1. 研究目的与意义（文献综述包含参考文献）

1. introduction

1.1 need of the study

small words are those special words which have features of adverbs and forms of prepositions. they are used to modify and complete the verbs in front of them, but they themselves alone cannot serve as the subjects, predicates, objects or any other sentence elements. though they may have no concrete meanings in sentences, they are of great importance. they show various types of relationships in dialogs and it will be difficult for us to understand the context if we ignore those small words. it is frequently used in english as statistics show that among ten words which are most commonly used, three of them are small words. however, efl learners have paid little attention to the use of small word in practicing their oral english.

2. 研究的基本内容、问题解决措施及方案

the object of the study is the correlation between the use of small words and oral fluency among chinese english majors of different oral english levels. by studying this, the research is aimed to solve the following questions:

1. how do the english majors use small words in their oral english?

2. how is the english majors#8217; oral fluency?