A Comparative Study Of The Effect Of Individual Memorization And Partner Dialogues On English Learners' Integrated Language Proficiency

The role of memorization in education and current situation of memorization on English learning were first discussed in this paper, and then a discovery was made in reviewing studies on memorization in and outside China, the individual memorization being once widely used in English teaching fails to keep pace with others and its development is restricted by its dull individual form and written texts. With more and more theories outside China having been introduced simultaneously, it is urgent for educationists to absorb new theories outside China to develop traditional Chinese methods.Enlightened by Long's Interaction Theory with "comprehension" as a core and the Scaffolding Theory proposed by Neo-Vygotsky, which states that "the effective interaction from teacher-learner or learner-learner can help learners to fulfill the tasks that can not be done by themselves", the present study seeks to test the possibility of partner dialogues as an alterative form of individual memorization to cultivate English learners' integrated language proficiency. The Scaffolding Theory provides interactive form for partner dialogues and the use of scaffolding strategies, such as, "meaning negotiation" and "interactional modifications" from the Interaction Theory help to adapt the difficult written texts into comprehensible dialogues.Based on the findings of pilot experiment, the main experiment of 18 weeks was conducted in the College of Foreign Languages, Tianshui Normal University. Enrolled in 2006, 61 learners from two intact classes participated the experiment. Class Three was referred as the Control Class and Class Four as the Experimental Class in the present study separately. It seeks to make a comparative study of two forms of memorization: individual memorization and partner dialogues and their effect on English learners' integrated language proficiency as well as memorization accuracy of English. It consists of eight phases: text adaptation, pre-test, grouping learners, classroom instruction, feedback, oral recall check, individual interview and post-test. 30 texts of New Concept English (Book 3) written by L.G. Alexander and 30 adapted dialogues from the same book were chosen for the instruction in the main experiment. To guarantee the authenticity and appropriateness of English language, two foreign teachers were responsible for adaptation from text to dialogue. It was the author who adapted the contents of dialogues to make them comprehensible and easy to remember. The subjects in the Control Class were asked to memorize 30 texts individually outside class, while the subjects in the Experimental Class first memorized 30 adapted dialogues in pairs, and then talked about the related topics with the help of words and expressions from adapted dialogues. A week later, learners in both classes were asked to recall, what they had memorized. Five sets of tape data including: text memorization, adapted dialogues memorization, text recall, recall of adapted dialogues and free talks based on adapted dialogues were collected, transcribed and analysed. It is found that partner dialogues are more effective to improve English learners' integrated language proficiency and the subjects involving partner dialogue task tend to retain memorized materials more accurately than individual memorization. The study indicates that the application of partner dialogues not only expedite the process of language learning but also add more new energetic power to traditional Chinese individual memorization.