The Fossitionliza Phenomenon And The Idiom Teaching In TCSL

In recent years, the fossilization phenomenon in second language acquisition has attracted attention of applied linguistics scholars, and discussions on how this phenomenon has risen, and how to avoid it, have become a popular topic in second language acquisition studies. However, most researches at present focus on the theoretical level. Few researchers do de-fossilization studies from the practical language teaching perspective, among which most are about fossilization in English teachings. Even fewer aim at learning and teaching Chinese as a second language. In concern of this lack, we are explore and analyze the fossilization phenomenon students may confront in acquiring Chinese as a second language, from the teacher's perspective, and attempt to come to some conclusion that can serve our teaching practices.In this essay we choose to do analysis on fossilization of second language students in learning idioms. Chinese idiom is a unique incarnation of Chinese wisdom, whereas its feature in structure and substance makes it difficult to teach and grasp for the foreign students: The sophisticated word formation, multiple grammatical function and cultural background implication of Chinese idiom are in nature intricate for non-Chinese speakers to acquire and thus impose much fossilization on their study. Based on previous language fossilization studies, we conduct a survey made up with 33 frequently used idioms chosen from Syllabus of Graded Words and Characters for Chinese Proficiency (2001). Interviewees are non-original Chinese speakers learning Chinese as a second language at advanced level who have been inhabiting in China for relatively long time. We analyze the survey result and attempt to come to some conclusion from the teaching practice perspective that may help defer language fossilization in Chinese idiom acquisition.The first part of the essay introduces the research methodologies and objectives. The following part is a theoretical review of previous studies in field of language fossilization. In the third part of this essay is the analysis of the survey and attempt to categorize and rationalize the fossilization phenomena interviewees have confronted. In the last part, we try to discus ways to defer or avoid idiom fossilization in Chinese teaching by analyzing fossilization importation of the learners.