The Effect Of Interactive Approach On Learners' Oral Performance With Non-English Majors

In the process of English teaching in Heze Institute, Shandong, China, some frequently observed problems related to the oral performance of learners, especially the non-English majors are as follows: In oral production, learners rely habitually and heavily on grammatical analysis and translation---translating the intended meaning from their mother tongue into the target language word for word, sentence by sentence. If not falling back on these strategies, it is unlikely, to some extent, for them to express the intended meaning smoothly in many cases, if not in all. It is difficult for them to use the target language for real-life communication fluently and accurately. As a consequence, Pidgin English and "Chinglish" expressions often occur in their oral performance.The underlying reasons for such a situation may be derived from many factors among which deficiency in teaching methodology (i.e. the Traditional Teaching Method) is probably one. In the light of the traditional teaching method, the teachers impart a mass of declarative knowledge to the learners, on the one hand; the learners acquire little procedural knowledge because of lack of ample oral practice, on the other hand. According to Anderson (1995), learners must assimilate the declarative knowledge through ample practice before they can use it automatically in real-life communication. The declarative knowledge learned in the classroom cannot be converted into the procedural knowledge and internalized into the learners' interlanguage system because of inadequate emphasis of the traditional teaching method on oral practice on the part of learners. This situation hinders the learners'...