A Research On The Application Of Communicative Approach To The Teaching Of Junior High School English Listening And Speaking

With the development of human society, the intercourses of economic trade and cultural communication have become more and more frequent. It leads to enhancement of people's understanding on English. Nowadays, English teaching has attracted much attention among many countries. The birth of communicative approach was a leap in the development of linguistic theory in 20th century. It greatly enriched the theories and methods of foreign language teaching. Communicative approach has received tests in foreign language teaching practice among so many countries that it is also widely recognized and accepted by the English teaching circle around the word.Communicative approach was introduced into China in the late seventies in 20th century. Although the domestic foreign language circle has different views and attitudes towards communicative approach, we have to admit that communicative approach has become one of the most influential teaching methods in China's English teaching. However, most of the study on communicative approach is carried out in colleges, little research work is done in the elementary education. Since the new curriculum reform is carried out all over the country, English teaching in middle school has pay more attention to the students'competence of actual use of language, so that it can cater to the society's communicative requirements. Because the basic theories of communicative approach adjust to the requirements, the communicative approach gradually penetrates in China's middle school English teaching, including the English teaching in junior middle school naturally. Therefore, it is necessary to face the impact of communicative approach on middle schools'English teaching and evaluate it objectively, so that it can guide the English teaching in middle schools more effectively.The researcher carries out an empirical study of communicative approach's application in English teaching of junior middle school. It aims to study the influence of communicative approach to the listening and speaking abilities. It also gains an insight into the feasibility and realization of communicative approach, so that it can give advice to the teachers to help the students improve listening and speaking abilities. Two parallel classes randomly chosen from Experimental High School in Zhoucun district are treated as experimental class and control class. There are 91 students participate in the teaching experiment. Listening and oral pre-tests are organized before the experiment. The results show that the students'listening and speaking abilities are almost at the same level. There is no significant difference between the two classes. In the process of the experiment, the traditional teaching method is applied in the control class, and the communicative approach is applied in the experimental class. Two classes have the same English teacher in order to achieve the purpose of examining the differences of the two teaching methods after the experiment. SPSS and other instruments are applied to statistical analysis: (1) whether the experimental class gains higher marks than the control class in the listening post-test; (2) whether the experimental class gains higher marks than the control class in the oral post-test. The final results show that the experimental class which applies communicative approach gains higher scores than the control class which applies traditional teaching method in the listening and oral post-tests. The four-month teaching experiment proves that communicative approach is an effective teaching method in developing students'communicative competence.