A Study Of Situation-based Teaching Approach In Improving Vocational School Students' Communicative Competence Of Oral English

Among the four English abilities, speaking ability is regarded as the primary goal by English learners and the teaching center by English teachers. It is paid more attention in vocational schools in Beijing. However, the big problem in English teaching in vocational schools is that most vocational students cannot communicate with others in English after they have learned English for six years. The students cannot apply what they have learned in class in daily situations. Therefore, it is urgent for English teachers in vocational schools to provide the students with the opportunity to practice English in class learning.As an English teacher in a vocational school for many years, the writer wants tofind a solution to the problem. With the help of the teaching methods——theSituational Teaching, the Communicative Teaching and the Situated Learning , and adopted Situation-based Teaching Approach in her own teaching, the writer creates six situations in the class, which are similar to those in real life, and provides students to learn and practice English in such situations. The aims are: 1) to evoke students' interests in learning English; 2) to stimulate students to participate in classroom activities; and 3) to practice English through communicating with others and hence to improve students' English speaking abilities.The writer conducts the experiment in her own teaching class for sixteen weeks. Because of the time limitation and textbook combination, only six situations are created for the students in experimental class to learn and practice English. The same content in the textbook are taught in the controlled class. At the end of the term, data from the experimental class and the controlled class are compared in four aspects: the classroom observation, the interview, the overall English test and the oral English test. The analysis shows that the students in the experimental class participate in the classroom activities more actively and their oral English test scores are higher than those in the controlled class. The writer then draws the conclusion that the situation-based teaching approach did improve students' communicative competence in oral English.Because of the time limitation, the experiment lasts only sixteen months. The conclusion needs to be retestified in English teaching later.