The Application Of Lexical Chunks To Reducing Fossilization Phenomenon In SLA

We often come across such reports that Chinese non-English majors make almost no or little progress in their English learning. And very often the persistent errors in their oral or written work often lead teachers into believing that their teaching may prove an utter failure. A study found that after more than 8 years instruction in learning English, students continued making errors such as the use of simple past tense instead of simple present tense. Teachers and learners in language studies all become aware of the inevitable "plateaus" in learning, where development slows down or even stops. If a tree is fossilized there is no bringing it back to life. Likewise, if a non-standard language form becomes fixed, it is fossilized, and there is no way of rescuing it.The purpose of the present study is to deal with the following problems:1. Analysis of fossilization phenomena in EFL learners vocabulary acquisition2. Application of lexical chunks to fossilizationThis thesis details the characteristics and causes of fossilization. On the basis of the insightful understanding of interlanguage fossilization, this paper makes an attempt to analyze the features of fossilization tendency of Chinese college non-English majors and based on this, discuses some pedagogical implications for the prevention and treatment for this phenomenon.The author here tends to prove the term, "lexical chunks"--- an effective solution to the problem of fossilization for the reason that learning lexical chunks means a change in the L2 vocabulary acquisition. Lexical chunks refer to pre-assembled and frequently used multi-word combinations in a language.The lexical chunk is described as "chunks' of language of varying length; it offers a promising new direction for language teaching. The approach draws linguistic theory for grammar of what to teach in their language classes and the theories of language competence about how best to present language in a classroom, it is, as social interactions, necessary topics, and discourse devices, seems to us the most effective distinction for pedagogical purpose. It is important to raise second or foreign consciousness in the use of multi-word...