Introduction:
As the B.C. curriculum demonstrates, the Core Competencies are sets of intellectual, personal, and social and emotional proficiencies that all students need in order to engage in deep, lifelong learning. Communication, one of the three Core Competencies, emphasize that it encompasses the knowledge, skills, process, and dispositions we associate with interactions with others. Through their communication, students acquire, develop and transform ideas and information, and make connections with others to share their ideas, express their individuality, further their learning, and get things done. Communication competency is fundamental to finding satisfaction, purpose, and joy. (Information on the Core Competencies, including profiles and illustrations, are availablehttps://curriculum.gov.bc.ca/competencies ) When I relate the B.C. curriculum competencies to Chinese student’s average level of English, it is of great significance to improve domestic students’ oral English presentation skills.
Description:
Despite the long-term and intensive English learning educations they received, Chinese college students still have to struggle to make even 2 minutes of professional English presentation. Through more than 10 years of English study, their vocabulary and language knowledge is enough for delivering an intermediate level English presentation.
The Chinese educators have a focus on how to improve domestic students’ comprehensive English ability in recent years, but the reality and database’s vacancy showing that this great attempt is still on its way. After searching the database on “Eric”, I found one resource that is very valuable and on topic. This research is conducted by Professor. Zhu, W (2019)’s team. By observing a mid-sized (38 students) class study in details and one on one interviewing and surveying in Shanghai University of Engineering Science in 2014. The educators proposed that psychological factors are assumed to be the top reason to hinder domestic students from being confident and motivated in speaking English in public.
Among the four macro English skills, speaking skills are the most important for communication, especially om the future career circumstances for college students, like job training, interviews, etc. (Zaremba, 2006). Making a qualified English presentation is the ultimate purpose of learning English as a second language for most Chinese college students. Children in China are required to take English as the mandatory major courses since the age of 7, or even earlier. (Cheng, 2010). In a regular school 8-hours schedule, English class is set at least 1.5 hours a day ranging from 1st-grade elementary school to 2nd-year undergraduate college. Even though through those intensive English studies, Chinese college students still feel very challenging to deliver a proper English presentation in a relatively professional area in public (Lu 2014).
In contrast, there are a lot of cases and live examples of young adults who can communicate smoothly for general talking in a completely new foreign language within a few months. It is quite common to see that the presentation skills of most of the foreign students, either in Chinese or English catch up dramatically, while neither of the two languages is their native tongues.
A general survey was given to 10 foreign exchanging students at Shanghai University of Engineering Science, asking them how they could learn to speak Chinese in a short period of time. Only 2 students said they attended certain language classes. The rest said they just learned from daily life and local people around.
Meanwhile, in China, the traditional English speaking class teaching style is instructor dominated: students have to spend at least half of the class time in listening to the teacher. Interaction is not encouraged. Practice opportunities are few for students. These caused the lack of interests, motivation, and confidence in learning English speaking of these young adults.
For the possibility of Inquiry, I assume that if the newly designed curriculum focuses on stimulating students’ interests, encouraging them to speak at their best, it probably will effectively help students to accelerate their presentation quality in a much shorter period. The ultimate purpose of the language is to communicate ideas not only for the test. When students were released from the worries of making mistakes, they demonstrated much more motivation and interest in learning to speak English. Any curriculums focusing on building up their confidences and relating closely with the real world
professional scenarios would benefit the students a lot.
Like language, presentation is never the work only limited to the throat and tongue; it involves the whole body and appropriate attitude to deliver a clear and effective one to make the audience accept the speaker’s idea smoothly. This curriculum does not follow the regular English speaking courses on grammar and accuracy. It
intends to motivate the students by accomplishing the tasks and getting feedback of their performances immediately from the audience and the video recordings. Upon the feedback and the observations from this group of students, the curriculums of English speaking learning which provide the students the Hands-on practice
opportunity, rather than listening to the instructor and mimic would be encouraging and beneficial to these college students in China.
The following is about the key questions within this topic:
1. Compared with the traditional English teaching model in China, what is the difference between the newly designed oral English presentation skill curriculum? (Related to the aim of the course, students’ objectives, students’ activities, learning experiences, teaching strategies, and assessment)
2. Inquiry-based teaching’ effectiveness is proved by lots of developed countries’ educational communities. So, how to apply inquiry-based learning into the new practice of teaching?
Reference:
- Ariyanti. (2016). Psychological Factors Affecting EFL Students’Speaking Performance. ASIAN TEFL, 1(1).
https://doi.org/10.21462/asiantefl.v1i1.14 - Zhu, W. (2019). 10 Years vs. 16 Hours: An Effective Curriculum to Improve Chinese College Students’ English Presentation Quality in Public. English Language Teaching, 12(9), 82–87.
- Introduction to British Columbia’s Redesigned Curriculum. Retrieved from: https://moodle.tru.ca/pluginfile.php/1366944/mod_resource/content/1/BC%20Curriculum%20Introduction.pdf