A Case Study Of The Oral Proficiency Development Among English Major Undergraduates In Non-governmental Colleges From CDST Perspective

With the development of global economy and the full implementation of our economic development strategy,the importance of oral English is becoming more and more prominent.The oral proficiency goals regulated in the English Teaching Syllabus for College English Major are correct pronunciation,natural intonation,fluent and appropriate exchange with foreigners on the major issues at home and abroad;systematic,deep and coherent expressions on opinions.But the oral proficiency is relatively poor among English major undergraduates in non-governmental colleges.Thus,how to make researches from new perspectives on students' oral proficiency development are becoming the main concerns of spoken English teachers in non-governmental colleges.Complex Dynamics Systems Theory provides us a totally new perspective to study on the development of oral proficiency.In this paper,under the foundation of Complex Dynamics Systems Theory in the field of second language acquisition research,the author made a case study on the development of oral proficiency of five sophomores of English majors in a non-governmental college in Shishi with dynamic observation,which consisted of three oral tests in three different months within a semester(16 weeks),the oral corpora were collected by transcription of audio recording.Fluency,accuracy and complexity,which stand for oral proficiency,were measured.With the comparison of the average and individual performance in three dimensions,it reflected from many respects the average developing tendency of students' oral proficiency,the interindividual variability and intraindividual variability.It also described the dynamic traces of the oral proficiency development of students.At last,the fixed pattern of students' oral expression and mutation were summarized through qualitative analysis.Four questions were researched in this paper: with the same oral task in different periods,(1)Whether the average growth in fluency,accuracy and complexity are rising?(2)Whether individual growth in fluency,accuracy and complexity show nonlinear development?(3)Whether there are big fluctuations in individual fluency,accuracy,and complexity?(4)Whether there are some fixed patterns and mutations in students' oral English?Based on the above research questions,research subjects' impromptu speech were recorded and transcribed,the needed time,pause time and repetition time in the corpus samples were marked by COOL EDIT software,the oral fluency,accuracy and complexity were statistically analyzed by software SPSS19.0 according to research purposes,at last,the dynamic change of the data were presented by means of graphs.It was found that with the same oral task in different periods,(1)The average growth in fluency,accuracy and complexity are rising.(2)Individual growth in fluency,accuracy and complexity shows nonlinear development.(3)There are great fluctuations in individual fluency,accuracy,and complexity.(4)There are some fixed patterns and mutations in students' oral English.Therefore,the author concludes that the oral proficiency development is in tortuous process among English major undergraduates in non-governmental colleges.Although the average oral proficiency of English majors in non-governmental colleges shows a linear rising tendency,each individual shows great differences.Student's fluency,accuracy,and complexity vary from person to person,which shows a non-linear form.Besides,students' practical oral expression shows a fixed progress mode and variation.The study aims at providing the oral teaching for English majors in non-governmental colleges with new theoretical reference and revelation,thus promoting students' oral English proficiency development.Some suggestions are put forward concerning the findings.Teachers are expected to attach importance to: students' individual differences and teaching according to their aptitude;small details in oral proficiency development system,meeting the spoken language learning sensitivity to initial conditions;an increase of target language input,maximizing the effects of oral subsystems;the balanced development of fluency,accuracy,complexity,reducing the influence of the dissipation;the cultivation of students' thinking ability and creativity,exploiting system emergence.