Task-Related Interlanguage Variability Study

The term, interlanguage, was first put forward by L. Selinker in his dissertation"Language Transfer"in 1969, and in 1972 Selinker issued his thesis"Interlanguage", in which he claimed that"Interlanguage refers to the separateness of a second language learners system, a system that has a structurally intermediate status between the native and target language". Now after summing up studies of researches we can define the term as"an interim language system constructed by second language learners between the mother tongue and the target language. It continuously moves close to the target language with constant consummation". Therefore, as an independent language phenomenon, the term gradually became an important issue studied by second language acquisition researchers, especially nowadays when variability has become a hot studying point in interlanguage research.Of course, there has been a hot debate among second language acquisition researchers and theoreticians on whether second language acquisition research should explore the field of interlanguage variability. Here, we are in favor of the views proposed by the variationist in this thesis, because we insist on that interlanguage variability is closely linked to changes in learners'language over time and interlanguage variability can offer us information about the way in which performance in various social contexts can influence interlanguage use and the whole development of interlanguage. And we also believe that to study interlanguage variability can contribute a lot to second language acquisition.It is in 1970s that task-related interlanguage variability began to arouse researchers'interest, but at that time most studies on this field were carried out in an incidental way. Since 1980s, researchers started to conduct some studies with specific aim of testing assumptions about task-related interlanguage variability and unveiling main factors influencing interlanguage variability. However, the number of this kind of studies is still relatively small, as much not adequate to make it clear why different...