With the deepening of the country's opening up to the outside world, especially the recent emphasis of the Ministry of Education and the National Scholarship Council on strengthening the cultivation of college students' foreign exchange ability and the promotion of international talent training, the ability to conduct discussions, defenses, reports and speeches in foreign languages, especially English, has received more and more attention. Students with strong presentation skills can accurately convey information to the public, can influence audiences, develop interpersonal relationships, and have potential leadership qualities, so they are also favored by the job market.
However, the research and teaching practice of this course are in the exploratory stage, and the research of English speech courses with professional characteristics has not yet formed a complete and systematic curriculum planning model, and there are also various problems in teaching practice. The teaching objectives of most English public courses are limited to language skills training, lack of teaching content and guidance in the field of communication and communication, and lack of training of students' innovative thinking, innovative ability and innovative quality. This kind of single situation, single mode of cultivation is difficult to meet the requirements of complex contexts: that is, students are not good at using English as a tool, in different contexts, especially formal occasions, calmly exchange information and expound ideas, students still have difficulty in opening their mouths, social interactions and job practices, and there are still communication barriers such as difficulty in opening, saying nothing, and being tasteless.
Chen Xi, associate professor of China Agricultural University, has extensive experience in teaching and researching English public speech, and she has guided Chinese agricultural university students to win many awards in domestic speech, debate and comprehensive English competitions at all levels. Among them, the debate team of the Agricultural University composed of two players won the third prize of the "Debate National Competition" and the "Foreign Research Society Cup" National English Debate Competition; Many people won the grand prize of the National College English Competition organized by the Foreign Language Steering Committee of Colleges and Universities; Many people won the first and second prizes of the "CCTV" Cup and the "21st Century" Cup National English Speech Competition in Beijing, known as the "Speech National Competition"; In addition, more students were shortlisted for the Beijing University Student Speech Competition and the Beijing Graduate Speech Competition and won the Excellence Award. Most of the award-winning students brought out by Chen Xi can attract attention on campus and in the workplace by virtue of their public speaking ability, and some have become university professors, postdoctoral researchers, senior investors, etc.
On the basis of years of teaching practice, Chen Xi has innovatively put forward the teaching idea of "interaction between English public speech classes and English basic courses" after years of intensive research, that is, how to maximize the role of English speech teaching under the framework of university English teaching. From the perspective of the reform and development of university English, she systematically studied the development of the current English public speech courses in Colleges and Universities in China and pointed out the current problems, proposing that speech teaching should be under the framework of the basic course of university English, through the integration of speech teaching in the oral language class, strengthen logical thinking training in writing class, select top students for special training and four ways to maximize the effect of English public speech teaching, and then build a new model of English teaching in colleges and universities.
Chen Xi believes that the teaching objectives of English speech classes in the university English public speech teaching are not clear, speech teaching can not go out of the mode of "spoken English" class, the positioning of speech teaching as a high-level oral language class, teaching pays more attention to the topic of breadth, word richness, expression fluency and communication interactivity, and there is no clear course goal for discourse logic, content depth and complexity, clear point of view and influence on the audience, resulting in speech teaching results are not very effective, Students' presentation skills are not cultivated. In the study, Chen Xi found that the module of teaching the basics of public speech in the oral language class has improved the students' discourse structure, discourse logic, supporting arguments, rhetorical use and stage display more significantly than that of the general speaking class, so it is proposed to use the advantages of English speech teaching to add public speech content to the intermediate and advanced speaking classes. For example, in the speech module, for the method of opening, Chen Xi introduced the most common way to attract the attention of the audience by asking questions, in addition to using examples, stories or famous quotes. Regarding rhetoric, which is rarely covered in general English speaking classes, Chen Xi introduced six rhetorical methods commonly used in English speech in the speech module, emphasizing that rhetoric is necessary for good public speech. Just these two knowledge points about public speaking, students can see the immediate effect through practice, so that their oral chapter level can be further improved.
English writing ability is one of the foundations of speech ability, but the current lack of attention to writing training in writing teaching, the current college students' English writing is generally unknown, the focus of writing teaching is always on grammar, words and sentence patterns and other language levels, and often ignore the English writing structure, content and logic guidance, resulting in many students mistakenly think that improving English writing is to memorize more words, more example sentences, as far as possible to pile up gorgeous and complex language. In response to this problem, Associate Professor Chen Xi proposed for the first time to strengthen the training of logical thinking in the writing class. Strengthening the logical thinking training of writing classes is also the task of speech teaching. In the writing class, from the analysis of excellent speeches as a starting point, guide students to understand the structure, views and thinking development, and then assign topics for students to imitate writing, and then compare their speeches with the former after completion, and finally revise them. This method enables students' logical thinking ability and writing depth to be improved in repeated thinking and practice, so that the writing level and thinking ability produce a qualitative leap. The 8th 21st World Cup National English Speech Contest National Champion Final Speech A Scene to Remember is one of the excellent speeches taught by Chen Xi, and she focuses on two outstanding features of the speech. The first is the prominence of the theme, the author in the speech on environmental protection issues, four times to bring the reader/audience to the scene of the film "Eighteen Years of the Misty Forest", the argument and the picture are skillfully combined, with a strong appeal. The second outstanding feature is the strong support of the arguments, in view of the arguments in this speech Chen Xi analyzed the students one by one, leading to the students' discussion of strong arguments and weak arguments, so that students have a clear understanding of how to choose the best arguments, and have a sudden sense of enlightenment. Professor Chen Xi's logical training method is exactly what is lacking in foreign language teaching in Chinese universities.
For students with a certain speech foundation and potential, put forward the model of the top class, select a good seedling with cultivation potential, open the class separately, and carry out the second classroom teaching in the spare time, effectively solving the problem of the number of classes in the university English class, due to the large number of classrooms and the challenging content of the course, through this training mode, the school has cultivated many seed players, with a large number of strong ability of the back candidate, the difficulty of teachers to guide before participating in the competition is also reduced a lot, and put forward the view of teaching instead of a race, For major events, special instructors should be arranged to conduct long-term one-on-one preparation counseling, and work together with players in the multi-month guidance and preparation process to make it easier to achieve good results. Yang Tiantian, a 21 World Cup winner, said: "The days of speech training are hard and unforgettable, I enjoy the process of making progress every day with Teacher Chen, and the speech makes me more confident and excellent. Shao Yuxin, a winner of the Foreign Research Society Cup Debate Competition, said: "I only knew how much potential I had when I came into contact with English debate, which was the biggest gain I gained from my English learning at the university level." "It is not difficult to see that the special training of top students provides a new path for innovative English teaching in China's universities."
In 2008, Chen Xi, as the leader, initiated the second classroom teaching of the speech and debate class of China Agricultural University, and for more than 10 years, 95% of the students selected for the class studied for more than one year. Teachers teach once a week, alternating lectures and debates, as well as hands-on learning formats such as informal competitions and competition observations. Since its inception, its members have won the first place in the English Speech and Debate Competition of China Agricultural University in previous years, thus representing the school in higher level competitions. Every year, more than 50% of the class members win awards in provincial and national competitions, cultivating a large number of veritable tops. In the preparation stage of provincial, municipal or national competitions, the contestants should follow the instructor for one-on-one preparation, and the main direction of teachers and students' efforts is thinking ability, material integration and speech expression. For example, unlike the conventional method of preparing a final speech, Chen Xi never lets students start writing as soon as they see the topic of the speech. For a final speech, she often spends a month or two with the contestants, repeatedly consulting, discussing, and deliberating each argument, in order to finalize the outline and write the first draft, only after this polishing process can the contestants have a deep understanding of the topic, so that the students can have a clear point of view, support the viewpoint with the strongest arguments, and broaden their thinking to better cope with the questioning session of the live competition.
Professor Chen Xi's innovative teaching mode has been widely used in teaching, which provides a theoretical basis and teaching methods for a series of educational problems such as backward teaching methods and worrying teaching quality in English public speech teaching in Chinese universities, and plays a very good role in promoting and learning from innovative English professionals with an international vision, who can better adapt to and be competent in an open social communication environment. As a new topic of foreign language teaching reform, the teaching mode research of "interaction between English public speech classes and English basic courses" meets the needs of the state for the solid development of English proficiency of Chinese students and the cultivation of international talents, and ensures the needs of relevant industries for high knowledge and high technical personnel English proficiency. (Bai Yijun)