A Study Of Use Of Language Chunks By The Chinese EFL Learners In Their Conversations

This study has been undertaken to find out how the language chunks are used in Chinese EFL learners' oral production in testing context. It describes the general characteristics of the language chunks identified in the test takers' oral production and explores the differences in the use of language chunks between higher achievers and lower achievers. Attempts have also been made to examine the relationship between the frequency of language chunks and the fluency of oral production.Materials employed in the present study were 17 conversations selected from SECCL, a learner corpus. Data analysis generated the following major findings:Firstly, the language chunks identified in Chinese EFL learners' conversations in the testing context can be categorized into four types: sentence level routines, sentence level patterns, phrase level routines and phrase level patterns.Secondly, all the language chunks identified account for 25.6% of the total number of words and almost half of the chunks were repeated (46%). This suggests that the repetitive use of chunks characterizes Chinese L2 learners' oral production in that they possess limited resources of language chunks at their disposal. Among all the chunks investigated, "I think…" and "you know" were found to be the two most frequently used chunks. The test takers tended to use them as pause fillers to buy time for information processing.Thirdly, routines, on either sentence- or phrase-level, tend to be used more frequently by L2 learners than patterns, possibly due to the effect of the on-line production, in which phrase level routines are easier to be retrieved. Both sentence level patterns and phrase level routines enjoy an apparently higher frequency of use,which helps the researcher to infer that the memory-based chunking and rule-based chunking coexist in L2 learners' speech.Fourthly, cross-group comparison reveals that both the frequency and type of language chunks can be taken as indicators to the speakers' levels of oral proficiency. Furthermore, patterns are more likely to be used by learners with higher proficiency level, while routines tend to be used more frequently by lower level learners, suggesting that patterns are more difficult in that syntactical modifications are required in making up the speaker's discourse and that routines are more memory based and easier to be extracted from the memory.Finally, L2 learners' fluency is getting better along with the increasing number of chunking words, which confirms the assumption that L2 learners may use language chunks to achieve a larger degree of speech fluency and ultimately facilitate their oral proficiency in L2 interlanguage development.Theoretically, attempts have been made in this study to clarify the conception of L2 learners' chunk, which is always a controversial issue in the existing literature. In addition, some of the findings yielded have provided insights into the dual-mode system of language acquisition.Practically, the findings from this study justify the practice of reciting in L2 language learning and teaching. Moreover, the positive correlation between chunking and fluency suggests that chunking could be employed as a strategy to improve L2 learners' oral fluency. Finally, the findings of this study may also provide some insights for oral English textbook writing.