Initial Search on English Communication Skills Training with Live Web—casting Platform in Vocational Schools

I.Introduction

Owning to the rapid development of globalization and information network， as the most commonly used information carrier and communicational tool， English plays a significant role in various fields in our society. According to the current situation， there is an increasing urgent requirement for talents who are capable to utilize English fluently and accurately， which reflects the necessity and the tendency of English educational reformation.

As the major cause of a number of tremendous changes in our living world， internet breaks barrier of space and distance in information transmission. On the basis of 2016 Global Internet Development Statistics Report by American professional investigation agent Royal Pingdom， the number of global internet users exceed 300 billion， increasing by 9%. According to the data from the 36th Chinese Internet Development Statistics Report published by CNNIC， Chinese Internet penetration reaches 48.8% and the number of Chinese internet users exceeds 66.8 billion. Due to the popularization of mobile terminals， the rising trend of its utilization in education is irreversible.

Live web-casting， major including real-time communication， is an emerging industry which is applied mainly through mobile devices at present. Compare with traditional video websites， it is undeniable that live web-casting websites motivated the most fundamental group of information transmission---the Netizen.

II.Problem Statement

Following the relevant improvement of linguistics， psychology and statistics， more and more researches are focus on connections between internet applications and English communicative training. Nevertheless， most of researches aim to the contributions from incomplete instant medias instead of stream medias， and to the college students instead of vocational students. Take Lanzhou Vocational College of Foreign Studies as an example for analyzing problems in English communicative training， the common problems are as follows：

i.Pronunciation problems caused by unmodifiable condition and reginal-disparity

With much more opportunities of college education appear these year， most high school students prefer and able to have better educational opportunity in collage instead of vocational collage. Only students with weak knowledge base enter vocational collage according to their low score. According to investigation， students who come from various regions had no chance of English learning or are not capable to pronounce correctly.

ii.Losing Interest in learning due to lack of clear learning objectives

It is extremely difficult for a student to love the subject he/she cant understand or practice in accessible ways. After being frustrated in attempting， the willing of foreign languages learning fades away eventually while aversion toward it grows.

iii.Inadequate situational training

There is no denying that every student is potentially talented and has every possibility of improvements. However， it is unavoidable that students are not capable to improve their English communicative skills due to the shortage of English practicing situation.

III.Initial Solution

For the above-mentioned problems and situation， based on massive investigations and analysis of necessity， a vocational-aimed project has been initially designed and implemented. The design of project is based on characters of vocational students， English communicative skills and live web-casting platform， which including three stages：

i.Pronunciation correcting stage.

The teacher encourages students in groups to choose the highly possible mistaken-pronounced vocabulary from daily class and live these on certain live web-casting platform through their smart phones. In order to build knowledge base for the next stage， every live should be controlled in 15mins and focus on the reasons and key points of mistakes to help others avoid similar pronunciation problems.

ii.Interest cultivating stage.

Based on the pronunciation correcting stage， most student have improvement on abilities of basic pronunciation regulation. In this stage， the teacher asks students to choose their favorite topic within the English textbook and live any relevant content of topic in English individually. This stage aims at encourage students to speak bravely and confidently without worrying their grammatic mistakes， to stimulate them with the interesting wed-form and admiration from non-English speaker Netizen， and to overcome their fear on English expression

iii.Further improving and expanding stage.

Owning to the improvements from previous stages， students have certain abilities of correct pronunciation and basic fluent English expression. While their interest in English raised， its time for teachers to apply the final stage which will be the time to give students more grammatic advice to assure the further improvements in English.

IV.Conclusion

After perform the mentioned project in a class of Lanzhou Vocational College of Foreign Studies， according to test and investigation， it is obvious that the relative students have more interest and much improved in pronunciation and expressions in English. Through this initial attempt， it is basically reasonable to say that live web-casting can be helpful to help vocational students build better confidence in using of vocational English.

Reference：

[1]Glaserfeld， Von. 1996. Radical Constructivism：A Way of Knowing and Learning [M].London：Falmer Press.

作者簡介：王莹（1982.05-），女，汉族，甘肃兰州人，助教，本科，主要从高职大学英语口语交际技能训练研究。