Causes Of Fossilization Phenomena In SLA And Its Implications For Oral English Teaching

Nowadays, fossilization phenomena have been paid much attention to by many researchers in the field of applied linguistics, because it is an inevitable topic in the study of SLA (second language acquisition). Based on the author's two-year English teaching experiences, it is observed that many vocational college students who are always hard to obtain an obvious progress after studying oral English for a long time, no matter how hard they work. This is actually a kind of fossilization phenomenon, which not only makes them and their English teachers feel tough and perplexing, but also causes"time-consuming more, yielding results low"phenomena in the oral English teaching. Therefore, the ways to overcome fossilization phenomena and to activate the oral English teaching has become an urgent but instructive problem.Selinker(1972) explains the causes of fossilization phenomena from a pedagogical perspective, and points out that there are five central processes existing in the latent psychological structure of a second language learner, namely, language transfer, transfer of training, strategies of second language learning, strategies of second language communication and overgeneralization. Based on Selinker and Lamendella's conclusion about the causes of fossilization phenomena, Ellis (1994) has summarized the possible causes of fossilization as internal factors and external factor. In China, Chen Huiyuan, in her discussion of the sources of fossilization, summarized the theories from abroad in this field, and classified these theories into theories of internal sources, theories of external sources and theories of interactive sources. After Chen Huiyuan's discussion, Zhang Xuemei introduces two skill theories—Keith Johnson's and Peter Tomlinson's, to further unveil the possible causes of fossilization in the light of cognitive learning models. A few researchers at home (Gao Xianli, Rao Yanbin, 2003) focus on exploring the implications of fossilization phenomena for oral English teaching. But they haven't chosen the vocational college students to make an empirical study.The studies at home and abroad on fossilization generally focus on the survey of causes of fossilization phenomenon, which touch upon a lot about the features of IL, theoretical and historical explanations for the fossilizable linguistic phenomena and some implications for foreign language teaching. In spite of Selinker and other researchers' great efforts, the fossilization phenomena in the oral English teaching remain vague and confusing resulting in the lack of empirical evidence as to improve the oral English Teaching.Based on the researchers'previous study about the causes of the fossilization phenomena, and associated with the present oral English teaching state, this thesis adopts the form of the combination of oral tests, observation and questionnaire, and makes an analysis of the main causes of some fossilization phenomena in oral English teaching through an empirical study. In this study, it takes 58 vocational college students from Wuhan Engineering Institute as the subjects. The purposes of this study are: (1) to explore the different levels of fossilization phenomena from the phonological, lexical and pragmatic level respectively; (2) to seek for the causes of fossilization of the subjects; (3) to explore the ways that can display students' foreign language ability into utmost development before they produce fossilization phenomena. By analyzing some causes of fossilization phenomena in the oral English teaching, it tries to find out the effective ways to prevent the fossilized errors to improve the oral English teaching, such as promoting the learners' motivation, reducing the chance of L1 interference, providing the right feedback, reinforcing the learners'awareness of fossilized errors as well as providing accurate and appropriate L2 Input.The thesis consists of the following six parts:In the first part, the author firstly tries to introduce the background information of the fossilization phenomena and then discusses the significance of this study.In the second part, the author presents the literature review of fossilization phenomena in SLA, firstly makes a brief description of the definition of interlanguage, fossilization and some related terms on fossilization, and then illustrates the types of fossilization phenomena---temporary fossilization vs. permanent fossilization and individual fossilization vs. group fossilization. Finally, the author summarizes the causes of fossilization phenomena at home and abroad.In the third part, the author explains the objective, the subjects, the instruments and the procedure of this study through an empirical study.In the fourth part, the author tries to analyze the results of phonological fossilization, lexical fossilization and pragmatic fossilization in terms of the two oral tests, and then discusses the causes of fossilization phenomena from the five aspects, namely, the subjects'unfavorable learning motivation, the teachers'ineffective feedback to errors, the subjects'negative transfer, the subjects'negative affective state and the subjects'lack of exposure to the TL.In the fifth part, the author tries to find out the effective ways to prevent the fossilized errors in the oral English teaching, such as promoting the learners' motivation, reducing the chance of L1 interference, providing the right feedback, reinforcing the learners'awareness of fossilized errors as well as providing accurate and appropriate L2 Input.In the sixth part, the author arrives at a conclusion of the whole thesis and points out the direction of further studies.