Research On Strategies For Improving Oral English Ability Of Vocational College Students: A Perspective Of Situated Cognition

Oral English, one of the four basic skills——listening, speaking, reading and writing, is an important tool in communication. Based on the review of contemporary researches on oral English instruction at home and abroad, the paper focuses on the low efficiency actuality of oral English and discusses the effect mechanism of teachers, teaching materials and students in oral instruction. With instruments of questionnaire, interview and observing students in class, the paper analyzes the main obstacles and strategies of oral English instruction. From the perspective of situated cognition, the paper explores how to optimize oral English instruction environment by using SBI(Strategy By Integrating) instruction and how to improve oral English instruction effect. It makes a conclusion that using strategies in oral English instruction pertinently can improve vocational college students' oral ability. The paper is divided into 4 chapters:Chapter 1 Introduction This part briefly describes the background of the current study, puts forward the research topic, discusses the purposes and significance of the thesis and introduces the relevant methodologies.Chapter 2 Literature Review This part introduces the theoretical foundation of oral English and its principle, based on the analysis of the relevant literatures.Chapter 3 Diagnoses for the problem This chapter illuminates the purposes, objects and methods of the study. Based on Chapter 2, the research gets across interview, questionnaire and observing students in class from oral English teachers and students respectively for data collection and analysis and new process figure about oral English materials, instruction targets, environment, teacher, instruction skills and strategies, effect, ego-knowing and evaluation etc. It draws a conclusion that there are a lot of obstacles in oral English instruction, which are included as follows: teachers' training, instruction strategies in class, updating of contents, realizing of targets, applying of strategies and way of overcoming the mentality obstruction, etc.Chapter 4 Discussions on strategies Based on the analysis of the previous study, the thesis advances strategy of training teachers and teaching strategies in real environment. Aiming at the characteristics of vocational students, the paper provides four strategies to improve the oral English instruction which include"instruction strategy of memorizing: knowledge visualization","strategy of sociable instruction: task instruction","strategy of cognitive instruction: instructional control"and"Strategy of affective instruction: activation self-confidence".The last part analyses the feasibility of using these strategies in oral English instruction for vocational students, points out the limitations of the study and gives some suggestions for further researches.