An Empirical Study On Improving Juniors’ Oral English By Means Of Topic Speech

It is observed that input and output hypothesis have been widely studied and applied since they were put forward by Dr. Krashen and Swain respectively. Their ideas that language is acquired by learners naturally with the triggering of input and output but not by taught have received a wide range of recognition. It is acknowledged that these two hypothesis are of great significance in guiding language in the field of pedagogy. Oral English, as a productive skill and a mean of communication, should be one of the focuses of English teaching. However, it is not paid enough attention in current junior high school classes. The English classes are dominated by large amount of input of language explanation while the oral practice is neglected, which result in the weakness of juniors’ oral English. Therefore, this study is raised. Topic speech, under the guidance of input and put hypothesis and with its collaborating with cooperative learning theory, is designed in junior English classes. The study will try to solve the problems:Will juniors be interested in topic speech classes? Can topic speech improve juniors’ oral English? If yes, how to employ topic speech in junior high school English classes effectively?The study will test the hypothesis that topic speech, under the guidance of input, output and cooperative learning theories can improve juniors students’ oral English. The subjects of the study are from two classes of grade eight in Zhijin Maochang Junior High School. Class one is the experimental class with 60 students and class six is taken as the control class with 58 students. An oral pretest and post test have been conducted before and after the experiment. After analyzing the results of the tests, it is found that the experimental class’ oral English improves considerably while the improvement of the control class shows little significance, which means that topic speech can improve junior students’ oral English. During the experiment, some research methods are used, including questionnaire, observation, recording, literature review and data analysis.The thesis studying on improving junior students’ oral English based on topic speech consists of five chapters. The first chapter introduces the background information and significance of the study, as well as the overall structure of the paper. The second chapter makes a review on the input hypothesis, output hypothesis and cooperative leaning theory. A revision on related study is presented as well. Chapter three is the body of the study in which the research design will be demonstrated in detail, including the research instruments, subjects, teaching design, teaching procedure and samples of the study. The data and data analysis and discussion will be shown in chapter four. Chapter five is devoted to presenting the conclusions and limitations of the study.