A Corpus-based Study Of Interlanguage Fossilization In College English Writing

Fossilization refers to the phenomenon that language errors and non-target forms in learners'second language become fixed. Many researchers and pedagogic practitioners have made various researches on fossilization and assume or prove that fossilization is prevalent in Second Language Acquisition (SLA). However, the perspectives on the theory of fossilization are ambiguous and divergent. Also, reliable empirical studies are insufficient. The present study, based on previous studies, probes into the situation of fossilization with Chinese English major students.Based on sub-corpora of Chinese Learner English Corpus (CLEC), English majors are chosen as the subjects of the present research and both qualitative and quantitative analyses are employed aiming to investigate the existence, causal factors and strategies to avoid fossilization. It is notable that both correct forms and incorrect forms can become fossilized. Only incorrect forms, namely, typical errors are focused in present thesis. Furthermore, stabilization is chosen as the object of research rather than fossilization for its accuracy in theory and its feasibility in practice.A pseudo-longitudinal study is carried out in this investigation between two groups of students: English majors in lower grades and English majors in higher grades. By comparing the error frequencies and distributions in two groups, great similarity is found between them. The Paired-samples T Test provides further evidence that there is no significant difference between two groups. Judging from the two aspects, fossilization is of high tendency to exist in advanced learners'English writing. Based on the analysis of causal factors of fossilization, some tentative strategies are proposed to minimize the long-term cessation.The combination of pseudo-longitudinal approach, advanced learner approach and typical error approach makes a more reliable and valid fossilization research. The implications on pedagogy are of great significance for teachers and students in second language acquisition.