A Study Of Fossilization In Non-english Majors’ Writing

Most of foreign language learners would come to a stage of “plateauphase” in the language learning process. Language fossilization is aphenomenon and some errors occur repeatedly in this period. Thisconcept was first put forward by American linguist Selinker. He alsothought that up to95%of second language learners would have this typeof experience. To those whose native language is Chinese and secondlanguage is English, fossilization phenomenon can not be avoided. And itwould make learners’ interlanguage system stay in one level and it isdifficult for them to improve to the level of native speakers. Fossilizationphenomenon has become a big obstacle for Chinese foreign languagelearners, especially for non-English majors as to language improvement.So, how to avoid the language fossilization has become a challengingsubject in foreign language research.With the development of global economy, the communicationamong countries becomes more frequent, and more and more peoplebegin to learn English. However, writing is the weaker part for foreignlanguage learners, especially for learners in China. English writing is thebasic skill which needs to improve badly. Writing is the comprehensiveperformance of language, is the recreated process based on learners’original language knowledge, and is the important form to showcommunicative competence. However, there are some errors that learnersare committed for many times. Although there is large amount oflanguage input, learners’ English writing competence is not improvedsignificantly. This is the performance of interlanguage fossilization inlearners’ writing.This thesis made a research about fossilization phenomenon in non-English major students’ writing. The author used the error analysismethod and questionnaire survey to analyze the fossilized errors instudents’ writing and their causes. Furthermore, she arranged the errorsand presented some strategies of defossilization, which have a valuablemeaning for improvement of non-English major students’ writingcompetence and teachers’ teaching ability on writing.