A Study On Problems Of Oral English Teaching And Learning In Rural Secondary Schools And Their Countermeasures

Recently, English teaching got the phased objectives. With the promulgation and reform of New Curriculum Standard, many foreign language talents are fostered. But China covers a vast geographic area. The unbalanced economy leads to the unbalanced education. In some rural areas, English teaching method is backward and breaches the rule of New Curriculum Standard. Grammar-translate teaching method is the main teaching method in those schools, and the comprehensive language ability is ignored, especially oral English.This paper is based on “Output Hypothesis” and “Interactive Hypothesis”, which is an empirical study. In order to find the problems and countermeasures of oral English teaching and learning in rural middle schools, the author uses questionnaires and interview to do research. The author chose two hundred students and eighty-five teachers as the subject of questionnaire and ten students and eight teachers as the subjects of interview. They were all from the rural middle schools of Jilin and Heilongjiang provinces and Inner Mongolia autonomous region. After getting the data, the author used the software SPSS and Excel to analyze the data.After the analyzing students’ questionnaires, the author got some findings: 1). Students’ attitude of oral English learning is negative. 2). They spend little time on oral English. 3). Campus environment cannot improve help for their oral English learning. And from teachers’ questionnaires and interviews, the author also got some findings: 1). The academic level of teachers was far from standard level. 2). Current teaching behavior went against the comprehensive language ability, especially oral English teaching. 3). This phenomenon was much serious among those elder teachers but those teachers who had higher academic degree and those who took more trainings were better in those problems. 4). The rural campus could not provide a suitable oral English learning and teaching environment for students and teachers.The author got students favorable oral English learning methods in students’ questionnaires and interviews and got some teachers’ perceptions on those problems from the teachers’ questionnaires and interviews, especially those methods and countermeasures using by those who have higher academic degree and those who took more trainings. These results are identical with each other, and some results are similar to those in Doctors Zhang Haiceng’ paper(2010), for example, the suitable group member for oral work is three, and best way of oral English learning is to talk with the native speakers. Some countermeasure is different, for example, in Doctors Zhang’ paper(2010), students’ favorite topic is commercial and politics but the students from rural middle schools prefer campus life and family life in rural middle schools. Those methods are suitable for the rural middle school students. All of those countermeasures will provide some help for oral English teaching and learning in rural middle schools.