Mistakes in Oral Teaching

In order to make students study and use English better, many colleges in China
have opened oral English classes in English teaching so that students have more
chances to speak English. Compared with the dumb English classes before, oral
English classes improve students’ enthusiasm and interest in learning English.
They can also improve students’ impression of oral English. However, it is still
great far away from the tasks established. Generally speaking, the following
mistakes exist in modern oral English teaching. First, the English classes are
organized in a dumb way. Because some of the English teachers are relatively old
or they have been teaching English in a dumb way for a long time, their oral
teaching still focuses on explaining grammars, idioms, memorizing, and reciting.
Some of the teachers adopt the methods of reading and writing, spending more
time on input. Some even play a monodrama so that students have less time to
exercise. Although some teachers have realized that oral teaching should be student-
centered, their teaching effects are still not ideal due to the reason that they
have not found their right role. Therefore, the oral English of students has not
improved obviously. Second, some teachers allow students to take activities freely,
making themselves bystanders so that the classes are in the state of complete
freedom and the activities lack specific purposes, let alone teaching effects. Third,
oral teaching contents are not consistent with students’ reality. The purpose of
study is to guide students’ life and work, so the study contents should be close to
the life and work as much as possible. Because there are problems in the material
of oral teaching, students’ awareness of participation is hard to be aroused and the
classes turn out to be deserted. Fourth, the lack of interaction is still the obstacle in
oral English teaching. In some oral English classes, students practice individually
and communicate unidirectionally. Although some communication seems to be
two-way, there is still no inherent connection in their communication, which does
not belong to significant interaction due to it not based on listening. For example,
teachers raise questions and the students answer them, during which process one
says a sentence, while another says another one. Without interaction and cooperation,
oral communication loses its essence, let alone to be significantly used.
Besides, oral classes have problem that there are some students who participate
actively while the majority act as bystanders. Some teachers do not perform their
duties properly, ignoring their roles as organizers and guides. In this way, the
classes cannot be extended deeply. Some chaos will occur to reduce the efficiency
of classroom teaching.
The existence of the above errors influences the effectiveness and quality of
teaching of oral English. Therefore, the roles that teachers play are very important.
Only by finding their right position and acting their roles well can they teach
vividly an oral English class.