A Review of the Causes and Teaching Strategies for Insufficient Spoken English Fluency among Chinese University Students

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Abstract

Improving the fluency of spoken English is one of the goals in English teaching in Chinese universities; however, it is difficult to achieve in practice. This investigation reveals that the difficulty in accomplishing this goal is caused by the combined effect of three closely related factors: firstly, the cultural and psychological obstacles brought by the Confucian educational tradition; secondly, the current curriculum, which has always emphasized reading and writing and ignored listening and speaking; thirdly, the lack of chances for real spoken communication in English classes of universities. By thoroughly studying relevant domestic and foreign literature, this paper expounds on the above-mentioned three main reasons and summarizes the major teaching approaches such as Communicative Language Teaching (CLT), Task-Based Language Teaching (TBL), and corrective feedback systems. The research indicates that although these methods are effective under certain circumstances, their application in Chinese universities cannot be directly adopted and should be modified according to the local teaching conditions. Furthermore, this paper highlights that there is a shortage of previous research: little effort has been made to construct a complete explanatory framework that integrates the three aspects of culture, curriculum, and classroom practice. This gap serves as the foundation and the main contribution of this review.

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