External Factors Affecting Chinese English Learners' Oral Fluency In SLA

With the entry into WTO and the operation of 2008 Olympic by Beijing, oral speaking fluency of Chinese-English learners is emphasized in China. Related reports were published in the media and Internet. Zhu Luzi, professor in Nankai University, had an article English Has Been a Great Cancer which gained the mounts of students'replies and was cited again. According to it the current English learners'English in China is non-fluent and is a failure. Educators and scholars are trying to know why Chinese-English learners seldom match their ability of reading and writing correspondingly with their'oral ability. But research on fluency is far from systematic in the study of Second Language Acquisition. There is not sufficient introduction of research on language production and fluency aboard on one hand, and it is just a beginning to make theoretical research and experimental exploration on production and fluency at home on the other hand.Although there are many factors that affect fluency in English, those factors are either internal or external. This dissertation studies the external factors and aims at evaluating those factors which affect learners'speaking competence most. Based on oral speaking fluency theory of First Language Acquisition and Second Language Acquisition, a conclusion is made that the main four reasons-- social contexture, language input, speech interaction and opportunity to speak- are most relative to non-fluent English, by analyzing English learners'data collected in a medium-sized Chinese city and application of SPSS10.0 and to what extent each factor affects fluency.Fluency is complicated. Because of the four factors and other reasons, many Chinese English learners'English is not fluent. This can be regarded as a transiting stage to fluency. Therefore Professor Zhu Luzi's conclusion that English education was failure in China is not appropriate. With more communication and better facilities, oral ability of Chinese-English learners will move for non-fluency to more fluency.