Reflections On Constructing An English Language Environment From The Features Of Language Acquisition Of Ethnic Minority Students In Southwestern Hunan

This thesis aims at finding out the background and reasons that cause the phenomenon that minority nationality students with multilingual ability in southwestern Hunan,on the whole,can hardly achieve the high efficiency in English study through the analysis and investigation of their language acquisition and learning features.The analysis and investigation focus on the childhood of minority nationality students from Tong Dao Dong County in southwestern Hunan.As far as the local English teaching is concerned,the final goal is to discover the role of language environment during the language acquisition and learning and provide the local English teachers with reasonable,effective analyses and suggestions about setting up a proper English language environment with an eye to improving the local English teaching.The on-the-spot investigation and my own experiences help me find out the characteristics of their language acquisition including the ways of acquisition,the location of speech acts,the order of communication languages as well as acquisition contents,and psychological environment.All the characteristics can not exist without an easy,joyful,peaceful,natural,comfortable language acquisition environment.The lack of enough qualified English teachers and proper textbooks together with the negative transfer of their own languages and Chinese etc.can partly count for the low efficiency of English study for the minority nationality members,but the core problem lies in the fact that an ideal English language environment is far from being satisfied.It is almost impossible for the local people to obtain a target language environment for acquisition. Nevertheless we can offer a bold conception of setting up artificially an English language environment with the aid of analyzing the characteristics of minority nationality members' language acquisition.Constructing artificially an English language environment possesses its own theoretical bases such as "Audiolingualism" theory, "Language as communication" theory and Krashen's "Monitor theory" etc..On the other hand,the author's own teaching practice and experience can partly prove that it is possible for the local schools to create a good English language environment. Considering the actual situation,the local people can gradually construct a proper English language environment with the implication of the features of minority nationalities.In the course of analyzing the features of minority nationality members' language acquisition in southwestern Hunan and the importance of constructing an English language environment,the author tries to highlight the following ideas:1.A proper psychological environment in English class teaching plays an important role in the whole English language environment;2.It is the best way to solve the problem by creating artificially an English environment through establishing "an English practice center" in the schools of southwestern Hunan;3.The enough qualified English teachers,advanced teaching facilities,proper textbooks and teaching languages are also indispensable parts of an ideal English language environment;4.Building and promoting an enriched language environment also involves English teaching concerning their daily life and culture through students' mutual cooperation by forming language learning groups based on the family model;5.The widespread phenomenon that the limited language information inputs can produce language output efficiently further prove both the theories of many linguists including Chomsky's and the importance of a proper language environment for acquisition;6.The characteristics of minority nationality members' language acquisition can confirm partly the fact that the critical period for language acquisition does not exist.