Oral Speech Fluency: A Correlational Study On Language Skill Transfer Of Chinese Learners Of English

The mother tongue plays a significant role in the process of second language acquisition. A second language may not be learned well without referring to and comparing with the mother tongue. So far scholars at home and abroad have conducted a lot of research, frequently on the semantic and syntactic contrasts between the two language systems. As for the study of language skill transfer between two languages, which has been viewed as an important acquisition model in the field of second language acquisition, only the mother tongue's influence on reading and writing in second language learning is generally taken into consideration. There are still a lot of issues for discussion.Learning a second language embraces such contents and skills as listening, speaking, reading, writing and translating. Up until now, scholars have merely studied the mother tongue's influence on reading and writing, and there's no systematical study concerning the mother tongue's influence on speaking. The achievements western scholars have made on language production and fluency are rarely introduced to China, and theoretical study and experimental exploration on developing oral speech fluency has just taken the first step. Only a few scholars in China are engaged in oral speech fluency study. Furthermore, studies at home rarely concern Chinese oral speech fluency's influence on English oral speech fluency.This thesis covers the correlational study between Chinese oral speech fluency and English oral speech fluency, in which 30 non-English majors took part. The purpose of the study is to find out to which extent Chinese oral speech fluency and English oral speech fluency are correlated. The conclusion of the study is that there is a positive correlation between Chinese oral speech fluency and English oral speech fluency, that is, the learners' Chinese oral speech fluency has a positive influence on their English oral speech fluency. The English oral speech fluency of those who are fluent in Chinese has something to do with the learners' English basics and the frequency of exercises, including the use of oral English. Meanwhile, a speaker lacking Chinese fluency will perform poorly on oral English fluency.