A Study Of Language Fossilization Of Chinese Local College English Learners Majored In Science And Engineering

"Fossilization" as a linguistic term refers to the phenomenon that language errors and non-target forms become fixed in the learners' interlanguage and that language development slows or even stops before the learning curve climbs once again.Since fossilization is a universal phenomenon in the second language development and a huge barrier for successful second language teaching and learning, it has become one of the popular issues in the second language acquisition (SLA) research and has drawn the attention of many researchers and teachers at home and abroad.Up to now, a number of works have been published on this issue with a view to working out feasible solutions to the problem. They mainly discuss such topics as the definitions and interpretations of fossilization, the causes associated with fossilization and the possible strategies dealing with it. While most of these researches focus basically on the theoretical and hypothetical analysis of the sources of fossilization. The lack of empirical evidence is the primary limitation in language fossilization studies at home and abroad.Inspired and stimulated by the achievements in fossilization research at home and abroad, the author intends to probe into the fossilization phenomenon among some Chinese local college English learners majored in science and engineering. The aims of this study are: (1) to identify and analyze the fossilized linguistic items in the writing of Chinese local college learners majored in science and engineering and try to find out the sources that may cause the fossilized errors; (2) to investigate the primary causes of their fossilization; (3) to devise some strategies to help the students to deal with their fossilization.College students of Taiyuan University of Technology are the subjects in the study. Based on the theory of error analysis, the thesis investigates different kinds of errors made by two groups of learners (the first-year undergraduates and the first-year postgraduates) in their English compositions. Those errors are then identified and categorized to trace their causes. The author is informed that after four-year English study, some Chinese local college English learners majored in science and engineering still make the same kind of errors in their written production and the most common errors in these students' compositions are perceived as fossilized errors. The author then makes an effort to analyze the causes of those errors.In addition, the study carries out a thorough analysis and discussion of the factors that may cause fossilization through questionnaire investigation so as to put forward some tentative suggestions for overcoming fossilization.The author concludes the thesis by pointing out the significance of understanding and studying fossilization, the weaknesses of this study and the directions for further studies.