The Study Of Text-Oriented Organizational Elements In Chinese College Students’ Spoken English From The Perspective Of Linear Unit Grammar

Currently,there are many researches about Chinese college students’ spoken English.However,there are only a few studies on Chinese college students’ spoken English from the perspective of linear unit grammar.Based on Sinclair & Mauranen’s(2006)linear unit grammar theory and Smart(2016)’s classification of text-oriented organizational elements,this thesis aims to study the use characteristics of text-oriented organizational elements in Chinese college students’ spoken English.In linear unit grammar,organizational elements can be divided into two parts:text-oriented organizational elements and interactive-oriented organizational elements.The text-oriented organizational elements can be divided into +OT-,OTs,and |OT,which play different but important roles in discourse and text coherence.In this thesis,a total of 135 transcript texts are selected randomly from spoken and written English corpus of Chinese learners 2.0(SECCL 2.0)(Wen,Liang,& Yan,2008),with the duration of 474 m 48s and the word number of 52,290 in total.Through qualitative and quantitative analysis,this thesis attempts to analyze the use of the text-oriented organizational elements in Chinese college students’ English from three aspects:distribution,lexical characteristics,and discourse functions.The results show that Chinese college students tend to combine a large number of+OT-elements,a small number of OTs elements,and |OT elements when speaking English.Moreover,the distribution of the text-oriented organizational elements is tied to the interaction level of discourse and the speaker’s level of oral proficiency.In addition,in terms of parts of speech,+OT-elements are the most various(three parts of speech),followed by |OT elements(two parts of speech),and OTs elements are the least(one part of speech).Similarly,in the use frequency,+OT-elements occupy the first place(3,774),followed by |OT chunks(31),and OTs(18)are the lowest.The findings provide a new perspective for further studying Chinese college students’ spoken English.In order to improve spoken English,Chinese college English learners need to absorb the use of text-oriented organizational elements.By exploring the use of the text-oriented organizational elements in Chinese college students’ spoken English,this study reveals the structure of Chinese college students’ spoken English from the linear unit grammar to some extent and provides a reference for the development of teaching in spoken English.