Learning Motivation And Oral English Teaching In Senior High School

After over ten years' teaching, what impressed the author most deeply is that most students master certain elementary reading, writing and listening skills while their speaking competence is poor. What they obtain is so-called "mute English" after years of learning.Why do most students agree that oral English is very important in the learning of English while their communicative competence is so poor? The main reason is that because of the influence of traditional teaching method, teachers pay much attention to the passing of knowledge of reading and writing and neglect the development of speaking competence. As a result, students are poorly motivated and they simply lack interest in speaking. However, motivation is considered to be one of the main determining factors in success in learning foreign language. It also helps learners find out the most suitable learning skill and strategy to foreign language. So the best way to solve the problem above is to arouse students' learning motivation.After studying motivation classifications and relevant theories, the author applied Dornyei's Three-level Learning Frame to make an investigation among the seniorâ…¡students. Through analyzing various disadvantageous factors affecting communicative competence, the author worked out some ways to arouse students to improve their speaking competence. Undoubtedly, Reconceptioning teachers' role, updating test systems (or evaluation systems) and renovating teaching methods are the determining factors to motivate students to improve oral English. The author expresses that the approaches suggested can be of some help to English teaching and learning.