FLIPPED CLASS PROMOTING ORAL ENGLISH AS FOREIGN LANGUAGE TEACHING

Accelerating globalization has put the English language in a very important position. Nowadays, English has become the main international language for many fields, in both written and oral form. With the rise of instantaneous communication, speaking ability has become one of the most important skills in the process of communication. Unfortunately, some countries have had limited success in teaching students to speak fluently. Developing oral proficiency in English has become one of the most significant issues and areas of concern in teaching English as a foreign language. This is especially evident in China, which has been devoting an increasing amount of resources with the aim to solve this problem, but without satisfactory results. It is widely acknowledged that Information & Communication Technology (ICT) has the potential to exponentially enhance educational outcomes. Therefore, it is imperative to explore effective ways of enhancing English teaching by fully using modern computer technology. The Flipped Class is an ICT-based teaching technique that has emerged in recent years and that mainly consists of video-lectures, followed by active participation in a physical classroom, and a feedback mechanism to verify acquisition of learning targets. This method is being increasingly adopted in education by schools and universities all over the world. The paper analyzes scientific aspects and feasibility of the flipped class in oral English as a foreign language teaching in order to give insights to English teachers and educators on using oral English in foreign language teaching.