An Empirical Study Of The Situational Teaching Method In Oral English Teaching At Vocational Colleges

With the globalization of the economy, especially after China’s participation in the WorldTrade Organization, English as a more universal language of international communication isplaying an increasingly important role. The social needs of oral English applicationcapabilities continuously enhance, but Chinese students’ current oral English teachingcondition is not too optimistic. For a long time, English teaching of vocational colleges inChina have put emphasis on written English and have not paid attention to spoken English, soit leads to the fact that students’ spoken English level is generally not high, and pronunciationis impure; moreover, they are ashamed to speak in English haltingly or just speakChinese-style English, which can not meet the needs of the economic and social development,in particular, can not adapt to the reform and opening up and expanding foreign relations. Inresponse to this situation, as the higher vocational English teachers, we should implement theeducation policy applying for the purpose of practice, being enough for the degree of premise,and focusing on the distinctive spoken English teaching mode. The author finds someresearchers think the Situational Teaching Method (STM) can help improve students’ oralEnglish level, but the research in secondary vocational school on oral English teaching is few.In the paper, under the guidance of Constructivist Learning Theory, Krasner’s InputTheory and Situational Cognitive Theory, the oral English teaching is input effectively to thestudents with the Situational Teaching Method. In order to get a clear picture of theapplication of the Situational Teaching Method in English classroom teaching at vocationalcolleges, the author put it into the practical teaching activities, trying to answer the followingspecific questions through the teaching experiment:1) Which way is the most welcomed andeffective by the students in the Situational Teaching Method.2) Whether the SituationalTeaching Method contributes to the improvement of vocational students’ spoken Englishskills and interpersonal skills.3) Whether the Situational Teaching Method can increase vocational college students’ interest in oral English learning, motivation, and othernon-intelligence factors.In order to analyze and study the application of the Situational Teaching Method in theoral English class of vocational school, the author first gave a test to the students who came tothis school in2009and whose major is English in Yun Cheng Teachers’ Colleges, andconducted the pre-questionnaires about students’ interests on oral English learning, then chosetwo class whose English level are similar (one for the experimental class with38students,and the other for the control class with42students)to carry out a14-week teachingexperiment. During the teaching experiment, the Situational Teaching Method is applied inthe experimental class; while traditional grammar translation teaching method in the controlclasses. At the end of the experiment, post-test and questionnaires were given to the students,the test data and the results of the questionnaires were analyzed quantitatively andqualitatively with statistical software SPSS17.0. The empirical results show that:1) In theSituational Teaching Method, role-playing, debating competitions and real situation-creativeteaching activities are the most welcomed and effective ways by the students.2) Theapplication of the Situational Teaching Method helps to improve vocational school students’interest and motivation, self-confidence in learning spoken English and to improve thelearning effect.3) The Situational Teaching Method can help improve the students’ oralEnglish communication skills and the students’ overall level of spoken English. Based on thefindings, the author proposed teaching suggestions, and pointed out the limitations andshortcomings of this study, and the direction of future research.