On Cultivating Communicative Competence In Oral English Teaching At Senior Middle School

The main purpose of qualified education in English is to cultivate the students'communicative competence gradually and make them have the ability to communicate with others freely and appropriately. This thesis focuses on how to develop students'communicative competence in English teaching at senior middle school. Richard and Rodger (1986) pointed out that the functions of language are interaction and communication. Language skills consist of listening, speaking, reading and writing.Stern (1990) and Walcott (2001) believed that communication and communicative competence are regarded as the main purpose of language teaching. What's more, the teaching of communicative competence has been looked upon as a tool, a way and a teaching method. So the English teaching should take the students-centered method, stimulating and cultivating their interests in English learning. Only in this way can they form a good learning habit and grasp effective learning strategies, which will improve their competence in using English precisely. This is our ultimate goal in learning English.Compared with writing and reading ability, students'oral communicative competence is quite low. And it is very difficult to make the students live up to the standards of new curriculum. Because language skills can only be improved through experiences. The process of language learning is not only a combination between old knowledge and new knowledge, but also an automatic application from theoretical knowledge to practical use.This thesis analyzes the problems in the oral English teaching on the bases of communicative theory and second language acquisition. It also puts forward some ways to solve these problems by discussing the ways and strategies from the angle of second language acquisition.This thesis consists of five chapters. The first chapter makes a study of the current situations of spoken English teaching at senior middle school and the relative studies of communicative competence at home and abroad. The second chapter mainly reviews the linguistic theories to this study. The third chapter is the investigation and discussion. and it analyzes the results of the investigation, which proves that it is quite necessary and effective to adopt different teaching methods by designing real communicative activities. The forth chapter presents the problems of spoken English and analyzes the reasons of the students'poor communicative competence. The fifth chapter makes some suggestions to the teachers and students. And in the end, a conclusion is made. As teachers, we should keep in mind that the real goal of English teaching is to cultivate the students'communicative competence. To achieve the aims of language teaching and improve the teaching quality, we still have a long way to go.