How to practice your English speaking skills?

How to practice speaking English? It is the problem that Chinese people are most looking forward to solving. Now you don't have to worry about it, we will provide you with 6 techniques for practicing speaking plus the software for practicing speaking with human-computer dialogues, and the problem will be solved.

The key to having a chance to survive and thrive in a foreign country is to have the opportunity to express yourself and communicate with others. If you learn mute English, it will be very difficult for you to arrive in the United States. And at present our university English education is defective. When you learn a language, communication is the purpose, not the language itself. We tend to learn English just as a subject, from elementary school to college, and at the end of the day, we still can't speak English.

Communicating in a language and mastering a large amount of vocabulary, sentence patterns, and grammar are two different things. As far as the knowledge of the language itself is concerned, we are already over the top. What we lack is the ability to use English in communication, and it is only in communication that we can decipher the code of thought with each other. The same words can mean different things in different language environments.

I suggest to contract the goal of our learning, the pursuit of a large and broad knowledge of English into the pursuit of a quantitative skills, I think there are six skills, is the key to communication between Americans and Americans, if we can master these six skills, we can better understand the thinking of the Americans, so as to learn to speak well.

First, the skill of how to define something simply in English. 80% of the time Americans talk to Americans they are trying to tell each other what the thing is. Our textbooks, despite the increasing difficulty of vocabulary, are stuck at one level of logical structure of thought. Chinese people often say Where is the book? Rarely does anyone say What is a book? American elementary school students begin to ask: What is the book? This kind of Where is the book is just a descriptive stage of thinking. But I think even college students have a hard time answering What is a book? Because the traditional Chinese English teaching model doesn't teach students the skills to express their thoughts.

Second, if you have learned to define, but your understanding is still off, then you need to train How to explain things in different ways. If the other person doesn't understand one expression, the American will look for another expression to eventually make the other person understand. Because there is only one thing, but there may be many language symbols to express it. This requires a lot of substitution practice. Traditional teaching methods also do substitution exercises, but this kind of substitution is not real substitution, just substitution at the language level, not substitution at the thinking level. For example, I love you (我爱你). According to our teaching method of substitution, we replace you with her, my mother, etc. This kind of substitution is no different from the tracing practice of primary school students. This kind of substitution does not challenge the intellect and does not stimulate the mind. The basic structure of the sentence remains unchanged, so if I don't understand I love you, I certainly don't understand I love her, and if I replace it with I want to kiss you, I want to hug you, I will show my heart to you, etc., or if I tell the other person about the movie "Titanic", and tell him or her that that's what love is, he or she will probably understand it. That's what I call real substitution. This is called real substitution. That is to say, use a different way to express the same meaning, or an expression that the other party can not hear clearly, give a simple and easy to understand example to express, until the other party understands.

Third, we must learn how Americans describe things. In terms of description, there is a big difference between Chinese and American culture. We describe things in terms of time and space. Americans always describe space from the inside to the outside, from the inside to the outside. The Chinese do the opposite. In terms of time, the Chinese describe things in natural chronological order. When we describe something that suddenly stops, often the last place said is the most important. Americans describe in time by saying the most important thing first and then the accompanying things. Only when a tragic event occurs do Americans add padding in front of it. This is the great difference between Chinese and Americans in the description of time.

Fourth, learn to use important American idioms. The things that are not easy to learn and can cause confusion are "idioms". For example, when a Pekingese says, "I've got my hat on," it's hard for a foreigner to understand, and that's idiomatic. Therefore, when you communicate with Americans, you can use American idioms appropriately, and they will immediately feel very friendly and love to communicate with you. What are idioms? It is every word you know, but put them together, you do not know what it means.

Fifth, learn the ability to translate between two languages. This is one of the most important criteria to measure the level of speaking. Because English is not our mother tongue, we are born with our own mother tongue. Many people think that to learn a foreign language well you have to lose your mother tongue, which is not true.

Sixth, have the ability to guess. Why Americans and Americans, Chinese and Chinese communication rarely produce ambiguity? It is because they can "guess" among themselves. Our teaching does not advocate "guessing". But I think guessing is very important to learn American speaking well. In communication, there is a word you do not understand, you can not immediately go to the dictionary, then you need to guess to build a bridge to bridge the gap, otherwise communication will be interrupted.

The Chinese learn to speak by heart, memorizing sentence patterns and intonation, and as a result, many people start to look up when they speak, in fact looking for things they have memorized in their memories. If he had been able to guess, I don't think this would have happened.

These are the 6 tips I mentioned for learning to think like an American. If Chinese students can do these 6 things, they will definitely learn to speak well in a shorter time.

Then there is the question of English phonetics. We Chinese don't need to take the bull by the horns and necessarily seek to pronounce our words like a native speaker, as long as our pronunciation doesn't cause the other person to misunderstand us. In our daily life, we don't need to be superstitious about any scientific method, we just need to remember one thing: imitation. But be sure to imitate standard English or American. On the basis of imitation, every day to keep an hour of self-speaking practice, this exercise must assume a two-way communication occasions, that is, as if someone to communicate with you.

Finally, a word about the use of breath in English. When we pronounce words, we try to move our breath through the dantian, and avoid pronouncing words with our lungs, which can make the English pronunciation loud and round.

The advantages of "human-computer dialogue" for the oral examination of English

The oral examination is one of the more difficult to implement in the test of language skills, and there are considerable difficulties in its proposition, examination and scoring. The quality of the oral test depends not only on the formulation of the test questions, but also on the process of implementation of the test and the objectivity and fairness of the scoring. However, the implementation of oral English examination in the basic education stage is a general trend. There are many technical difficulties in conducting a unified large-scale oral test in the traditional face-to-face manner between candidates and examiners, so at present, even if the oral English test for the college entrance examination is conducted, it is only required to be attended by candidates applying for the foreign language and foreign-related majors. Nevertheless, the number of candidates registering for the oral test is still increasing year by year. In the face of such a large number of candidates, the reform of the oral examination method has become the key to the implementation of large-scale oral examination. After research, exploration, experimentation and demonstration, the computer-assisted oral examination of English for the 2000 Shanghai college entrance examination was adopted. Referring to their experience and according to the actual situation of our school, the author carried out a research on assisting the English oral examination with the language laboratory in the second year of junior high school. The oral examination was held in batches in the language laboratory of our school. To ensure the fairness of the oral examination, we recorded ten sets of questions of consistent difficulty and used them randomly in the examination. After entering the examination room one batch at a time and taking their places, the candidates put on headphones with microphones and put the blank tapes into the cassette compartment. The instructor plays the questions and the oral exam begins. Candidates follow the instructions they hear, mouth to microphone, and answer the questions as required. The official examination time for each oral examination is approximately 10 minutes, which includes time for the candidate to prepare for some of the test questions. At the end of the oral examination, the teacher will be stored in the box warehouse in the candidate answer tape centralized to the teacher's office for scoring. This method of conducting the test is what I call a "human-computer dialog" approach.

Through the study, we believe that the "human-computer dialogue" approach to the oral examination of English has the following advantages:

One, high efficiency

Last year, our school held a trial oral examination at the junior level, in the traditional face-to-face teacher-student approach, half of the students of the entire level of nearly 180 people to participate in the afternoon of the day. Classes were suspended for the grade group. All the teachers of the English language section went out in groups to serve as organizing preparation and examiners, and the test was conducted throughout the afternoon. In contrast, the author's batch oral examination, conducted with the aid of a language laboratory, took less than three hours for the 316 second-year candidates who took part***, and classes were not suspended for this purpose; the three marking teachers spent four days marking the recordings of all the candidates' answers. From this comparison, it can be seen that compared with traditional testing methods, the "human-computer dialogue" approach has a higher efficiency, and can test a large number of candidates at the same time with the same set of questions, which meets the basic requirements of standardized testing on a large scale and makes the implementation of large-scale oral examinations possible: at the same time, the impact on the occupancy of the classroom time is also reduced to a minimum. minimized.

Second, the scoring is more objective and fair

Traditional oral exams, scoring is often decided by the test teacher or a few people, it is inevitable that the influence of human factors, and because there is no opportunity to retake the test, once there is disagreement can not be reconsidered. In this oral examination, the teachers involved in the scoring first discussed the "scoring criteria" and formulated a unified scoring standard for each question, and the work procedures were also controlled and managed by the head of the classroom preparation team. Scoring teachers turn on the tape recorder, according to the original formulation of the test questions, answers and scoring standards for each question, listening to the students' answers, in turn, the score of each question recorded on the scoring table, and finally add points and statistics. Can also be part of the scoring at any time to spot-check re-listening, reconsideration, if a teacher continuous scoring too loose or too tight phenomenon, the head of the preparation team can remind him in time, so that the scoring of the credibility of a better guarantee.

Three, to reduce the psychological pressure of the candidates

In the author's last examiner for the first year candidates in the process, to see some of the candidates psychological pressure is too great, so that they can not play their normal level. Some of them have trembling hands, voice change; some forehead constantly sweating, eyes staring at the desktop do not dare to look at the examiner: some in a panic to get off the paper; there are candidates who say a sentence over and over again four or five times can not think of what to say below. Although these phenomena are often due to the psychological capacity of the individual candidates, but as a test organizers should also try to create for the candidates to create a relaxed, natural environment for the examination as a must be held to consider the conditions. In the recording of the examination of the second year students basically did not appear due to nervousness and can not answer the phenomenon. This shows that this "human-computer dialogue" mode of examination for the candidates to bring a natural, comfortable psychological feeling, so that their performance is not affected by the pressure of the examination.

Fourth, to facilitate the organization and management of the examination

Generally speaking, if you carry out the traditional oral examination, the organization of the preparation, training of examiners, the implementation of the examination and other work, often for the normal teaching of the school to bring a certain impact. In particular, if classes need to be suspended for this reason, the implementation of the oral examination and other courses and subjects will inevitably be in conflict with the prevailing time constraints in the classroom. The "human-computer dialogue" mode of examination can be carried out at any time in the classroom, the marking work can be arranged at an appropriate time, and at the same time can realize the examination management of the majority of students by a small number of teachers.

In summary, the oral examination of "human-computer dialogue" has advantages in various aspects. However, the author believes that the use of language laboratories to carry out oral examinations is only temporary. With the rapid development of information technology, computer applications have rapidly entered the field of education, computer technology to carry out "human-computer dialogue" oral test should be the future direction of language testing.