The Application Of The Output Hypothesis To Oral English Teaching In Senior High Schools

With the advancement of society, the communication and cooperation in many aspects between nations increases, so do the chances that Chinese people contact foreigners, especially after China's entry to WTO. Oral English serving as a way of communication plays an important part in it, with the result that people focus more attention on the teaching and learning of oral English in schools in China. Also, as one of the four language skills (listening, speaking, reading and writing ) oral English teaching has been devoted much attention to by many experts and scholars.At present, however,it is not uncommon that, in English class, oral English teaching has not been allocated sufficient time and activities with both the historical and practical reasons. The input language practice such as listening, reading in English is more given than output practice such as speaking and writing, which indicates that the instructors of English in class have not understood the unity of language learning process appropriately.As the means of social communication, recognition of the world, intelligence development, emotion exchange, the four skills are influenced mutually, promoting and enhancing each other. From different angles, linguists divide the four skills into oral language and written language, as well as language input and language output, which also has the unified organic relationship.From the point view of cognitive process in language learning and acquaintance, language input and output has the relation of dynamic unity. Comprehensive input facilitates the utter understanding of the target language, whereas appropriate output facilitates the mastery of language structure.In traditional teaching, the emphasis is on language input with purpose of cultivating students'linguistic competence, while communicative approaches attach importance to language output for the cultivation of communicative competence in ignorance of the systematicity of the language. Therefore, according to Krashen's Input Hypothesis and Swain's Output Hypothesis, the author here indicates that the attention should be paid to the dynamic relationship of input and output. During different period of language teaching, different emphasis should be placed on training students'comprehensive competence.The author here, from the point view of the dynamic unity of the four skills, comprehensive input and effective output, by making a contrast of the teaching of oral English at home and abroad historically, designs a new model of teaching oral English in class in senior schools in China, hoping to find a practical and effective teaching model of oral English. The design illustrated by an experiment proves to be effective and practical. The highlight of the thesis lies in the close connection between the Out Hypothesis with the current teaching syllabus and materials, so that the teaching model is able to be handled with ease.To meet the demand of the current teaching practice in senior school in China, it is quite significant to carry out the research experimentally on oral English teaching. From the autumn of 2006, the author began to read through the documents concerning the research and gather necessary materials, thus having a good understanding of the Output Theory. Combined with the current English teaching syllabus and teaching materials, a new teaching mode is designed by the author, and was experimented on the two classes in YangXin No.1 School. A pretest was conducted in September, 2007, and the result processed by means of SPSS12.0 shows that the 66 students in the Experiment Group are at the same level of their oral proficiency as the other 66 students in the Control Group at the beginning of the experiment. At the end of the term, a posttest was performed, indicating that after applying the Output Hypothesis to the Oral English Teaching in the EG for a semester of 4 months, the development of the students'oral proficiency as well as their communicative competence is facilitated. Other things being equal except the teaching method, the mean score of the EG in the post-test is significantly higher than that in the CG. That is to say, the Output Hypothesis, when applied appropriately in the classroom setting in Chinese Senior Schools, actually facilitates students'oral proficiency and their communicative competence as well. Concludedly, the author's teaching designation out of the Output Hypothesis Application on the Oral English teaching is of great significance and functions well.