Study Of University Art Students’ Formulaic Sequence Processing On The Basis Of Reading And Writing

Formulaic sequence is also called “formulaic language”, “prefabricated chunks”, which is widely used in language and have a variety of usages and functions. Therefore, formulaic sequences play an important part in second language acquisition and language teaching. Based on the cognitive and constructional grammar, formulaic sequence provides a new perspective to the study and interpretation of language acquisition. At present, researchers have explored definition, essence, identification, classification, functions of formulaic sequence, but studies on processing of formulaic sequence, as well as the teacher’s teaching method of processing and students’ self-processing method of formulaic sequence are relatively limited.This thesis attempts to study the correlation among the formulaic sequence recognition ability, reading comprehension ability and writing proficiency, the effect of teachers’ formulaic sequence teaching instruction and students’ self-processing method, as well as the contribution of formulaic sequence in writing. It consists of six chapters: Chapter one provides an introduction to the present research, which outlines the research issues, purpose and significance of the research, brief introduction of the experiment, and organization of the thesis. Chapter two has a view of the related literature of formulaic sequence, including definitions of relevant terms, recognition and production of formulaic sequence as well as previous studies home and abroad. Chapter three makes theoretical foundations of categorization in terms of meaning and form, functional aspects of formulaic sequence, major properties and learning and teaching based on formulaic sequence. Chapter four sets the goal of the research and explains several key factors on the basis of the research design, including research questions, hypotheses, research subjects, instruments and the procedures of experiment. And it also serves as a theoretical pavement for this thesis by an experiment of formulaic sequence study, including the reading comprehension tests to formulate the functions of formulaic sequence in facilitating reading comprehension, teacher’s teaching method for experimental class to make student learn formulaic sequences’ special usages and functions to ease the burden of language processing, and writing tests to verify whether the hypothesis formulaic sequence recognition ability is related to writing ability, as well as the formulaic sequence process is connected with writing proficiency. Chapter five analyzes the data collected in the experiment and has a discussion about the results, which includes presupposition of the experiment, statistics and analysis between formulaic sequence recognition score and reading comprehension score, formulaic sequence recognition score and writing score, as well as among discourse organizers, number of formulaic sequence and writing score. In addition, pedagogical implications and suggestions are provided. Chapter six summarizes the major research findings, gives some suggestions and points out the limitations of the study.The subjects of the thesis are art students from Shanghai Normal University. The steps of this experiment are as follows: firstly, reading comprehension test. Students will finish a reading comprehension test and a formulaic sequence recognition exercise within the required time. The second step is the processing of formulaic sequence. Students are divided into experimental class and control class, teacher applies the formulaic sequence method to the experimental class to help students process, in order to cultivate their awareness of formulaic sequence. While the control class process formulaic sequence by themselves, including read formulaic sequence loudly, recite them as well as remember them silently. Thirdly, a writing test is carried out. Two weeks later, the students are required to finish a writing task with some guidance. Fourthly, invite different teachers who have experience in rating CET compositions to rate the compositions for two rounds without informing them of the purpose of the research. Then, observe the use of formulaic sequence discourse organizers in terms of use and accuracy by statistics with SPSS software. The last step is to compare the obtained data between the two classes and analyze which formulaic sequence processing method is better.The study finds that there is a high positive correlation between the formulaic sequence recognition ability and reading ability of college students, that is, as the higher formulaic sequence recognition ability, the higher reading comprehension ability, and the higher writing ability of the students. College students’ writing scores are higher by means of formulaic sequence teaching method. Teachers’ formulaic sequence instruction is better than students’ self-processing method. Therefore, it is necessary to encourage teachers to teach formulaic sequence in class.