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dents have to take in passively. So some students are excellent in grammar, vocabulary, but poor in oral English.
Recent years, China carries out a series of reform on junior English teaching, and spoken English teaching is concerned widely. In addition, the new teaching materials also lay emphasis on spoken English, and teachers, to some degree, stress the training of language application. But there is little progress in spoken English, and the present condition is still unsatisfactory.
Ⅱ. The Reasons of Poor Spoken English at Present
In China, the number of English learners is increasing, but few people can study it well and use it freely. There are three main reasons for it.
A. The Lack of the Environment to Speak English
Bernard Spolsky listed 74 conditions for second language learning. Condition 42 talked about the Number of Speakers condition: The number of people who speak a language as a first or second language influences the desire of others to learn it. Condition 48: Linguistic condition prefers to learn a language when
(a)You desire the social approval of its speakers, and/or
(b)You see strong value in being able to communicate with its speakers, and/or
(c)There are no social norms providing other methods of communicating with speakers of that language, and/or
(d)Your learning is reinforced or encouraged by speakers of the language.
Condition 45 Official use condition: prefer to teach or learn a language which is officially used or recognized.
One of the biggest obstacles for Chinese students to learn English is the lack of language environment. They study in a single environment – Chinese context. They seldom have a chance to use English or to practice English except several English classes every week. Many students can’t see the strong value in being able to use it to communicate. In most cases their listening and speaking cannot be revised, consolidated and applied out of class, so this language environment impacts the development of speaking.

B. The Lower Qualities of English Teachers
As is known to all, nowadays our teaching material “New Standard” English emphasizes the application and communicative competence, although the book is changed but many teachers’ mind and teaching method don’t change. What’s worse, some teachers are not trained. They lack some basic research on teaching method and teaching thought. Some are at moderate English level; it is hard for them to express the rhythm and intonation of English and to organize teaching in English efficiently.
C. The Impact of Test-Oriented Education
The goal of teaching and the goal of learning, to some degree, are impacted by exams, and the exams themselves emphasize memorizing, but neglect application of language. The main purpose of Chinese students studying English is to apply it and communicate. Therefore, English teaching should be like this: studying is for application; teaching is for learning; examinations are for application, the goal of exam is to promote teaching and learning. Mr. Tao Xingzhi opposed to overemphasizing the result of the exams and the proportion of students entering schools of a higher grade. Many teachers have this experience: in class, when something about the custom in the western countries is introduced, the students are very interested in it, so the teacher talks more so he can’t finish the content prepared beforehand. After class, the teacher is regretful for he has “wast