Focusing On The Development Of Speaking Skills From Communicative Perspectives

On the basis of the fact that English has become an international language, and the need of participation into the international competition after China's Entry to WTO, more and more educators have realized the importance of developing students'communicative competence, especially the speaking skills. However, traditional English language teaching lingers in an exam-oriented mode resulted from the fact that teachers and students alike are judged by examination results. The 'primary aim' of language learning seemed to be mastery of the grammatical system, which leads to the neglect of students'communicative competence, especially the spoken communication ability. As a result, although students have learned English for many years, they are still incapable of communicating with the English speakers. The paper states that this situation has to be changed and the speaking teaching should focus on the development of the speaking skills.This paper focuses on the development of the students'speaking skills from the communicative perspectives. It is divided into five chapters. Chapter 1 presents the necessity for language teachers to develop the students'speaking skills and analyzes the traditional teaching pattern and the problems existed in it. It advises that one of the most effective ways is to perform communicative tasks in the classroom activities. Chapter 2 studies the literature of past research in the Communicative Language Teaching Approach, the communicative competence and speaking skills. Chapter 3 introduces the ways to promote engagement in communicative activities. It focuses on the techniques to choose meaningful activities and offers sample activities used in the classroom. This paper also discusses how to change the teacher's role meet the needs of communicative activities, how to stimulate students'interest, how to create more authentic communicative environment and how to ensure the success of the activities. Chapter 4 discusses how and when to correct students'errors during the process of teaching and how to overcome classroom problems existed in language teaching. Chapter 5 draws a conclusion that classroom communicative activities are one of the effective ways to develop speaking skills in language teaching.