A Study On The Application Of Communicative Approach To Spoken English Teaching In Higher Vocational School

With the development of human society, the intercourse between countries in every aspect is progressively increasing. Therefore, the importance of English as an international language has already been inarguable. However, the students' English proficiency, especially their spoken English proficiency is very poor. Many non-English majors in technological school may not speak even a single complete sentence in a real language context after more than ten years' English learning. Maybe they are able to say out some isolated words, or to talk like a book. Anyhow, their English communicative competence is far from satisfactory.The author has been devoted herself for so many years to seeking for an effective method to promote the teaching and to improve the students' oral English proficiency. Communicative Approach(CA),namely CLT was firstly found in the changes of the major British approach to First Language teaching(FLT), dating from 1960s. Since its introduction to China at the end of 1970s, it greatly arose both the teachers' and learners' attention. It is "an approach to foreign or second language teaching which emphasizes that the goal of language learning is communicative competence" (Richard, 1992). "One of the most characteristic features of communicative language teaching is that it pays systematic attention to functional as well as structural aspects of language." (Littlewood ,1981:1 ). In 1992 the State Education Development Commission (SEDC) introduced a functional syllabus that set the goal of communicative teaching and listed the communicative functions to be taught. In the same year, in cooperation with the publisher Longman, the SEDC published a new textbook series for communicative teaching. The syllabus and the textbooks required teachers to teach communicatively in classrooms.The author has carried out the research with 79 sophomoric non-English majors from two intact classes in Hetao University participated in it, forty from Public Relashionship and Secretary class as experimental class(EC) and thirty-nine from Tourism Class as controlled class(CC), which mainly focuses on whether the application of Communicative Approach(CA) to English class of non-English majors is effective on improving students' oral English competence. The CA is adopted in the EC and the traditional method in the CC. Two spoken tests and questionnaires, interviews, and classroom observations are involved in the research. A four-month experiement concluded with the demonstration that the application of CLT is effective to improve students' oral English proficiency.The thesis falls into six chapters. The author orderly represents the introduction of CA, literature review, specific application of communicative approach to spoken English teaching, the research design, data collection and conclusion in the six chapters .When the thesis comes to the conclusion, the author re-states that it's a worthy attempt to apply CA to English teaching of non-English majors' class as far as their oral English is concerned.