论文总字数：33953字

摘 要

本文以交际教学法的理念为基础，综合当前新课标对口语教学的要求，试图分析我国中学英语口语教学的情况，提出应用角色扮演活动来改善英语口语教学中存在的不足。本文不仅分析角色扮演作为一种交际性的课堂活动对于口语教学的优越性,而且指出角色扮演在实际教学过程中可能出现的问题，并进一步提出解决方法。

关键词：角色扮演；交际教学法；课堂活动；初中英语口语

Contents

1. Introduction 1

2. Literature Review 2

2.1 Studies of communicative language teaching 2

2.2 Previous studies of role-play 3

3. Introduction of Role-Play 4

3.1 The definition of role-play 4

3.2 The function of role-play 5

4. The Present Situation of Oral English Teaching and Learning in Junior High Schools 6

5. The Application of Role-Play in Oral English Teaching in Junior High Schools 8

5.1 Guiding principles for role-play 8

5.2 The practical application of role-play in junior high schools 9

5.3 Potential problems 12

5.4 Solutions 12

6. Conclusion 13

Works Cited 15

1. Introduction

With the frequent communication between China and English-speaking countries, English communicative competence combined with English knowledge and skills is indispensable to English learners. Therefore, Communicative Language Teaching has been one of the most potent language teaching approaches in the past two decades, which gives prominence to the cultivation of communicative competence.

As stated in the English Curriculum Standards, an important goal of English teaching is to communicate with others in English at liberty. Nevertheless, in reality, traditional teaching approach still dominates in English language teaching. Many teachers primarily highlight grammar and vocabulary to meet the needs of final examinations, and ignore the development of students’ communicative competence. Due to the complexity and subjectivity of the oral test itself, the results of the oral test have little effect on the admission into higher schools. How to improve the quality of English teaching and achieve the purpose of cultivating students’ English communicative competence is an urgent issue that every English educator should pour attention to. Teachers should pay attention to oral English teaching, transform the concept of teaching, reform the traditional English teaching mode, and improve the level of oral English teaching. It seems there is no alternative but to reform traditional teaching approach.

As a typical communicative classroom activity, role-play manifests the modem teaching conception of dynamic integration of autonomic learning and cooperative learning with the student-centered belief. In comparison with traditional classroom activities, its unique vantages reside in: 1) stimulating and maintaining students’ enthusiasm and motivation of speaking English; 2) allowing every student the opportunity to put the language they have acquired into effect by keeping them speaking English; 3) creating an appropriate English speaking environment and so on. This is virtually the only way that teachers can give the students the opportunity to practise improvising a range of real-life spoken language in the classroom, and is an extremely effective technique if the students are confident and cooperative, but a green hand in teaching English is likely to hold that role-play is challenging and even disconcerting. To put this activity to good use, the teacher should be able to capitalize on a script closely pertinent to the teaching content, give feedback to the students in time, guide students to alter their learning strategies and methods, appreciate students’ learning needs and difficulties, and create a relaxed and pleasant learning atmosphere for students.

1. Literature Review

After decades of researches, role-play is widely used as a typical communicative classroom activity in communicative language teaching. No studies of role-play can absolutely detach from the studies of communicative language teaching.

2.1 Studies of communicative language teaching

The studies of communicative language teaching were generated in the late 1960s, laying emphasis on alternative notions of a syllabus. British scholars have made outstanding contributions to the establishment of communicative language teaching, which brought about the innovation of traditional language teaching. Since the mid-1970s, foreign scholars have broadened the studies of communicative language teaching. They paid attention to the in-depth study of language function, shifted emphasis from the teaching of language form and structure to the teaching of language function.

Hymes (1972) values communicative competence. On one hand, a person who learns a language should not only have the ability to recognize whether a sentence conforms to grammatical rules or not, but also should have the ability to create sentences that conform to grammatical rules. On the other hand, the learner must also know how to use the language.

According to Richards and Rodgers (2000), it is communicative competence that represents the goal of language teaching. In communicative language teaching, procedures are designed for the teaching of the four language skills that admit the interdependence of language and communication.

In brief, the common features of communicative language teaching shared by the majority of proponents are: 1) Function as well as structural aspects of language is emphasized; 2) Communicative and contextual factors are considered; 3) The learner-centered and experience-based view of second language teaching is highlighted.

2.2 Previous studies of role-play

Role-play was initiated by American psychologist Jacob L. Moreno in 1934. Later, role-play became an important technique for psychotherapy, management, education and so on. There are quite a few researches on role-play at home and abroad.

In accordance with Mead (1934), the process of role-play is key to the generation of self-consciousness and to the general development of the self. Within Mead’s theory, there are three activities through which the self is developed: language, play, and game. Language allows individuals to take on the “role of the other” and allows people to respond to his or her own gestures when it comes to the symbolized attitudes of others. In the course of role-play, individuals take on the roles of other people and pretend to be those other people in order to express the expectations of significant others. In the game, the individual is required to internalize the roles of all others who are involved with him or her in the game and must understand the rules of the game.

Shaftel and G. Shaftel (1970) propose the “role-playing” teaching model on the basis of the theory of social interaction and interpersonal communication in social psychology. It is a unique model for developing students’ social adaptability and social consciousness from three aspects:1) This model advocates the creation of a learning context based on experience, so it allows students to learn real, typical emotional responses and behaviors; 2) This model no longer lays emphasis on the traditional role of teachers, but encourages students to obtain information from their peers instead, because the interaction of peer groups can generate new ideas, offer guidance for students’ development and change, and highlight the students’ dominant position; 3) This model puts a premium on the interaction between individuals and society in order to help individuals find their own values in the social environment in which they live, and to solve individual ideological conflicts with the help of groups, and to help students develop the ability of solving personal social problems.

As Halapi and Saunders (2002) state, role-play permits students to stand in the position of others and view the world from a different perspective in the process of speaking and understanding English. Via this method, students will be confronted without prejudice and discrimination against specific groups of the public. A case in point is that when a student plays the role of a disabled person, he can personally understand the depressed mood and the difficulties faced by the disabled, and look at life from the perspective of the disabled. This will not only reduce the students’ discrimination against the disabled in the past, but also arouse the students’ compassion, treat the vulnerable groups in the society with a correct attitude, and deepen their understanding of the entire society. Therefore, role-play is beneficial to improve the effect of language teaching, and also favorable to strengthen the ideological education of students.

Domestic scholars also have an army of researches on role playing. In Gu’ s (1998) opinion, role-play is also recognized as “symbolic game”, which is an independent and imaginary game. By playing various roles, young children express their understanding and experience of life around them without restrictions through words, movement and expression. In the light of Li (2007), role-play is an activity employed in language teaching, which reveals a piece of real life in the form of a game. It requires participants to go from themselves to another role in a particular situation. It is favorable for students to apply the language knowledge they have acquired to specific communicative situations. According to Zhang (2009), the role-playing teaching method is based on the interpretation of different roles by the students. With the elaborate design of the storyline and the problem situation, students are put into the simulation of the place, play the characters in the story, understand the psychological world of the character, and deliberate on the problem.

1. Introduction of Role-Play

After decades of continuous development and improvement, role-play has become an internationally widely used activity in teaching quite a few subjects, especially English language teaching.

3.1 The definition of role-play

Different researchers offer different definitions of role-play based on their researches.

In the light of Ur (2000), role-play refers to the activity in which students conceive of a situation outside the classroom, play the role of someone with the exception of themselves, and use language matched with this new context. The term can also be used in a narrower sense, to denote barely those activities where each learner is allotted a specific role. Participants are given a situation plus question or task, as in simulations; but they are also allotted individual roles, which may be written out on cards.

Richards and Schmidt (2010) define role-play as a drama-like classroom activity in which students take the roles of different participants in a situation and act out what might typically happen in that situation. For instance, to practise how to place an order in English, students can role-play a situation where a traveler at airport makes a telephone call for reserving a restaurant to a waiter.

In a nutshell, role-play is a classroom activity in which students pretend to be others in a particular situation with the appropriate language and behavior.

3.2 The function of role-play

Firstly, it refines students’ English listening and speaking skills. Students must improve their oral expression to present a perfect performance. Therefore, they can easily acquire knowledge to accurately express their meaning by collecting or improving oral expression. Students can review and consolidate the relevant English words and grammatical knowledge through role-playing, provided that students want to play the relevant roles smoothly, they must memorize and apply the relevant English knowledge in advance, especially some key vocabulary, phrase and sentence structure.

Secondly, it stimulates students’ interests and maintains their motivation for speaking English. Students are not limited to the sort of language used : they can be doctors or patients, sellers or buyers, employers or employees; they can be excited or depressed, annoyed or pleased, indifferent or sympathetic; they can be in Buckingham Palace or on a ship or on the moon; they can be threatening, advising, apologizing, condoling. The language used can differ in many aspects: the position, character, or mood of the character role-played; the physical setting imagined; the communicative functions or purpose required (Ur 130).

Thirdly, it helps students take effective language learning and language using strategies, particularly communication strategies, rehearsal strategies and retrieval strategies. Students will constantly improve themselves in the process of using foreign languages to communicate, from more mistakes to fewer mistakes.

Fourthly, it helps students develop social skills and establish harmonious interpersonal relationship. In spite of the fact that students differ in the learning capability, English level, hobbies and so on, in the process of jointly completing tasks in a group, they require communicating with each other, tolerating each other, and assisting each other in order to finally achieve the goal and accomplish the task. In this way, in the classroom activities, students not only achieve the purpose of acquiring language knowledge, exercise communicative ability, but also experience the joy of unity and cooperation, and cultivate the spirit and ability of teamwork.

Finally, it increases students’ awareness of the cultural differences between the East and the West, enlarges their vision, cultivates their patriotic spirit, and helps them form healthy views about life (Wang 44). The theme of role-play reflects the collision of Chinese and foreign cultures, highlights the cultural differences that may give rise to communication barriers; the created situation is a socio-linguistic situation with communicative cultural factors; Students develop critical thinking ability and multicultural perspectives through observations, analyses, evaluations, discussions and reflections.

1. The Present Situation of Oral English Teaching and Learning in Junior High Schools

The new English Curriculum for Nine-year Compulsory Education declares that junior high school leavers must meet these requirements: students can provide information on simple topics, use appropriate pronunciation and intonation, express simple views and opinions in proper tone, and communicate with others successfully. Moreover, the teaching objectives of the new English curriculum require that English language teachers must take student-centered teaching approach and give every student the opportunity of participating in the class. Besides, material condition is equipped. On one hand, the launch of new English textbooks fully reflects the awareness of performing English communicative functions, carrying out English teaching in the communicative language environment, and transforming knowledge into language skills and developing this skill into language communicative competence through a large number of language practices. On the other hand, the widespread availability of multimedia classroom also makes sure that English learning environment can keep pace with the times.

In English classroom teaching, most teachers do not lay the same emphasis on English speaking skill as on the other three skills. There is not enough time allocated for oral teaching in the classroom. Those teachers tend to take traditional teaching method, which fails to fill the gap between the language used in real life and the language learned in classroom for several reasons:1) it often gives priority to forms rather than functions; 2) it tends to focus on one or two language skills and ignore the others; 3) it is prone to isolate language from its context (Wang 15). Especially in oral English teaching, under the pressure of inappropriate linguistic environment, limited time, difference of students’ oral English level and overcrowded classroom, those teachers are inclined to controlled activities and semi-controlled activities, such as reading aloud, giving a prepared talk, learning a piece of text or dialogue by heart, interviewing someone, and doing a drill. The majority of the above activities are simply language practice activities that carry students away from real life and can not develop students’ communicative competence effectively. Additionally, due to the different English foundations of students and the uneven level of oral English, class teaching is difficult to balance the oral English level of each student.

Under the influence of exam-oriented education, many students mistakenly believe that the purpose of learning English is to pass the exam. Due to the complexity and subjectivity of the oral test itself, the result of oral test has little influence on students’ entering a higher school. Some students even think that the oral test is just “going through the motions”. Such a situation can easily lead students to the illusion that oral English learning is the same with the waste of efforts. The ability of many junior high school students to speak English can not meet the requirements of the new curriculum standard as a result of the low quality of some junior high school oral English teaching. A common feature of Chinese students’ English learning is that they are proficient in grammar but poor in spoken English. Many students complain that they understand English, but fail to speak English. Those students are awake to the fact that having a good master of English vocabulary and grammar is not equivalent to having confidence in the English conversation. In an overcrowded classroom, each student has extremely little time on average for speaking English. There are not enough opportunities for conversation in or outside of class. Students are often inhibited to say something in English in class for afraid of attracting attention, making mistakes, being criticized or losing face. Even if they are not inhibited, they struggle with lack of motivation to speak and fail to think something to say. Due to the lack of training, many students are accustomed to using the mother tongue, or organizing words in Chinese and then translating it into English.

As mentioned above, oral English teaching and learning has more or less problems, and a big gap from the expected goals still exists. There is no doubt that the status quo of oral English teaching and learning needs transforming. The primary goal of English language teaching is to allow students to utilize English when necessary. To achieve this goal, English language teachers should convert their views about language which is not an integration of linguistic knowledge but a communication tool. The combination of language teaching and real life should be constructed by designing more realistic classroom activities.

1. The Application of Role-Play in Oral English Teaching in Junior High Schools

Dialogue materials are found in many units of English textbooks in China, which can be adapted for role-play. Therefore, it is quite clear that role-play is feasible. In fact, role-play has been employed by teachers. Nevertheless, there are still many problems in the application of role-play, failing to show its advantages in developing communicative competence compared to traditional classroom activities. Consequently, great pains must be taken by teachers to ensure the solution of those problems.

5.1 Guiding principles for role-play

Firstly, shift emphasis from the language form and structure to the language function. The purpose of foreign language teaching is to cultivate students’ communicative competence. The role of teachers is multiple: a organizer who organizes activities; a counselor who answers students’ questions; a communicator who interacts with students; a facilitator who helps students learn English.

Secondly, choose and adapt a script according to students’ language proficiency level and communicative needs. Just as Livingstone (1983) said, students’ level of language proficiency should be taken into account. Simplify the script if it is beyond students’ linguistic competence.

Thirdly, create a real-life situation which stimulates students’ interest. Appropriate situations should have these characteristics: 1) There are unscrupulous people or social organizations, each with their own interests and interests; 2) The situation involves disparate values, and it is difficult to reach agreement; 3) The contradiction needs to be solved urgently; 4) There are many ways to solve the problem.

Fourthly, make sure that every participant takes a suitable role. The domination of role-play is not in hand of several talkative participants. The characteristics of roles are analyzed by all members of the class, and then the assignments of roles are decided by the teacher together with students. Roles can be assigned to students who have similar problems with the role, to students who have exploration requirements, or to students who often think about others.

Fifthly, arrange time in a scientific and reasonable way. The process of role-play ( preparation, performance, discussion, evaluation) takes at least three class hours. This will undoubtedly occupy the time of other tasks and bring difficulties to the overall arrangement of courses. This contradiction can be solved by scientifically arranging the number of role-playing, effectively using extracurricular preparation time, and setting up a “caucus group”.

Finally, provide prompt guidance and valid instruction. All the indispensable information and clear role descriptions are connected with students’ confidence in performance.

5.2 The practical application of role-play in junior high schools

(1) Role-play controlled through cued dialogues

Example 1

student A

student B

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