The Causes Of Interlanguage Fossilization And Its Countermeasures

As one of the most important concept of interlanguage theory, interlanguage fossilization has always been the central issue in SLA domain. In practice, a large number of foreign language learners have long been affected and puzzled by such a phenomenon that they would be stuck somewhere on the way approaching target language, ceasing to make apparent progress. Many mistakes or errors which have been corrected would reappear and are hard to be completely eradicated. Their target language input always reads or sounds in a different way with native speakers, and even those advanced learners are no exception, who are equipped with a large vocabulary and abundant grammar knowledge after a long period of study. This phenomenon was termed by Selinker in 1972 as fossilization which was immediately widely accepted. Since then, scholars and researchers both abroad and home have been studying it from different perspectives, expecting to explain it and find out the solution to this problem in order to facilitate foreign language teaching and learning, as the causes behind fossilization are so complicated that multiple researching perspectives are involved, such as biology, psychology, cognitive science, as well as sociology.The author at first analyzed the forms and features of fossilization at phonological, morphological, semantic, syntactic, discourse, and pragmatic levels of Chinese learners'English systems: and then, on the basis of the previous attainments of the studies on interlanguage and the causation of interlanguage fossilization, proposed"Zero Interlanguage","C-process", and the"Patch-Hole Hypothesis"with the intention to probe into the causation of fossilization. With the analysis, the author concluded that the cognitive interruption and loopholes originating from the desynchrony of the language development and thinking development is the essential cause of fossilization. And on the basis of the analysis mentioned above, the author at first proposed some measures to reduce fossilization in teaching and learning process including promoting learners'motivation, providing sufficient and correct L2 input, reducing L1 interference, and increasing the awareness of fossilization; then he put forwards some suggestions for further study on the interlanguage fossilization research: firstly, the study on fossilization should shift its focus from the unsuccessful learners'fossilized interlanguage systems to the successful learners'so as to find the antidote against fossilization; secondly, the theoretical study on fossilization should consists with the specific language environment in China, and it is necessary to discuss the classification of Chinese learners to whom the fossilization theory is applied, because it is an indisputable fact that English in China is taught and learnt as foreign language rather than second language, which inevitably leads to the situation in which a large proportion of learners and even teachers are affected by fossilization due to the lack of authentic English speaking environment.