A Study Of English Public Speaking Strategies From The Perspective Of Adaptation Theory

As a vital means of communication, public speaking enjoys a long history in the westerncountries, which can be traced back to the period of Aristotle. With the development of humansociety, public speaking, an important means of communication, has been applied to variousoccasions and is becoming more and more important. English, as a foreign language, has themost learners in China. English public speaking becomes an indispensable part of our life,which can effectively help us develop language application ability and communication abilityto better express our views on different occasions. At the same time, English public speakingstrategies are also widely used.In this paper the author tries to analyze the English public speaking strategies from thepragmatic perspective with Verschueren's Adaptation theory. According to the adaptationtheory, proposed, enriched and developed by Verschueren,"language use must consist of thecontinuous making of linguistic choices, consciously or unconsciously, for language internal(i.e. structure) and/or language external reasons."Human beings can make the linguisticchoices and use language freely. According to Verschueren, the reason is that language itselfpossesses three features: variability, negotiability and adaptability. The three notions arefundamentally inseparable, and adaptability has the most generality. Linguistic adaptationcould be examined from four angles for a better pragmatic explanation. The four angles arecontextual correlates of adaptation, structural objects of adaptation, dynamics of adaptation,and the salience of the adaptation process.According to Adaptation theory, this paper holds that the English public speakingstrategy is actually the adaptation process of the speaker's making-choice to realize the aim ofspeaking.Based on the theoretical framework of language adaptation theory, the author choosesvarious English public speaking strategies as the specific research materials, and analyzesthem from the following four aspects: their adaptation in contextual correlates, structuralobjects, dynamics, and the salience, trying to analyze English public speaking strategies from the perspective of the new theory.On the basis of the theoretical analysis, in this paper the author also carried out herresearch on college English public speaking strategies, their influences on the students'English learning and the implications for English teaching in classrooms by means ofquestionnaire, interview and classroom observation as well as video-watching. The surveyresult illustrates the main strategies of college English public speaking, and proves theimportance of English public speaking in students'English learning and the important role itplays in English teaching classroom.Since English public speaking is widely used in our daily life, the grasp of English publicspeaking strategies can effectively improve people's pragmatic and communication ability.English public speaking can provide a good platform for students to learn English on.Therefore, in foreign language teaching classroom, teachers can employ English publicspeaking to help students learn English well with intensive training, and give students someinstructions on English public speaking strategies, improving their language application andcommunication abilities.