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Chapter 1 Introduction

1.1 Background of the Study
More and more attention has been paid to English teaching and learning with thebackground of globalization where there has been increasing interaction betweenvarious countries and China. Specifically, people have gradually realized thesignificance of oral English among all the four basic skills in recent years andtherefore put more emphasis on it. As stated by Kang and Lu in Wen and Wang (2004:309), English majors are required to have the course of oral English when they arefreshmen, and oral Enlish training is provided for non-English major postgraduates insome colleges and universities. Meanwhile, oral English is taken into considerationduring a series of recognised English examinations, such as CET-4, CET-6, GRE,IELTS, TOEFL and so on. For instance, the exam of IELTS (the International EnglishLanguage Testing System) and TOEFL iBT (Test of English as a Foreign Language,Internet Based Test) consist of four sections, including listening, reading, speakingand writing. Expressing oneself in English can sometimes constitute one’sperformance in a job interview. As mentioned in Dai and He (2002: 13), “speech andwriting are the two media or substances used by natural languages as vehicles forcommunication... of the two media of language, speech is more basic than writing ...the writing system of any language is always invented by its users to record speechwhen the need arises”.Some researchers, however, have found out that the oral proficiency of languagelearners in China is far from satisfactory. In Wen and Wang (2004: 325), Wen Qiufangfurther summerizes the problems of English majors in oral performance during theirsecond year of learning, such as low language accuracy and fluency, predictablecontent, and little knowledge of communicative principles in conversation. Therefore,it is imperative to concentrate on the development of oral proficiency.
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1.2 Purpose of the Study
The present study aims to examine the second language oral accuracy andcomplexity development of English majors in China. Specifically, this study tries tocompare nine English majors’ oral accuracy and complexity development. Theanalysis mainly focuses on the data recorded for three times, and the interval betweenevery two sessions is about one year.Different from the previous ones, this study explores both accuracy andcomplexity by comparing the English majors’ oral performance in three tests whichlast about two years. During every test, there are two tasks for English majors or thesubjects to fulfil, one is the interaction between the teacher and the participant, and the other the argument of the participant for his or her own opinions upon a definitestatement or phenomena. Moreover, the present study attempts to provide a relativeoverall picture of oral proficiency of English majors through a combination ofquantitative and qualitative analysis.Accordingly, as for the practical significance, this study attempts to make somecontribution to the current situation of foreign language teaching and learning inChina. Specifically, this study is related to oral performance of English majors, sothere might be some suggestive information that will help facilitate the languagelearning to some extent, specifically the second language oral accuracy andcomplexity.Such a longitudinal investigation of second language oral accuracy andcomplexity will be本论文由英语论文网提供整理，提供论文代写，英语论文代写，代写论文，代写英语论文，代写留学生论文，代写英文论文，留学生论文代写相关核心关键词搜索。