Most students in China have the same illusion: the crux of poor oral English lies in a small vocabulary. With their amazing vocabulary, they naturally blurted out enviable authentic English, so they staged an embarrassing scene of a stunning GRE (course) oral show that foreigners could not understand. It is true that vocabulary plays a vital role in the learning of any foreign language (course). However, having a huge vocabulary but not knowing how to use it correctly, the importance of "polysemy" in oral English, its applicable scene and its cultural background is really a big misunderstanding in oral English learning, and even a fatal injury. In fact, an American farmer can speak very fluent and idiomatic English even if the English word does not exceed 1000. Comparatively speaking, CET-4 has a vocabulary of 4,000-5,000, which is more than enough in daily oral communication. So don't be afraid to speak for fear of not having enough vocabulary.

Second, fluency and coherence.

Spoken language requires fluency, and fluency means fluency and fluency. But fluency and speed cannot be confused. Some students blindly pursue fast speech and ignore the coherence of expression, resulting in logical confusion and semantic cohesion, giving people a sense of incoherence. Therefore, in spoken English, we should not only speak fluently, but also ensure the fluency of thought expression.

Third, input

Listening and reading are the input sources of oral English, which help us to accumulate various language points (idioms, slang, sentence patterns, etc. ) step by step. In addition, listening is the spoken language of foreigners, so we can feel its "pronunciation, intonation and tone" and imitate it on the basis of listening (the standard of imitation is that the more like the better, if it is exactly the same as the original pronunciation and intonation, it will certainly gain the greatest gains and greatly promote the improvement of spoken language. )

It should be pointed out that in the selection of materials, we should refer to the standard of "moderate difficulty". Many students are more or less holding the mentality of "eating a fat man in one bite" and "reaching the sky in one step" in English learning. In the initial stage, they held the China Journal in their hands and filled their ears with "Standard Voice of America". As a result, I was disgusted because I couldn't read the newspaper, and I was disheartened because I couldn't read the news. In the long run, they will lose confidence in learning English, but it will not pay off. Krashen, an American psycholinguist and teaching method professor, once pointed out that one of the problems to be solved in learning a foreign language is CI (comprehensive input) (Krashen 198 1). To put it simply, it is argued that the difficulty of inputting information should be "1+ 1", that is, it is a little more difficult at the current level, and it takes one step instead of two to reach the level, so 80% easy-to-understand materials are the best choice. (In CET4-6 or intermediate interpretation stage, "21century"; Reader's Digest is good reading material. )

Fourth, grammar.

Many students pay too much attention to the correctness of grammar in the process of oral training, which leads to the situation that a sentence will take a long time. In fact, spoken English doesn't need much grammar, and even native English speakers sometimes "slip of the tongue". The purpose of language is communication, and grammar serves communication. Paying too much attention to grammar will cause psychological obstacles. Of course, it is also wrong to ignore grammar, which is an important part of language communicative competence. D.Hymes( 197 1) pointed out that it is not enough to be grammatically correct, but also depends on whether the language is used in social situations. This view of Hymes has been widely accepted in the field of foreign language/second foreign language teaching. Canale and Swain( 1980) developed this view and divided communicative competence into four aspects: grammatical competence, sociolinguistic competence, conversational competence and strategic competence. This is not only using language knowledge and skills to understand grammatical sentences, but also whether these languages and skills can be used to solve practical problems and achieve the purpose of communication in a given environment. This communicative competence is an important symbol of foreign language quality.

Verb (short for verb) culture

When oral English learning enters the final stage of growth and oral English practice becomes more and more effective, many students are secretly delighted with their fluent oral English. At this moment, be careful not to enter the strange circle of "fluency-stupidity" (fluency in Chinglish or disharmony between manners and western culture), otherwise it will easily lead to embarrassing scenes and even be despised by foreigners. Only by exploring the cultural background behind the language and the way of thinking of foreigners can we truly master a language. This is also what I emphasized in the New Oriental Listening and Speaking Training Course.

On the one hand, foreigners' logical thinking follows the concept of "time is money". Tend to come straight to the point and be concise. In our oral English, we should actively implement the principle of "giving priority, stating opinions first, then demonstrating, giving results first, and then explaining the reasons", instead of treating foreigners with the shyness of "she is still hiding half her face behind the guitar in front of us" and the hint of "don't talk if you want", which will only increase the shielding of communication.

On the other hand, the profound knowledge of British and American culture has laid the most solid foundation for authentic spoken English and proper conversation. We will see its importance from the following examples:

Taboos and euphemisms (taboos and euphemisms) must not be profaned in daily communication. For example, age, money, marital status and political inclination (age, income, marital status and political inclination) are purely personal privacy in western culture and should not be touched. Another example, euphemism, such as "I want to answer the call of nature." "I want to go somewhere." And "I want to go to the bathroom." Usually used to express the meaning of "going to the bathroom". In addition, media language pays special attention to the use of euphemisms, such as:

Option: Support abortion.

Contribution: tax increase (Clinton actually used this, and the news media parrot it. )

Physical disability: disability

Vertical challenge: short

Low-income families: the poor

Custody Engineer: Floor Sweeper

(euphemism before colon)

In etiquette, the most common example is that foreigners are used to giving a firm handshake to show their sincerity and trust, which is far from China's elegant handshake.