A Case Study On Adults’ Oral English Fossilization

English,as an international language,has an important role in China and penetrates the whole educational system.With a long stretch of English learning,the ultimate language proficiency,especially oral proficiency,of many adult learners are far away from what is called native-like proficiency.In 1972,Selinker names the language system of a language learner as interlanguage,which is in the middle of the continuum starting from native language to target language.As the direction shows in a continuum,interlanguage proficiency can go forward or draw back,and under certain circumstances,fossilize.After one’s secondary education or higher education,adult learners of English as a foreign language(EFL),along with the change of their social identity,rearrange their daily learning load voluntarily or compulsorily.During the higher education,to improve oral proficiency usually is not on the top list under the pressure of various exams and tests.Those learners who start working and account for a much more proportion,though having strong desire to improve language proficiency,do not know where and how to start learning exactly.Among studies on fossilization,writing has attracted more attention than speaking,yet oral English is an important indicator of language proficiency.Therefore,this study aims at exploring adult English learners’ oral fossilization.The research questions are as follows:(1)What kind of errors are persistent in adult EFL learners’ oral English?(2)What are the possible causes for the subjects’ oral fossilization?(3)What are the solutions to oral fossilization?In this study,the author chooses American director Linklater’s movie,Before Sunrise(1995),as the learning material.There are 5 subjects in total.In the study,the movie was divided into 21 clips according to its plots.The participants were required to do a monology based on the content of each clip.The elicited productions were transcribed and errors were classified and analyzed.The main findings are as follows:Firstly,adult learners’ oral English manifests a multi-facet problem of fossilization.On the phonological level,the sense groups are fragmented and disjointed,the stress and connection of syllables are insufficient.On the morpho-syntactic level,nine main error types are identified on clause level,under-clause level and beyond-clause level,among which the verb-related error is the most salient.Secondly,the subjects’ oral fossilization is a product of many causes which include external factors as well as internal factors.Among all the causes,some can be changed by the individual learner and some might not.Concentrating on those factors that an individual learner can change,the author thinks the main causes for the subjects’ oral fossilization are the lack of analysis and the affective filter that curbs the motivation of learning.The lack of analysis can be out of limited analysis ability as well as plainly limited analysis,the affective filter includes input affective filer as well as output affective filter.Thirdly,targeting at the lack of analysis and affective filter,suggestions are made for alleviating oral fossilization:(1)adult EFL learners need to learn theoretical(linguistic)knowledge to guide the form-meaning-function mapping as well as the processing,representation and real-time usage,namely,to enhance the ability to analyze;(2)language accumulation requires adult EFL learners to learn in a consciously repeated way to strengthen the analysis ability so as to automatize the analysis;(3)The learning procedures should be individually tailored to guarantee the sustainable and hopeful learning;(4)adult EFL learners can try to control the affective filter through finding outside support or inside changes.