Classroom Interaction and Oral English Teaching 课堂互动和英语口语教学

课堂互动和英语口语教学Classroom Interaction and Oral English TeachingAbstract At present, in our country, the English teaching of many schools lacks of interaction and the students have seldom opportunities of speaking English in the classroom. This paper begins from the meaning of the interaction, indicating that the interaction is the process of communicating the ideas and feelings and affecting each other. And then it proposes the theoretical basis of the interaction-teaching mode. Under the hypothesis of intercourse as the core of the English teaching theories, the classroom teaching should be interactive. Because of the intercourse, adopting the interaction is also urgent. In the interactive classroom, teaching should follow the principles: the guidance principle; the encouragement principle; the equality principle and the interest principle. In the interaction between the teacher and students, the teacher should change the traditional teaching style, encouraging the students to open their mouths. In the interaction among the students, the teachers can set up some tasks and the students finish the tasks together in the way of discussion, role-playing in a group etc. so as to produces active and interactive classroom atmosphere and creates the environment for students to speak English.Key Words interaction; oral English; teaching; principle; relationship; climate【摘 要】 从目前来看，我国许多学校的英语教学缺乏互动性，学生很少有口语锻炼的机会。本文从“互动”的含义入手，指出互动是两个或更多的人交流思想感情并且相互产生影响的过程。接着阐述了互动式教学模式的理论依据，在交际作为英语教学理论的核心这个前提下，课堂教学应该是互动式的，也正因为交际，实施课堂互动教学模式也就势在必行。在互动式的教学课堂里应遵循以下这些原则：指导性原则；平等性原则；激励性原则；兴趣性原则。在教师与学生的互动中，教师应该改变传统的教学风格，多激励学生，鼓励他们开口。而在学生间的互动中，教师可以设定一些任务，通过小组讨论，角色扮演等方式来共同完成目标，从而营造出积极互动的课堂气氛，为学生的口语交流创造条件。【关键词】 互动；口语；教学；原则；关系；气氛1. Introduction    In current china, English has attracted peoples great attention. The classroom teaching has paid more attention to the communicative ability than the knowledge. The English that most students learnt is “mute English”. In our country, many English learners are only “coping examination”, but not see it as a tool for communication. Most of their communication ability is low, which is the actual truth. In the “spoon-feed” classroom, many students only listen to the teacher, but have no opportunities to open their mouths, or students only follow their teacher, but have no interaction. These problems make the students lose their interest and enthusiasm of learning English. Hence, the classroom loses the active atmosphere and, at last, is not benefit for fostering the students oral English.2. Literature review2.1 Definition of interaction “Interaction is the collaborative exchange of thought, feelings or ideas between two or more people resulting in a reciprocal effect each other.”1 By classroom interaction, we do not just mean verbal exchange such as question answers between the teacher and the students in class. Interaction takes various forms. For example, the teacher asks a student a question and the student responds to it. Thats teacher-student interaction. In a discussion or group work, the student learns from other students, shares other students opinions, thats student-student interaction or peer interaction. Besides verbal communication, nonverbal communication, the sending and receiving of non-language cues indicating attitude and feeling, also plays an important part in classroom interaction. This refers to gestures, facial expressions, bodily postures, eye contact etc. For example, interaction occurs when the teacher faces the students, furrows his brow, nods his head, droops his hand or body or winks his eyes. 2.2 Theoretical basis of the interaction-teaching mode 2     With the boosting communication between every country's politics economics and culture, the foreign language social intercourse ability seems to be more important. We know the main purpose of the foreign language teaching lies in developing and helping students to acquire intercourse ability. The social intercourse teaching method is a main way of the modern foreign language teaching, which develops on the theoretical basis of American social linguist Hymes. He argued against Chomsk's linguistic competence and then put forward the "social intercourse ability". Many applied linguists and teachers also regard the language social intercourse ability as the main target of the language teaching. The interactive type social intercourse teaching method with Widdowson as the representative is becoming a new hot topic of the foreign language teaching method in recent years.The theories foundation of the social intercourse teaching method includes the language social intercourse theories and learning theories. The learning theories include: (1) social intercourse principle, truly involves the activity of the social intercourse, raising the study efficiency;(2) mission principle: language is for the activity of the completion of mission, raising the study efficiency;(3) meaning principle: Learners' interested language materials speed a learning process.  According to the following theories, the foreign language classroom should be the field filled with “communication”; the language becomes the social intercourse means, i.e. “Learn with the language”. The knowledge and the social intercourse ability acquired depend on hearing, saying, reading, writing and translating. So, we say to train a student the social intercourse ability, actually to want to train a student to hear, say, read, write and translate etc. Interaction is a process of interacting the ideas and emotion, handing over the information and affecting each other.At present, the core of popular intercourse English teaching theories lies on a point that the intercourse ability cultivating should comply with the principle of "interaction". The process of the language social intercourse is actually the process of information exchange. The classroom is a place that students communicate with the language they have learned. So the teaching should be interactive.Under the direction of interactive teaching method, the traditional teaching in the center of teachers should turn to the students, obeying the way of learning and practice and cultivating the students' intercourse ability through the activities of heuristic language input and practice.2.3 The necessity of adopting the interaction- teaching mode 3 On account of the spoon-feed English teaching in China, the teacher is the lord in classroom. The teachers explanation takes the most time of the classroom. So the teacher cannot afford the sufficient opportunities to practice for students. The students become the negative acceptors in the teaching process. Because of lacking of practice, their ability of using the language is so bad. Thus, they face kinds of difficulties in actual intercourse.   College English Teaching Syllabus (revise originally) published by the Ministry of Education recently requires the students should have the ability of “communicating information in English” but not the traditional ability of “getting the information in English”. Communicating information is a kind of social intercourse activity. It involves both sides many factors of social intercourses. A key factor is language intercourse. This explains that the social intercourse ability should be enhanced. If wanting to train the student's English exchange ability, we have to adopt efficient classroom teaching method and adopt teacher-student interaction in student-centered intercourse activities, and enhance college English classroom teaching.2.4 Interaction oral English teaching should follow the principles   In English classroom, teaching activities are interactive activities between the teacher and students. Both their tongue and actions affect the classroom atmosphere. So the two sides should follow the principles:2.4.1 Guidance principleThe teacher guidance principle means conducting the students to hold kinds of activities and creates more opportunities for students to apply the knowledge and skills. “As a language teacher, our main concern is not to inform our students about the language, but to develop their ability to use the language for a variety of communicative purposes.”4 The teacher is a conductor and monitor in a classroom. And he supervises students communication and gives help when needed. So the teacher should observe the students process and direction of study at any time so that they lead to a common teaching target.2.4.2 Equality principle    First, the teacher should place himself on the same position of the same language learning, participate in their activities and experience their feelings. If, in the teaching, the teacher would like to and can place himself in the role of the learner, they would deeper understand learners challenge and difficulties, and can strongly feel the students need so that teach them better.     Second, the teacher should treat each student equally, but not pay more attention to or discriminate against one student. They should respect mutually, trust mutually, and cooperate mutually. It can help remove students stress and anxiety and encourage students to expand creative study spirit.2.4.3 Encouragement principleProgress, succession, victory, and endorse are hoped by each student. Also, they are students motivation of learning. In the teaching process, the teacher should make full use of the encouragement principle, understand each student and observe him or her. A teacher should be good at listening to the students and should learn to how to appreciate them, which could set up the commentary consciousness that science and art are combined together, and then encourages them to participate in the classroom intercourse activity actively, especially those introverted students. For them, “the teacher must first discover and eliminate the mental obstacle in foreign language learning.” 5 and improve their application ability of oral English.2.4.4 Interest principleThe contents of the “interaction” activity should contribute to inspire the students interest. “Whether the students are more active or not is the one of key factors of determining the teaching effect.”6 The tedious teaching is the performance that takes no responsibility to the student. English differs from other foundation academics. English is not only a knowledge lesson, but also a practice lesson. If we cannot arouse the students interest, they will feel learning English is drudgery. In the teaching, thus, we should increase interest, fully consider students request of the interest of teaching content in the process of teaching designing, and stirs up maximally the students interest in the study.3. The disadvantage of traditional oral English teaching At the end of last century, the world entered an age of information. In such an information age, with the increasing use of computers and Internet, the huge globe becomes a global village. These are big changes to us, and because of these changes we renew the attitude of Foreign Language Teaching, the aim of foreign language teaching is to use the target language in communication. China boasts the largest English learning population in the world, and a history of several decades of English teaching and learning. As a foreign language in China, English becomes more and more popular. In these decades, generally, most schools still adopt the following two approaches, which have a common disadvantagelacking of oral interaction. 3.1 Grammar translation approach“The grammar-translation method is also called the traditional method, the old method, and the classical method.” 7 “By the nineteenth century, it had become the standard way of teaching and learning foreign language in school. It preserved the basic framework of grammar and translation and students from their classical studies.”8 This approach is so ordinary. Each new lesson had one or two new grammar and presented new grammar points one-by-one in an organized sequence. The teacher often shows a sentence and explains the sentence meaning, and then he analyzes the structure of the sentence. The next step is asking some one to make another sentence, which has the same structure of the original one. The task of the students is to imitate the sentence. So “It emphasizes learning by rote so that the type of teaching is single and the class atmosphere is tedious, which cannot arouse the students interest.”9 This approach pays more attention to the teachers presentation but lacks of interaction among students and deprives the students opportunity to raise questions, which cannot afford more opportunities for students to communicate.But with the modern emphasis on the importance of oral communication and the present generation's greater familiarity with aural oral rather than graphic presentations of information, this approach can be discouraging for many students. 3.2 Audio-lingual approachAudio-lingual approach where oral imitation, memorization and drill techniques precede attempts to speak and spontaneously emphasizes the importance of patterns. “It is form-oriented rather than meaning-oriented.”10 This approach neglects written language. The boring and mechanical patterns drills sometimes make students feel monotonous. It is also not good to the ability of using language in actual environment.For so long a time of mechanical repetition of fixed patterns, learning is seen as mechanical process. The dialogue as a teaching technique has come in for much criticism because it has been used unimaginatively and its full potential ignored. The most criticized way of teaching through dialogues is that students are asked to memorize every dialogue completely and thoroughly and that they be able to recite the whole sequence. This type of activity is time-consuming and tedious. As a result, students are at a loss when they do not hear the precise cue they are expecting. They become discouraged and exasperated by the mistakes they make in recalling memorized materials. Their mistakes have nothing to do with their comprehension and assimilation of the material.If the main activities in class are to imitate English patterns in the text and practice conversation, students will have no chance to express themselves and exchange their ideas. Therefore, pure pattern drills practice cannot effectively improve students' speaking ability, nor will they achieve the goal that language is used as a communicative means.  Also there are many teachers totally depending on fixed textbooks and they certainly ask students to recite what they learned as if the only way to improve their oral English is to recite.When students acquire English knowledge they do not only learn how to compose and comprehend correct sentences as isolated linguistic units of random occurrence; they also learn how to use sentences appropriately to achieve a communicative purpose. But this kind of approach also lacks of interaction and opportunities for students to raise questions. So the students have not enough communication in the classroom.4. Managing an interaction classroom   Owing to the necessity of classroom interaction, efforts have been made to dispel the disadvantage of the traditional teaching approaches and to manage an interaction classroom successfully. To achieve the goal, four aspects should be taken into consideration: (1) the relationship between the teacher and students; (2) two types of the interaction; (3) classroom climate; (4) classroom size. 4.1 The relationship between the teacher and students   In order to make the classroom interaction more effective, the importance of the relationship between the teacher and the student cannot be overlooked.  A good teacher ought to know his students well, for understanding of the students' background provides an important basis for the teacher's planning at each step of the teaching process.  “Both the organization of the classroom and the process of acquisition are achieved through the teachers talk.”11 So the teacher should use the appropriate words. A sound relationship needs to be established on the basis of mutual respect between the teacher and students. Respect for people is considered as an essential part of education and the most important contributor to good rapport between the teacher and students. When the teacher comes to a class, he gets a first impression of it. If he is interested in the class, he will work hard to meet the students' expectations. On the students' part, as they see their teacher so enthusiastic about and interested in them, they will participate actively to cooperate with the teacher and help create a climate within the classroom. As a result, both the teacher and students will become equally responsible for themselves and the class.   The more harmonious the relationship between the teacher and the student grows the more conspicuous the dynamic qualities of classroom learning become.  Students, in such an atmosphere, become more independent in learning.  They feel that they have the responsibility to behave well, to perform well, to learn and to respond more actively than before.  Rather than passively sitting there and receiving facts and knowledge, they become active participants in the classroom activities.  Rather than lecturer of information, the teacher is now a guide and helper. In a word, when there is a lively classroom climate, if the teacher is in good rapport with the students, they will feel more at ease in doing whatever in class. T he interaction between the teacher and students will be easily going on.   But so far as this kind of relationship is concerned, the teacher should not get too close to the students or they will lose control over the class.  A proper distance is always necessary. Make sure the students realize that in the class mutual respect is emphasized even though all are friends outside the class.4.2 Two types of interaction    In a classroom, the teacher often ask students questions and the students answer them, or the students raise the questions and the teacher answers, or the teacher participates in the activities. These are interaction between the teacher and students. And another interaction is that among students. In this kind of interaction, always, the teacher is a monitor and the students are the main participants.  4.2.1 Teacher- student interactionCentral to classroom learning is the interaction between the teacher and students. Teaching is always a shared-relationship job. It always involves persons. It never involves only one person or one thing.  Just because of that, the teacher has to change his traditional role as a lecturer. “So we should show the same interest in all students, make all students participate, and especially, show great patience to the weakest among them.”12 The teacher will have to provide guidance and inspiration, decide what questions to ask and how to ask them, and create learning situations that stimulate students to listen, read, write, discuss, ask questions, perform tasks, solve problems or engage in other activities. The teacher-student interaction in classroom setting is bound up with the teacher's teaching style.  Traditional classroom provides for chalks and talk teaching methods, with a class of students sitting in straight rows facing the teacher and the blackboard.  The teacher sits or stands behind a desk, which symbolizes his authority, and spends a large proportion of his time giving lectures and directions. The students sit passively listening and busily taking notes, needless to say, they have no opportunity to ask questions.  In this way, the teacher is not only physically separated from the students, but is psychologically remote from them, too. Under such circumstances, the interaction pattern is always in a linear direction: almost all the communication flows through the teacher. Cons