluency of their spoken English will also be improved in chorus.These three strategies, imitation, reciting and retelling, are interactive and inseparable,complementing each other to push ahead learners' English speaking abilitydevelopment.In the light of the results from the investigation in Chapter three and with thehelp of the theoretical instructions in Chapter four, applications of imitation, recitingand retelling are illustrated in Chapter five. There are different kinds of training formsin accordance with different learning contents. Duplicated imitation can be used topractice English pronunciation and intonation, and creative imitation can be used topractice grammar and discourse;vocabulary, fixed expressions, sentences, dialogues,short or long passages can be the contents of reciting and learners can practice byswitching roles, filling in blanks, expanding or contracting texts, etc.;texts, stories,movies, listening or reading materials can be the contents of retelling and learners canemploy various techniques to practice. In short, the author presents many effectivemethods to help adult English learners carry out these strategies. Adult Englishlearners can make full use of these methods to develop their English speaking abilitystep by step.It can be perceived that, through theoretical research and practical manifestation,the strategy of imitation-reciting-retelling gets along well with adult English learners'characteristics on the one hand;it conforms to requisitions from related spokenEnglish theories on the other. Therefore, imitation-reciting-retelling strategy is a goodlearning method in developing adult learners' English speaking ability. It is hoped thatthis strategy not only helps adult English learners training speaking ability, but alsobrings enlightenment and support to all students at school who want to improve theiroral English competence.