A Study Of Lexical Fossilization In English Writing Of English Majors

Fossilization as a concept was first proposed by Professor Larry Selinker in the article Interlanguage in 1972 (Selinker, 1972: 209-231). Fossilization is the phenomenon that linguistic items, rules, and subsystems of speakers of a particular native language tend to persist in their interlanguage relative to a particular target language. The age of the learners and the amount of input they are exposed to have no de-fossilizing effect. The study of the fossilization phenomenon in the field of second language acquisition has been widely recognized and concerned since it was brought forward in 1972. Over the past 30 years or so, many researchers and linguists have probed deeply into the concept of fossilization and its causal factors, and have made lots of empirical researches on it. However, at home, fossilization researches have started relatively late and just remain in the state of introducing foreign theories of fossilization. Chinese researchers do not pay enough attention to the empirical studies of fossilization. Lots of teachers and students have found a large amount of repeated errors which are difficult to correct in the writing of Chinese students of different majors even English majors. Learners'writing levels may reach a plateau and fail to make the progress it should have. Once the English vocabulary in their writing fossilized, it would block the developing of their writing competence. Inspired and stimulated by the close observation of the frequent lexical errors and the competence plateau in college students'English writing, the author intends to discuss fossilization from the standpoint of lexical fossilization in written English.The paper reviews the theories of interlanguage and interlanguage fossilization, and then makes a tentative investigation of the lexical fossilization phenomenon in English majors'English writings. The author has collected lexical errors made by English majors and makes an attempt to analyze the cause of errors with lexical fossilization tendency with the aid of another two research tools of a questionnaire and a vocabulary test.The major findings which are derived from the analysis of the written products, together with a questionnaire and a vocabulary test are shown as follows:1. The collected data confirms the author's hypothesis Lexical fossilization widely exists in English writing among Chinese English majors. After analyzing the collected English writing of English majors from Shandong Normal University, the author tries to classify the fossilized lexical errors and finds the regularity of the distribution and frequency of fossilized lexical errors.2. The author makes an attempt to analyze the causes of lexical errors with fossilization tendency, and both of English majors'internal and external aspects influence their lexical fossilization. Their internal factors are the main stream of lexical fossilization, which include Chinese Negative Transfer, intra-lingual transfer-overgeneralization, lack of Lexical Input, improper lexical strategy used in English writing and lack of the intrinsic motivation. External factors affect it indirectly such as, the impact of teaching methods and lack of effective feedback.3. Accordingly, lexical fossilization can be delayed or reduced through two aspects, learning aspect and teaching aspect. Strategies of defossilization from Internal Aspect include avoiding negative transfer of mother tongue, reinforcing learners'awareness of fossilized lexical errors, enhancing the learners'motivation and adopting effective learning strategies to defossilize lexical fossilization. Optimization of Teaching Environment includes providing efficient vocabulary teaching strategy and effective feedback.Finally, the author thinks that understanding and analyzing lexical fossilization in interlanguage can facilitate the understanding of the theory of foreign language learning and can also provide us with some useful inspirations for vocabulary teaching and learning. A clear awareness of its causes enables us take active and effective measures to prevent or at least minimize lexical fossilization.