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II. The Development of Oral English Teaching Methods
Oral English teaching plays important role in communication. Oral English teaching methods have been studied by many famous scholars such as Krashen, Dornyei, Widdowson, and so on. In this part, the paper will introduce the development of oral English teaching.
2.1 The Grammar-Translation Method
It’s a traditional method which has been used by English teachers for many years earlier in this century. It focuses on learning and remembering the grammar rules and vocabulary of the target language. It uses mother tongue to teach foreign language. It is taught to translate from one language to another language. In this method, teachers play the absolutely important role with little students’ interaction. This method has been used for a long period. It has advantages and disadvantages. It is easy for students to understand the abstract words and difficult sentences. Secondly, it benefits students’ ability of reading comprehension and producing grammatically correct sentences. Thirdly, it is helpful for teachers to control the class. But the method is bad for students’ communicative ability because it puts much attention on reading and writing. Besides, mechanical memorizing doesn’t motivate students to actively in learning English.
2.2 The Direct Method
Due to no efficiency in communicating of grammar-translation method, the direct method receives its name from the fact that meaning is to be conveyed directly in the target language through the use of demonstration and visual aids without referring to the students’ native language. It advocates the importance of oral language and believes that language should be learned through direct association of form and meaning. It requires thinking in foreign language by setting up connection between the object in real life. It explains new words in foreign language to avoid using mother tongue. Grammar teaching is not thought to be important. The teaching of all four basic language skills is not neglected, but reading and writing exercises should be based upon what the students practice orally. Firstly, pronunciation is paid attention to from the beginning and vocabulary takes precedence over grammar. The initiation of the interaction goes both ways from teacher to students although the latter is often teacher-directed．Students converse with one another as well．
The use of the target language in the classroom is helpful for students to form the habit of thinking in the target language. But the absolute avoidance of the native tongue occasionally troubles the direct method in teaching the meaning of abstract concepts．It’s good for students’ listening and speaking skills，but lacking a necessary knowledge of the target language．Students tend to produce utterances with a lot of grammar mistakes in them．It also has a high demand on the teachers that they require having native speakers．
2.3 The Audio-Lingual Method
The Audi-lingual method was developed as a reaction to the grammar-translation method of teaching foreign language, which is an oral-based approach. It means to achieve quick communicative competence through innovation methods. This approach influenced the way language was taught in the 1950s. This approach has a strong theoretical base in linguistics and psychology that language learning is a set of habit formation. Since learning is thought to be a set of habit formation，the dialogues are learned through imitation and repetition. Trains are conducted based upon the patterns present in the dialogues. Most of the learning time should be spent on imitation, memorization, repetition and oral practice. The students’ successful responses are positively reinforced.
The habits of the students’ native language are thought to be interfering with the students’ attempts to master the target language, which the teachers use in the classroom. The speaking and listening skills receives most of the attention. Pronunciation is taught from the beginning while grammar rules are not provided. Grammar is induced from the examples given in audio-lingual class, the teachers directly control the language behavior of the students. The students follow the teachers’ direction and respond as accurately and as rapidly as possible. Most of the interaction in class is between teachers and students. Though there is student-to-student interaction in chain drills or when students take different roles in dialogue, but it is teacher-directed. All the methods above have some positive effects at certain times. But they have some weak points，which are not good for developing students’ ability to use English. They are teacher-centered and they lay little emphasis on the interaction between students and had few activities in class.