sh speaking negatively affect performance in English speaking; Inappropriate and unfair assessments making by teachers make students hesitate to speak.
When teaching in Xiang’an No.1 Middle School, Xiamen, as a practice teacher in March, 2006, we did an informal survey on the situation of students’ learning of oral English. The questionnaire was designed to get a rough idea of the oral English learning of the students and particularly the difficulties students meet in speaking English (see appendix.)[4].
According to the analysis (see appendix), 54.3% of the students find it difficult to speak well because they are afraid of criticism or losing face. Anxieties get in the students’ way to speak; 51.2% of the students like the section of free talk; 82.1% of the students realize that the ability to speak English fluently is very important; 94 % of them are interested in foreign culture and customs; nearly half of the students wish that their teacher can correct the mistakes they make with encouragement and smile and they wish to be assessed in various ways.
Students learning English frequently worry about the small-size vocabulary, incorrect grammar and inappropriate expressions in their spoken English when communicating with others. English teachers are very familiar with the worries that English learners feel in their language learning process, particularly in their oral communication. This worry phenomenon should be included in anxiety in SLA research.[5] In reviewing research examining the effects of anxiety on language learning, Macintyre and Gardner concluded that learners’ excessive anxiety “negatively affects performance in the second language”. Worrying too much about learning and performance is both unnecessary and harmful. It may prevent learners from practicing English-speaking skills.[6]
3. Related teaching strategies
3.1 Developing students’ culture sense
3.1.1 Analysis and strategies
If the students’ motivation for learning English is zero, teaching them speaking English will be a huge problem for the teacher. So, before deciding on any other teaching strategies, what the teacher has to do is to arouse students’ interest and increase their motivation in learning English. There are many techniques that a teacher can take to help motivate students’ interest to learn, but no one motivational technique works well for all students. Since 94% of the students attending the questionnaire wish that their teacher could introduce foreign culture as often as possible, one can safely conclude that developing students’ culture sense is a general motivation practice which can motivate their interest in English.
The culture-bound aspect of teaching material is often of great interest to students, and it can be used to provoke an interesting discussion not only about the “other” culture, but also about the “home”culture. The discussion results may facilitate the speaking tasks.
Once students’ interest is motivated, they will realize that learning English has a lot of fun and will surely enjoy learning English. Once they enjoy learning English, they may look forward to speaking English and they are less likely to be afraid of speaking. So, provoking students’ interest can be considered as a good way to ease students’ anxieties in speaking.[7]
Another reason for developing students’ culture is that language is the carrier
