An Empirical Study On Improving Spoken English Fluency Of Vocational College Students Through Group Work

The teaching objective of higher vocational English course is to train students’ ability ofpractical application of English and focus on their communicative abilities in the workplaceenvironment. One of the goals of communicative language teaching is to develop oral fluencythrough using language. Spoken fluency is viewed as one of the basic requirements of students’foreign language communicative competence.For higher vocational non-English majors, their spoken English fluency is oftenoverlooked. Not much attention is paid to how fluency can be developed through using groupwork in vocational college English classrooms. The author carries out an empirical research onthe application of group work to promote students’ spoken English fluency, and furtherinvestigate the relationship between the use of group work and spoken fluency.This study aims to explore the following questions: whether group work is more efficientthan teacher-centered English class in improving students’ spoken English fluency in vocationalcollege; whether there are any differences in spoken English fluency among vocational studentswith different genders and different motive levels through group work.The author carried out an empirical study of English classroom teaching in vocationalcollege to test the promoting relation between group work and second language spoken fluency.This study mainly uses the quantitative analysis method. First,620students of two departmentsmajoring in accounting and information engineering in LWVC took questionnaires of theAchievement Motives Scale (AMS). According to their motivation level, totally318studentswere chosen to participate in the experiment. From14classes participating in the study, sevenclasses were randomly selected as the experimental group, the other classes as the control group.After18weeks of English teaching in experimental and control group, both groups were testedfor English fluency with the form of impromptu oral expression. After the experiment, statisticalsoftware SPSS17.0was used to analyze the resulting data.The experiment proves that group work has a significant role in promoting spoken Englishfluency of vocational students. Compared the experimental group with the control group, spokenEnglish fluency in the experimental group is significantly higher than that in the control group. Group work is more efficient in enhancing students’ English spoken fluency in vocationalcollege; spoken English fluency of female students in vocational college is significantly higherthan that of male students; spoken English fluency of male students in experimental group isextremely significantly higher than that of male students in the control group; with theimplementation of group work, male students’ SEF has been apparently promoted; spokenEnglish fluency of students in high motive group is significantly higher than that of students inlow motive group. Group work plays a significant role in promoting SEF of vocational studentswith high motive level.The study focuses on the relationship between L2spoken fluency and group work teachingstrategy in classroom setting of Chinese vocational college and studies the influence of differentgenders and achievement motives on spoken English fluency. The findings prove that theapplication of group work has a significant role in promoting spoken English fluency ofvocational students. And through the use of group work, male students’ spoken English fluencyin the experimental group of high achievement motivation has been improved significantly.Therefore, in specific teaching process, teachers should fully take into account different gendercharacteristics and students’ high and low achievement motivation levels, and use individualizedteaching to take advantage of group activities to improve students’ spoken English fluency. It isan attempt to explore the development of L2spoken fluency in classroom setting of Chinesevocational college. It provides reference for present vocational college English teaching andstudy.