Study On Oral English Communication Strategy Teaching Model For Non-English College Students

In recent years China’s education has got rapid development, the demand for talentsof various disciplines greatly increased; college English has become one of thecompulsory courses for University students and English has become the most widelyused language in different areas of people’s life. Oral English communicativecompetence plays a vital role in English communication as it not only reflects aforeigner learner’s language knowledge, but also reflects the learner’s knowledge of theculture, custom, thinking patterns of the people that speak the language. However, thenon-English major students’ language proficiency level is much lower compared withEnglish-major students. This reality is not only reflected in the exams, but also in oralEnglish communicative competence.The purpose of learning a foreign language is to use it for communication; therebyincreasing students’ communicative competence is the primary task of foreign languageteaching. As an integral part of communicative competence, strategic competenceteaching should be one of the goals of oral English teaching, especially for non-Englishmajor students whose English proficiency level is relatively low. Communicationstrategies and oral communicative competence are closely linked, and communicationstrategies are teachable. Learner’s communicative competence can be improved byteaching them communication strategies in oral English classroom.Based on theories of communication strategy, this paper has surveyed180non-English major students from Chongqing University by means of questionnaire,interview and classroom observation. The questionnaire is expected to obtain thestudents’ understanding of communication strategies and their use frequency; theinterviews are conducted as a complement to the results of the questionnaire; classroomobservation is meant to observe the students’ use and the teacher’s teaching ofcommunication strategies. The results will be analyzed and finally a communicationstrategies teaching model will be proposed.The research has found that most of the surveyed students did not have a clearunderstanding of communication strategies. The results of the questionnaire showed thatonly11.7％of them were familiar with communication strategies;66.1％of them justheard of them, and22.2％of them never heard of the term of communication strategy.Results and analysis have also shown that the frequency of the students’ use of communication strategies is between occasionally and sometimes, which is pretty low.However, through interviews the author has found that some students are actuallylearning and using communication strategies in an implicit way; inspired by this factthis paper proposes a communication strategy teaching model respectively fromsemantic level and discourse level，with the purpose of enabling students to learncommunication strategies and improving their strategic competence and eventuallyimproving their communicative competence.