On Fostering Learner's Consciousness Of Turn In Oral English Class At Elementary Level

Since the 1970s, the study on the analysis of daily conversations and natural conversations has attracted more and more attention in both linguistics and sociology. The minimum unit of a conversation is a turn .The linguists and sociologists at home and abroad have made some studies on turns in the field of discourse analysis . And some of them have focused on the analysis of the turns of the class conversations . Some scholars at home have made the research on the communication competence of English learners . But those are all mainly on either the explanation of foreign theories or introducing their own experience without authentic proofs. The school where the author of the present paper has worked for is a foreign language school, which has the regular spoken English examination with grading criterions . So the author decides to make an attempt to bring the training of turns in the spoken English teaching into the usual classroom teaching activities so as to develop the students' communication competence.This essay first reviews theories on turns and spoken English , then the author conducts the experiment of the training of turns of conversations in the class teaching . Many different kinds of materials can be used in the turn training including dialogues, discussions , descriptions, role-plays and etc. in the period of the 45-minute class learning except the written practices. The author should design the topics for conversations, make the recording work for the conversation procedures and make arrangements after class . By comparing test results before and after the experiment, the author draws a conclusion about the effect of the turn training on the communication abilities.The conversation topics chosen for the turn training are interrelated to the contents of teaching materials .The spoken English examination in the school where the author teaches is conducted during the week before the final examination of the term. So the results of the spoken English last term are taken as ones before the experiment, and the results in the present term are the ones of the last test after the turn training for a term . Then the paper makes comparison and analysis.The competence part of the tests is the main content to be compared and analyzed. The scoring criterion is based on the three layers, the language expression , the correctness for the usage of the language , the cooperation in the conversation. Comparing the two test results , it is found that the students' expression competence has improved greatly , the language competence has improved a bit better . Moreover, students' abilities for the conversation cooperation have greatly improved . In terms of the findings above , it is proved that the turn training is helpful for the students to improve their conversation abilities.Through the turn training in the spoken English teaching , the students have improved the abilities for conversation cooperation . They attach more importance to the maintenance of their normal and friendly conversation relationship than the improvement of the abilities for language expression . This is not foreseen during the initial stage of the study . There exist some subjective factors which are disadvantageous to the test results in the testing part, and also some objective factors which are unfavorable for the better performance in the test.At the end of the paper, some revelations from the turn training are given, such as the teaching concepts for speaking competence should be changed; the consciousness of turn of the teachers should be possessed and fostered and practiced in the practical teaching ; the students' active attitude for communication should be fostered; the study for spoken and written English should be combined .