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The main focuses of these researches are the problems of students’ spoken English, the factors that influence spoken English and the measures that can be taken to improve the bad situation. The emphasis is different, but the goal of these researches is consistent, to improve the current situation of spoken English learning in China. In the researches that reveal the status quo of students’ spoken English learning, several problems are found in the oral communication of college students. The most common ones are low language accuracy, low language fluency, limited language range, inflexibility, rare substance and weak master of communicative principles in conversation (Wen, 2001: 24-28).
In the study that analyzes English learners’ spoken English competence and features with Birmingham University Discourse Analysis Method, the researcher finds that because of a weak grasp of English, spoken English learners are prone to depend on the simple and fundamental formulas or the vocabulary familiar to themselves and secure communicative skills in oral communication. Because these spoken English learners are not familiar enough with the conversation norms and principles of English, they unconsciously abide by the conversation habits of their mother tongue when they converse in English. Another conclusion drawn from this study is that psychological pressure is formed when these spoken English learners talk with others in English, which will lower their interest in the conversation and result in dull and simple talk (Lu, 1996: 97-103).
The problems emerged in oral communication can be explained from two sides: the internal factors such as personal affection, language foundation, paid attention and learning strategy; the external factors such as language environment, the quality of teacher, course content and methods of instruction (Zhu, Peng, 2005: 62-63). In Krashen’s (1983) Affective Filter Hypothesis, he pides personal affection into three kinds: impetus, confidence and anxiety degree. Impetus comes out of motivation. Gardner (1985) defines motivation as “the combination of effort plus desire to achieve the goal of learning the language plus favorable attitudes towards learning the language”. In his motivation theory, there are two typical reasons for learning second language: integrative and instrumental. Instrumental motivation means learning to accomplish a task, such as finding a profitable job, passing a course, getting better pay, etc. (Ehrman, 1996). Integrative motivation indicates a favorable attitude toward the target language community, probably a wish to adapt to a new culture with the tool of foreign language (Gardner, 1985). Different motivations play a different role in helping English learners acquire spoken English skills.
As the main subjects of this kind of researches are English majors and non-English majors, in the aspect of exploring the external reasons, for non-English majors, the classroom instruction which pays more attention to grammar, reading, writing and translation deprive them from practicing their oral English. The situation of lacking the real communicative environment in daily life also influences the improvement of students’ spoken English proficiency (Qiao, 2007: 202-203).
On the basis of analyzing the factors that influence the spoken English competence of college students, Feng and Wu (2005) suggest that there should be a center shift from teacher-centered classroom instruction to student-centered and communication-centered. As students are the subject of language learning, more attention should be paid to them. Their status quo should be kept track of and the problems they encounter in spoken English learning should be known in time so that relevant improvement measures could be taken to better the situation.
In spoken English teaching, three principles should be put into effect. They are grammar principle, communicative principle and cultural principle (Xiang, 2006: 129-130). For a conversation, the grammar principle is the most basic one to abide by, because only with the right grammar, the sentences can be understood by each other in the superficial level. As spoken English is mostly used in communication, so the communicative principle should also be obeyed. Combining language structure with context and function, students could acquaint themselves with the persity of language structure and the possibilities of language expression.