| Numerous studies show that retelling training plays a positive role in promotingoverall spoken ability of English learners. However, currently no studies have shown thatwhat impact the story-retelling has on specific forms of language acquisition in oralexpression. English teaching practice in our country is mainly based on Krashen’scomprehensible input theory; therefore, the phenomenon of "dumb English" emerges.While students put a lot of time and efforts in English learning, they can not communicateverbally and written in English freely. English learning did not satisfy the purpose oflanguage learning.Many scholars questioned Krashen’s comprehensible input theory. Among themSwain is the most influential one. Swain raises the comprehensible output hypothesisaccording to the findings of the Canadian French Immersion Programs. The theoryexplains the causes of such phenomena. She insists that we must pay attention to the roleof output so as to really master a foreign language and improve the oral English ability.The output theory force language learners to use the learned knowledge through speakingand writing, which make the output of language possible during the process of speakingand writing. However, it has been also noted that, not all language output can promotelanguage acquisition and learning.In this study, the author mainly uses the "noticing function" of output hypothesis. Itrefers to that when outputting the target language, learners may notice that there is acertain gap between what they want to express and what they actually expressed, whenthey output language, they encounter language problems, which attract their attention tothe language knowledge that they do not understand before or is not entirely understood.In other words, the output activities may stimulate second language learners consciouslytake notice of some language problems. Although there are kinds of output-based teaching methods such as role-playing, dialogue exercises, and impromptu speech and so on. Ibelieve that the retelling training is the simplest and most effective way to learn a foreignlanguage. As a result of this, the present study takes notes on the roles of story-retelling inpromoting the higher vocational college students’ oral English.The study subjects are selected from Shanxi Management Vocational College. Theyare freshmen and non-English majors. The experiments are designed on the grounds ofSwain’s output hypothesis and its related researches at home and abroad.34freshmen arescreened as subjects from non-English majors; they are divided into two groups and areassigned to complete nine story-retelling tasks. First, the subjects complete the retellingtask on the basis of the storyline and related subjects prompts, then teachers demonstratethe original story, after that, two groups of subjects are required to complete differenttasks. The first group, students only retelling the story, the teacher does not make anyfeedback (control group). The second group, students retelling the story, the teacher pointsout the errors and gives some feedback (experimental group). After eight times’ retellingpractice, on the ninth week the two groups of students were required to retell the samestory and be observed for the changes.The SPSS statistics software is used to process and analyze the data collected fromthe experiment. The results display that retelling exercises have positive effects on theimprovement of learner’s attention to language forms further to improve their oral Englishability; retelling and feedback have more effects on the improvement of learner’s attentionto language forms thus improve their oral English ability greatly.Therefore, this study demonstrates that retelling training, especially retelling andfeedback is beneficial to the improvement of the accuracy of spoken language form forlanguage learners in a certain degree, further to improve their oral English ability. Thus itcan be seen that the study has positive enlightenment on English teaching and spokenEnglish improvement. |
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