A Study Of Native English Speaking Teachers' Roles In Oral English Teaching In The Senior High Schoo

With the development of society, the new English Curriculum Standards for High Schools clearly puts forward for the first time that the English language education in senior middle schools is an important process of cultivating foreign language quality for citizens. The education should not only meet the needs of the developing students'mind and emotional attitudes in a positive way, but also satisfy the needs of employment and further education for high school graduates. At the same time it ought to answer society's demand of talented people in the field of economic construction and science and technology. The new English Curriculum Standards for High Schools also emphasizes the English teaching should strengthen students'English using ability, including the competence of communicating with others in English appropriately, obtaining and dealing with information in English and thinking directly in English.It is therefore not difficult to see that the importance of oral English teaching is increasingly reinforced in senior high schools. However, due to the influence of traditional method of"cramming teaching"and the grammar-translation method in English class, oral English teaching is the weakest link compared with reading and writing teaching. At one time, English teaching was called"dumb English"in our country. In order to turn the situation around, native English speaking teachers are gradually being brought into oral English class in senior high schools to help students feel the authentic English language and culture. It is expected that the quality of oral English teaching can be enhanced and students'comprehensive capability in English can be well-developed in this way.Based on this case, an investigation was conducted on the native English speaking teachers and their roles in oral English teaching in three senior high schools of Qingdao city. All of these three schools have had the foreign teachers'oral class for at least 4 years. It is therefore quite necessary to carry out an exploration on the teaching characteristics of these teachers and the roles they play in oral English teaching. The exploration is to seek the answers to the following questions: 1) What teaching methods do the foreign teachers employ in oral English class? 2) What effect does the foreign teachers'teaching have on students? 3) What problems do there still exist in the foreign teachers'teaching work?The exploration was based on the investigation of one semester. The subject samples are six native English speaking teachers from three senior high schools. During the procedure of the exploration, the researcher visited the foreign teachers'class twice each week for class observation, one in Grade one and the other in Grade two. The average number of the students in each class was 55, and one period of foreign teacher's oral class was intended for each class every week. In addition, at the end of the semester, the questionnaire was carried out for getting the students'feedback on the foreign teachers and their oral classes. By analyzing the feedback, it can be figured out what the students think about the foreign teachers class, including the values, problems and their expectations for the native English speaking teachers. At last, the six subject foreign teachers and five non-native English speaking teachers chosen randomly were interviewed by the researcher about their understanding and perceptions on the foreign teachers'oral teaching jobs at the end of the semester. By interviewing these teachers and rethinking the effect that the foreign teachers had on the oral English teaching, it is hoped that the oral class of the native English speaking teachers plays a much more role in improving students'communicative competence.In order to analyze data collected from the study, interactive language teaching, input and output hypothesis theories and culture teaching are used as theoretical basis. Firstly, Oral communication is a process of interaction between the speakers and listeners, which involves the productive skill of speaking and the receptive skill of listening with understanding. In the class of interactive language teaching, more opportunities will be created to motivate students to speak as much as possible. Secondly, for language learners, they require large amount of language material input by listening and reading before the effective output. And this is a natural process of language acquisition, which is thought to be the best way to learn and master a target language. Only in this way can the learners put what they have learned into use so that they can communicate in both speaking and writing form. Lastly, language and culture are closely related and cannot be separated. Therefore, the process of learning a language is the process of learning a culture as well. In order to make communication meaningful, the learners should follow the target culture's habits of thinking and behaviors. The study has made the following major findings. First, advantages and values of foreign teachers to teach oral English class are: 1) Foreign teachers value the importance the interactive activities and often provide a comfortable atmosphere in their class, which frees students from fear and worry and helpful to motivate students to participate the activities in class. 2) Foreign teachers speak authentic English naturally, automatically and confidently. It is of great value that students can input the different kinds of native accents and gradually output the target language without the influence of mother tongue. 3) Foreign teachers have their own advantages to adopt different ways to transfer cultural knowledge to students and cultivate their cross-cultural competence, which will be beneficial to their competence of using English to communicate. However, there are also some problems for native English teachers in teaching oral English class: 1) Some foreign teachers lack the experience of teaching, which leads to some problems in class, such as: speaking too fast and inefficient design of teaching activities. 2) The big size of class is an obstacle for foreign teachers to carry out oral teaching. 3) Some misunderstandings caused by culture conflict come up between foreign teachers and students.In a word, oral English class taught by foreign teachers is absolutely beneficial to students and the whole English teaching in senior high schools. However, some problems have also arisen unavoidably. Therefore, it is hoped that by investigating the better use will be made of the teaching resource of the native English speaking teachers to promote the oral English teaching in senior high schools.