On The Application Of Communicative Approach To Spoken English Teaching In Middle Schools

In language teaching, the origins of the communicative approach can be dated back to the late 1960s. As its name indicates, the communicative approach views language learning as a means mainly for communication. This idea appeals to those who seek a more humanistic approach to language teaching and has been widely employed at all levels of foreign language teaching and learning since then.Likewise, the communicative approach, since its first introduction into China at the end of the 1970s, has also exerted profound influence on English teaching and Learning in China when traditional teaching methods were no longer considered appropriate for achieving middle school students' communicative competence. The author has been studying the application of the communicative approach to spoken English teaching in midddle school these years. Some satisfactory findings, which are suitable for the students of middle schools, can be found in the research:The purpose of this thesis is to survey some theoretical principles of the communicative approach and explore the ways of implementing those principles in spoken English teaching and learning. This paper is composed of five chapters.In Chapter One, the author points out that middle school students in China as a whole exhibit a rather low level of English proficiency in speaking and this weakness in English teaching calls for an urgent inquiry into the realms of teaching methodology.Chapter Two carries out a general survey of the communicative approach both in terms of language theory and language learning theory and points out its influence on spoken English teaching in middle schools.In Chapter Three, the main problems of spoken English teaching in middle schools are analyzed. Thus the Communicative Language Teaching is called for to change this situation.In Chapter Four, the author elaborates on the application of Communicative Approach to spoken English teaching, including communicative competence, communicative activities of various kinds with an aim to achieve the students' oral competence, the ways to organize successful communicative activities, the application of authentic materials to spoken English teaching, the attention on the multiple roles of language teachers and students in spoken English teaching as well as the learner-centered classroom. And the author also provides a framework of a spoken English teaching.In Chapter Five, the experimental research part, the author analyzes the students' performance of spoken English at No.2 middle school of Xinjian county, in Jiangxi, and proves that the communicative approach is effective in enhancing the students' speaking proficiency.Chapter Six summarizes the study of the communicative approach conducted in the previous chapters and draws a conclusion that the communicative approach is an effective way of enhancing students' spoken English. It asserts that the communicative approach, whether in theory or in practice, will be continuing to exert fundamental influence on spoken English teaching and learning in middle schools.