The Application Of Communicative Strategies In Oral English Instruction For Higher Vocational College Students

Many linguistic researchers both here and abroad have studied EFL speech language learning in terms of various aspects. The results of which show that the effective use of communicative strategies can improve the learner’s oracy. That is, the communicative strategies play a vital role in improving the capacity of English communication. American linguist Dwell Hymes holds the viewpoint:Communicative competence includes not only the understanding and grasp to a form of language, but also the comprehension and mastering in when and where, and how and to whom to use language appropriate form of communication systems of knowledge.The researcher designed the communicative strategy training model to conduct an empirical research on first-year students in Chengde Nursing Vocational College. This experiment was done to answer the following two questions:1. Can students’communicative level and interest be improved by communicative strategy training?2. Which aspects of students’oral English are improved obviously and which ones are not?This experiment lasted four months. Eighty female vocational college students from two classes, who graduated from junior middle schools, took part in the experiment. One class was assigned to be Control Group which was taught with traditional method while the other class was assigned as Experimental Group which was taught with the communicative strategies approximation, word coinage, literal translation, appeal for assistance and mime. Both groups were taught by the researcher himself, Oral tests, questionnaire investigation and students’ interviews were applied in the process. The two groups were given an oral pre-test at the beginning of the study and no significant difference in language proficiency was found between them. At the end of the study the two groups were post-tested orally. The following are the conclusions that there exists significant difference in the oral post-test results between the two groups in favor of Experimental Group and that the students’ oracy about vocabulary, fluency and coherence has been improved greatly but their ability about grammar and pronunciation is not obvious and that English learning interest of students in Experimental Group has been more improved than that in Control Group.This research has made a foremost attempt to the effect of communicative strategy training in Grade One in vocational college, but there are still a lot of limitations. The researcher will adopt other communicative strategies, such as description, language switch in helping the students to improve their communicative competence during the future teaching and study.