Influencing Factors and Countermeasures of Chinese Students' Oral English Proficiency

Abstract

With China going global, oral English proficiency seems to be required in more scenarios such as chasing further education in English-medium countries and posts in transnational corporations. However, China’s existing English education probably fails to satisfy the rising need for proficient oral English, where written English tends to be paid much more attention rather than oral English. Despite oral English has been increasingly concerned by the continuous curriculum reform in China, the actual level of Chinese students’ oral English tends to be relatively low. Meanwhile, Chinese students are facing a range of challenges or difficulties in oral English learning. This paper is intended to search for certain approaches to lead Chinese students to overcome these challenges and attain a higher level of oral English proficiency. For this purpose, this paper will systematically review the prior studies. By analysing the results and findings of these researches, the common challenges faced by Chinese students in English learning have been summarised, which are dumb English, the insufficient level of professional quality of English teachers and the neglect of oral English. Moreover, the potential influencing factors aggravating the challenges have also been extracted, that is, foreign language anxiety, educational resources and the education system. Based on the challenges and influential factors, several recommendations have been provided, namely, teaching strategies applied in English classrooms, supporting more education funds and boosting the curriculum reform.