Chapter One Introduction
1.1 Background of ELFT in China
At present, English is universally used throughout the world as a commoncommunication tool in business, science, sports and even popular recreation. In globalperspective, Only 337 million people in 20 countries communicate through their firstlanguage — English. However, there are over 800 million language users in 74 countriesfrequently using English, and the number is keeping rising. Small wonder more and morecountries attach great importance on English as a foreign language teaching(EFLT).Chinese 20”、century has witnessed the gradual progress of EFLT since English wasintroduced into China as an compulsory course in 1960^'\ With the advancement of societyand China's entry into WTO，lots of attention has been fastened on English languageteaching and meanwhile, English, as required language skill is being taught in differentstages of Chinese school Education ranging from kindergarten, elementary school, middleschool to university. What, more, EFLT is also thriving in masses of institutions such aseducation agents, language learning centers and tutoring agencies. In traditional EFLTsystem, four skills including listening, reading, speaking and writing are alwaysemphasized. As the two former skills are sorted into language input, and latter two.language output, it's inevitably that more and more educators and learners think highly ofspeaking and writing skills. According to Tsai (2017)，the goal of English learning is to ?develop students' abilities to communicate target languages in authentic, real lifeenvironment. Therefore, students' oral performance gaining overwhelming attention is outof question considering the goal of language learning and its practical utility. Take currentcollege English teaching for example. A new Curriculum Requirement of the Course ofCollege English published by National Ministry of Education regulates explicit criterionfor college students oral English performance. Furthermore, in order to gear tointernational English teaching conventions, native English speaker teachers (NEST) arebrought into Chinese schools.
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1.2 Statement of Problem
NESTs and NNESTs, each of whom possesses its own features, are dichotomouscamps of English teachers in the background of Chinese higher education. Raised up inEnglish speaking environment, NESTs are often considered irreplaceable roles in TEFL inconsideration of their cultural facility, language proficiency as well as exclusive classroomatmosphere they created for Chinese students. The second language has to be the onlyway to communicate in a different language condition (Gatenby，英语论文范文，英语论文范文，2017). All to often,NESTs are given priority when chosen as an oral English teacher if financially permitted.Researchers also speak highly of the desirability of a native English teacher. Nevertheless,few studies were carried out on the effectiveness of a NEST on students oral performance.Oral English performance in this research means fluency & coherence, lexical resources,grammatical range & accutancy and pronunciation, which embodies a learner's capacityin communicating English in an authentic, real life environment. What are the advantagesof NESTs over NNESTs in language teaching? Are these advantages effective on studentsoral English performance? To what extent do these advantages exert influence on s
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