一、簡(jiǎn)單嗎？不簡(jiǎn)單！

我在教學(xué)過程中常常聽到學(xué)生嫌教材內(nèi)容簡(jiǎn)單了。真是這樣嗎？難道教材編寫者刻意低估學(xué)習(xí)者的能力？

專家教授對(duì)于英語(yǔ)初學(xué)者的建議都是從閱讀簡(jiǎn)易讀物、觀賞卡通電影這些簡(jiǎn)單的語(yǔ)言活動(dòng)開始做起。一方面，語(yǔ)言越簡(jiǎn)單，使用的句子結(jié)構(gòu)就越明顯，便于記憶和模仿；另一方面，這些看似簡(jiǎn)單的語(yǔ)言活動(dòng)如果深究起來，是大有學(xué)問可挖的！

二、口語(yǔ)練習(xí)，都練習(xí)了些什么？

對(duì)于口語(yǔ)練習(xí)來說，除了要堅(jiān)持不懈、抓住一切機(jī)會(huì)開口練習(xí)，還要注重在每一次練習(xí)的過程中做好自我總結(jié)，有意識(shí)地去練習(xí)相關(guān)語(yǔ)言技巧。下表中列出了您在口語(yǔ)中需要考慮到的12項(xiàng)因素：

注：上表中列舉出的12項(xiàng)因素在您的口語(yǔ)練習(xí)中應(yīng)盡量全部考慮到位。

雖然口語(yǔ)練習(xí)的主題和形式五花八門，但是基本都是在訓(xùn)練下表中列舉出的語(yǔ)言交際功能：

三、錄音機(jī)是你的必要裝備

當(dāng)然，在具體操作時(shí)，您不可能也沒有必要把上面兩張表格隨身攜帶，不斷地去對(duì)照實(shí)施。您只能在練習(xí)之后去回想和反思這次練習(xí)的`成果。這也就凸顯了錄音的重要性！

以Julie Shen通過MSN與外國(guó)朋友聊天為例，如果她能夠把每一次長(zhǎng)達(dá)一小時(shí)的對(duì)話錄音保存下來，回放給自己或者她的老師聽，找出自己常犯的錯(cuò)誤，記錄下外國(guó)朋友說過但是沒能一下子反應(yīng)過來的一些詞匯和表達(dá)，做好書面總結(jié)，假以時(shí)日，必然能取得明顯的進(jìn)步！

沒有聽過自己錄音的朋友第一次聽到自己的聲音時(shí)會(huì)情不自禁地“Wow！這是我的聲音嗎？怎么這么怪”？！的的確確，我們“認(rèn)為”自己聲音的效果往往與我們的聽眾聽到的效果相去甚遠(yuǎn)。對(duì)于英語(yǔ)口語(yǔ)練習(xí)來說，一個(gè)簡(jiǎn)便易行的檢驗(yàn)自己發(fā)音是否到位的方法就是錄下自己的聲音，然后自己去聽。要知道，我們被VOA、BBC、好萊塢電影“寵壞”的耳朵是非常挑剔的，很快就能辨別出自己的錄音中哪些發(fā)音是不到位的�！�—你自己已經(jīng)是個(gè)很好的評(píng)委了，當(dāng)你自己對(duì)自己滿意時(shí)，再請(qǐng)老師不遲。

四、口語(yǔ)學(xué)習(xí)策略（根據(jù)北外網(wǎng)院曹文和王彤教授的講座整理）

Strategies to improve your spoken English.

On April 21st, 2004, Prof. Wang Tong hosted a VOB program entitled “My Best Friend — Spoken English”. To my memory, the total number of participants at that time amounted to 160, which was a new record in the history of VOB. Undoubtedly, it also reflects the learners’ strong desires to speak good English.

In the program, Prof. Wang raised the typical problems of spoken English, i.e.

1. Grammatically wrong;
2. Poor pronunciation and intonation;
3. Chinese English (Chinglish);
4. Lack of vocabulary;
5. Lack of fluency.

Of cause, she had given detailed solutions for each problem as well.

Alternatively, I want to show you one point made by Prof. Cao Wen, say, “Practice doesn’t always make perfect! Rapid progress lies in quality practice, active listening and guided speaking instead of quantity practice, passive listening and free speaking.”

Overall, I tend to use Prof. Cao’s theory as a principle or foundation, and Prof. Wang’s detailed solutions as the weapons to equip myself, and then, score some achievements in spoken English.

1.Principle:

• Quality practice instead of Quantity practice
• Active listening instead of Passive listening
• Guided speaking instead of Free speaking

Do you suffer from this? — “I believe that practice makes perfect. I do a great deal of listening and speaking practice everyday. Listening to or watching English programs on the radio or TV, talking to myself in English whenever possible. How come I don’t see much improvement in my listening and speaking abilities on the course? What should I do?” (Cao Wen) Well, that’s the result of “Quantity” practice “Passive” listening as well as “Free” speaking.

(In my class, some of my students read English every morning and watch CCTV-9 or listen to VOA radio broadcast programs whenever possible. Seemingly, the “exposure” is enough. Indeed, they do have made some progress, but I don’t think their extremely hard work only deserve such slow progress. The point is we should regard practice an approach, not the aim. It is the effect to which it is put that determines its value to us. If one approach has little effect on your progress, think the bottom cause over and, drop it without hesitation. Take my students as the example again, I find their problem in spoken English is not the pronunciation or intonation, nor is the lack of grammar usages or vocabulary. They obviously have stored lots of English in their heads. However, they have formed a bad habit of doing all these studies in a passive way, hardly the sort of active interactions are applied in their study process. That is the bottoms cause. In addition, “input” can not finally turns out “output” without using them in daily interactions; hence I encouraged them to form a small chat group and try to select a specific topic to talk about. Alternatively, participating in the VOB programs using the above-mentioned strategies is also effective. The most important thing is not to force themselves to try to practice everything in one go. Let the feeling of fluency and accuracy sink in bit by bit. )

2.Symptoms and solutions

1) Grammatically wrong
“Grammar, you have not mastered the basic grammatical knowledge of English, that’s why when you speak English, you feel that you always get stuck, you feel that grammar keeps you from going on, you have to concentrate on grammar. That is one typical problem for most BeiwaiOnline students. Especially, if you speak English with a lot of grammatical mistakes, a foreigner will treat you as a poorly educated person, so I highly recommend all of you to watch for grammatical mistakes in your oral English. Grammatical mistakes are unpardonable.” (Wang Tong)

Solutions: “When you are speaking English, do you feel a little person in your mind who keeps telling you that, ‘you should speak in this way, and you should speak in that way. That is the right word.’ For those students who haven’t such a feeling, it means that, maybe; you are in two situations, 1. You need to brush-up your English grammar; 2. Your English grammar is too good, is more than good. We call the little person in your mind a ‘monitor’. Especially when you are learning English at the very beginning, that monitor should keep telling you that, ‘Oh! You’re using he as a subject, you should add‘s’ or ‘es’ after the verb.’ If your English grammar is not adequate, the monitor is not born yet. That’s why you need to brush-up your English grammar. Or, probably your English grammar is already very good, and then, you can speak and think very fast, so that you don’t feel that monitor. But usually, you need to have a little monitor in your mind. Take me for example; I usually have a little person in mind when I speak English, telling me that, ‘Oh! Just now you made a grammatical mistake, and now you should speak in this way, this is the right word.’ Although you don’t feel the existence of that person, he should be there!” (Wang Tong)

(Well, as Francis Bacon put it, “Reading maketh a full man; conference, a ready man and writing an exact man. “ Personally, I find writing a practical way to refine the English that we have already possessed in our heads. Do you have an English – English Dictionary handy while you are writing? If not, you must get one and you might consult it whenever necessary. The purpose is the accuracy or correctness of your language. For instance, if your son and his younger brother are playing together, and suddenly, they begin to quarrel and even fight with each other. What is the elder boy supposed to do is to “humor” the younger one a bit. Here, the word ‘humor’ means ‘to do what someone wants or to pretend to agree with them so that they do not become upset’ (Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English 4th Edition). You see, that is what you can learn about accuracy from the dictionary.)

2) Poor pronunciation and intonation
“Chinese students’ English speaking don’t sound like English, because of the tone, because of the pronunciation and intonation.” (Wang Tong)

Solutions: “Some students said that fluency should come first, fluency is crucial in oral English, but you cannot speak fluently wrong English, you cannot afford to speak fluently wrong English. The solution to solve the problem of pronunciation and intonation is: listen (choose an appropriate type of listening materials) first, imitate (a tape, a teacher, a native speaker) as closely as possible (you might use a tape recorder to record your voice, and then, imitate and compare), and then you need to have sufficient amount of practice. At last, you need to use these skills or principles you’ve learnt. Learn them by heart! ” (Wang Tong)

(In her talk, Prof. Wang stated that it might be a torture for the students to practice the pronunciation and intonation, but, the process is worth gone through. Personally, I benefited a lot from “The Phonetics” written by Prof. Tu Pei. In that book, a detailed learning guide is shown and we can literally grasp the main features of English pronunciation and intonation step-by-step. I also hold a belief that one must master the pronunciation of every single phonetic symbol first, and then, he/she would be qualified to learn the rhythm and word/sentence stress.)

3) Chinese English (Chinglish)
“When students speak English, they first translate English in their head, in their mind and then, speak. I know that, most English learners do need to go through the painful process of translation, ‘mind-translation’, you translate in your mind, and then you speak. All of the Chinese students, including me, have gone through such long process. However, we need to end the process as soon as possible.” (Wang Tong)

Solutions: “This is a very typical and a very serious problem for most Chinese learners. Why? Because we are learning a foreign language which has its own idiomatic expressions, and its own language rules and regulations. That’s why we can’t create things, we cannot create expressions. What we can do is just to follow, to use their idiomatic expressions, not to create our own. For instance, “Are you hot?” is the accurate way to ask the other person’s feeling; we can’t use “Are you feeling hot?” The latter one is the Chinese translation. We Chinese people need to keep both eyes open, for idiomatic expressions and make use of them.” (Wang Tong)

4) Lack of adequate vocabulary
“Students don’t know how to express their ideas. They have so much to express, however they don’t know how to express it. That’s because they don’t have enough vocabulary. They know what to say, they don’t know how to say it well.” (Wang Tong)

Solutions: “Actually, when we are learning English, we are learning new English words, almost everyday. However, some students feel that they still speak middle school level English. Their English vocabulary is very limited, the level of their English is still the middle school level, and it has not been improved. Why? We know that your vocabulary contains two parts, one part is functional part or ‘core vocabulary’, these words can function very well in your oral English; however, the other part is called ‘recognizable vocabulary’, which means you can recognize them very well but cannot use them very well. For instance, some students can recognize so many very difficult English words in their reading; however they cannot use them in oral English. That’s because their ‘core vocabulary’ is so limited. So, we need to expand our ‘core vocabulary’, the ‘functional vocabulary’. Enlarge your core vocabulary.” (Wang Tong)

How can we expand our “core vocabulary”? According to Prof. Wang, on-campus students of Beijing Foreign Studies University are required to make five sentences with every new word, and then, the new word can probably become the “core vocabulary”. Personally, I have even higher expectations about the new words. I not only make sentences with the new word, but also use a thesaurus to find and memorize the synonyms as well as the antonyms of the word, for I find it crucial to know them, especially synonyms, to make my writing readable and colorful. In addition, you might keep a journal; write an essay everyday using the new words. The method is time-consuming, but rewarding! I am a good example; I upgraded my command of English through such intensive learning in less than three months!

5) Lack of fluency
“Students get stuck all the time when they are speaking English, that’s why they suffer from the lack of fluency.” (Wang Tong)

Solutions: “You need to practice as much as possible!” (Wang Tong)
The criteria or reasonable goals of one’s spoken English are accuracy and fluency. There’re several elements of ‘a(chǎn)ccuracy’, namely, a) adequate grammar; b) one needs to master functional and idiomatic expressions (for instance, in the bank, you ‘withdraw’ money rather than ‘get’ money, here, ‘withdraw’ is the functional expression in the bank); c) good pronunciation and intonation; d) enough vocabulary. As for fluency, we need the ‘speed’, of cause, based on accuracy. (Wang Tong)

Overall, I have learnt a lot from Prof. Wang Tong, especially the every day formula — High Quality Input = High Quality Output. What I want to point out is, I am not the only person who got the formula, and my classmates also know it, so why can’t they make rapid progress as I do? The reason is I actually applied this formula to upgrade my English, and I make action plans in order to achieve such ‘high quality’ study criteria – we must change our role from a listener to doer. I also want to encourage persons who didn’t make noticeable progress right now to carry on their study passionately. For after all, most of the potential successful learners stop right before they succeed, what we need is confidence and perseverance.