A Study Of Mother-Tongue-Reliance Strategies In English Language Learning

For a long period,researchers' assessment on the status and function of L1 in second language acquisition has varied greatly.Lado's(1957) Contrastive Analysis Hypothesis exaggerated the role of L1 in second language acquisition,while Dulay, Butt and Krashen(1982) attempted to minimize it.Both of the two trends are finally proved to have some vital deficiencies in explaining the relationship between the two. With the reassessment of the relationship between L1 and L2,researchers approach L2 learners' reliance on mother tongue from a cognitive perspective,and maintain that mother tongue reliance is a distinctive feature of second language learning,a psychological process and most importantly,a language learning strategy in learners' construction of interlanguage.Studies about the learners' mother tongue reliance were conducted primarily on western subjects.In recent years,there were some studies concerning L1 influence, but most of the studies were qualitative research.The quantitative research on mother-tongue-reliance strategies was very limited.Although some researchers had realized the application of mother-tongue-reliance strategies by Chinese students in their English language learning,their research were far from answering the questions as to the characteristics of students' use of mother-tongue-reliance strategies.As to the factors affecting the use of mother-tongue-reliance strategies,although most of the studies suggested that L2 proficiency would affect the use of mother-tongue-reliance strategies significantly,some scholars still claimed that different language proficiency would not lead to distinctively different use of mother-tongue-reliance strategies in writing.As to the question how students' mother-tongue-reliance belief affects the actual use of mother-tongue-reliance strategies,things are more complicated.Meanwhile,there is not much research focusing on the influence of all these factors such as motive,mother-tongue-reliance belief or L2 proficiency on students' use of mother-tongue-reliance strategies,and so is the case for studies about the predictors of the use of mother-tongue-reliance strategies.On a comprehensive review of previous studies and research gaps on mother-tongue-reliance strategies,the thesis investigated the types of 368 non-English major freshmen's use of mother-tongue-reliance strategies in English language learning.Firstly,it studied the characteristics of the freshmen's use of mother-tongue-reliance strategies.Then,it respectively presented the correlation between the use of mother-tongue-reliance strategies and L2 proficiency, mother-tongue-reliance belief,motive as well as gender.Finally,it explored the predictors of the use of mother-tongue-reliance strategies among these factors.The results of the study indicated that mother-tongue-reliance strategies were important and unavoidable language learning strategies for the non-English major freshmen to learn English.First of all,it presented that the use of mother-tongue-reliance strategies in output was much more frequent than that in input.Secondly,it was revealed that the use of mother-tongue-reliance strategies would vary significantly according to students' different L2 proficiency, mother-tongue-reliance belief and motive.Gender was not correlated with students' use of mother-tongue-reliance strategies.Mother-tongue-reliance strategies were negatively correlated with L2 proficiency and positively correlated with mother-tongue-reliance belief.And it was negatively correlated with deep motive while positively correlated with surface motive.Finally,mother-tongue-reliance belief and motive,the predictors of mother-tongue-reliance strategies,could predicate the students' use of mother-tongue-reliance strategies.Besides, mother-tongue-reliance belief was the most powerful predictor of students' use of mother-tongue-reliance strategies.L2 proficiency,however,could not predict the students' use of mother-tongue-reliance strategies.Based on tentative analyzing,explaining,comparing,evaluating and commenting the major findings of the study by referring to theories concerning mother-tongue-reliance strategies,the study finally discussed the implications to guide English language teaching and learning.