Abstract：Obstacles in oral English expressions seem to discourage students from practicing， so it is regarded as one of the major problems in oral English teaching. The paper aims to analyze why students have to struggle for appropriate utterances and to what extent group-work speech， the method combined task-based language teaching with cooperative language teaching， could help students solve this problem.
Keywords：Oral English； Expression； Group-work； Speech； Task-based Language Teaching； Cooperative Language Teaching； Classroom
1 Introduction
2 Mistakes Made in Oral English Expression
Since our mother language is supposed to play an important role in acquiring and learning second language
（Granger，1998）， it is inevitable for our students to make many mistakes in expression. A couple of examples took place in classes are listed as follows：
Example 1： A student describe an upset event in this way： “my father is bad， because he makes me to go to training school， which makes me not happy…” two problems should be noticed here， one was that it was not proper to define his father as a bad man due to his requirement； while the other problem was the word “make”， which inappropriately appeared twice in his sentence.
Example 2： Another student complained about his friend， “it was his fault， because he pulled my leg and then i lost the game…”The student failed to comprehend the true meaning of this collocation “pull one’s leg”. As an English slang， “pull one’s leg” works in the same way as “kidding” from semantic perspective. Moreover， in terms of the student’s context， “hold one’s back” better fits in his sentence. 3 Reasons lead to mistakes in oral English Expression
Lastly， cultural differences between Chinese and American cultures hinder students in generating appropriate utterances. Especially slangs， meanings they possessed are far different from our awareness， because students are not familiar with American culture and language convention. Patridge pointed out the attribute of slangs that they were considered as colloquial collocations and their developments were rapid （Patridge， 1970）. 4 Group-work Speech to deal with mistakes in expressions
The whole task is given based on the procedures proposed by Willis： pre-task， task cycle and Language focus （Willis，1998）
Pre-task： The teacher would inform students with the topic of the speech and relevant requirements. And the topic assigned to students should help them prepare for oral test in TOEFL or IELTS， which serves the function of task-based language teaching： combine the task with real life contexts （Williams & Burden， 1997）. And then the teacher introduces students several lexical phrases related to this topic and demonstrates how to use them. Since Krashen emphasized the significance role of language input played in helping students obtain a large amount of lexical phrases and finally improve their speaking ability （Krashen， 1991）
Task Cycle： During students’ preparation in small groups， they are allowed to consult dictionaries to look for lexical phrases that make sure the accuracy of their report. Through brainstorm， students are engaged in exchanging ideas to help their representatives. With a common study goal， it stimulated students to dedicate to group discussions. And brainstorm was able to expand their horizon and then students could come up with different perspectives on the topic（Ellis， 1994）. Also， in this course， the teacher transforms the role from a controller to an advisor， because this identity would more likely to help students grasp， comprehend and practice oral English during their interactions （Nunan， 1989）. Then representatives from each group give speeches one by one.
The final part should be Language Focus， when the teacher will analyze each student’s utterance， pointing out and correcting mistakes happened in expressions. With teacher’s assessments students can modify their mistaken expressions and form a new habit of producing appropriate utterances （Scrivener， 2011）
5 Conclusion
To sum up， there has been no flawless method invented in oral English teaching so far. Teachers should further explore other creative teaching approaches to improve students’ speaking ability.
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