An Empirical Study Of Primary School Students’ Oral English Competence Improvement Via Pre-class Guessing Games

Along with the further development of globalization, English, as a kind of world language, broadens its influence and the importance of oral English has been recognized by more and more people. Primary school English is the start to learn English and the importance of it goes without saying. English curriculum standards in compulsory education also stresses the cultivation of primary school students’ oral English competence. However, because of lack of learning time, interaction, study initiative, learning foundation and so on, primary school students’oral English learning is not so good.In recent years, the studies on oral English at home and abroad grew significantly, mainly in middle school, high school and university but seldom in primary school. On how to evaluate primary students’ oral English competence and how to improve it effectively, there are not so many relevant studies, and reliability and validity testing lack. Therefore, depending on relevant studies about oral competence and game teaching, this study introduces pre-class guessing games, which are so attractive to primary school students, into the oral teaching class, in order to test the influence it brings. The study is expected to find the answers to these questions:(1) Can higher marks of oral testing represent higher oral competence? What method can we take to evaluate primary school students’ oral English competence effectively and scientifically?(2) Can pre-class guessing games promote the efficiency of oral English teaching and improve primary school students’ oral English competence?(3) What teaching strategies can we adopt in class when we conduct pre-class guessing games to improve primary school students’oral English competence?The quasi-experimental method is used to carry out quantitative study:the primary students are chosen to be the experiment subjects. Both of the 2 classes are taught by the same teacher, but in one of which pre-class guessing game is conducted and other conditions remain the same. All the subjects take the pre- and posttest and the scores are analyzed by the SPSS software. The questionnaires and oral tests are also used to invest the impact and effect that pre-class guessing game brings.The analysis of the pre-and posttest scores, questionnaires and oral tests prove that:(1) Primary school students’ oral English competence can be evaluated effectively and scientifically by combining formative assessment and summative assessment together.(2) Pre-class guessing games can improve primary school students’ oral English competence effectively.(3) Teachers’ feedback and judgments to students are of great importance and they can affect the result of pre-class guessing games to some degrees.This study puts pre-class guessing games into the empirical research field of improving primary school students’ oral English competence, which offers empirical support to relative theoretical researches. What’s more, it has some important value and enlightenment in effectively cultivating primary school students’ oral English competence.