Research On The Application Of Cognitive Flexibility Theory To College Students’ Sustainable Speaking Ability

People are all aware of the fact that language is the most importantcommunicative tool of mankind, and English is in particular the one for today’sinternational communication. The goal of English language teaching (ELT), as manyscholars have pointed out, is to help learners become efficient and competent users ofEnglish. With China’s increasing exposure to the global marketplace, the need forproficiency in spoken English is critical. The real function of English lies in beingused as a tool to talk to the world and exchange ideas.The present paper is an empirical research to testify the effectiveness ofcognitive flexibility theory (CFT) on the improvement of students’ sustainablelearning ability in speaking, the ability to transfer knowledge and skills to novelsituations.Based on CFT, the author of the present thesis attempts to give some tentativesuggestions on how language teachers try their best to help students developsustainable learning ability in speaking. Teachers and educators should focus less onthe transmission of content expertise and more on facilitating the process of learning,particularly the skill of “learning how to learn”.With a view to obtaining scientific statistics，an experimental research aiming totestify the effectiveness of the proposed teaching strategies is conducted followingspecific design and procedures. First, four hypotheses were made, and the experimentlasted for a semester. Then data were collected and results were assessed with the helpof the statistical instrument. Finally, the marked differences of the means between theExperimental Group and the Control Group in the final tests indicated that theteaching strategies mentioned had a significant effect on sustainable learning. The thesis consists of six chapters.Chapter One is a brief introduction about significance and the framework of thispaper.Chapter Two reviews the current situation of English speaking in China andexplains sustainable learning ability.Chapter Three introduces Cognitive Flexibility Theory and its application toteaching instruction.Chapter Four is the research design of the present study including the specifichypotheses, the subjects to be investigated, the test forms, the survey instrument aswell as the statistical instrument used.Chapter Five sums up the findings of the survey.Chapter Six is the conclusion of the thesis, including a brief summary, somesuggestions for teaching, the limitations, and suggestions for future research.