An Error-analysis On Writing Fossilization For Vocational College Students

Almost all of the English learners have this kind of experience:In the previous period they can make steady progress, but after several years of studying the language they just didn't have any progress or reach a more advanced period; or at least they cannot see obvious progress. According to Larry Selinker in 1972, fossilization means that for second language learners, some linguistic items, rules or systematic knowledge in their interlanguage tend to be fixed, there have no effects in defossilizing of permanent fossilization no matter the age of the learners or the amount of their input. As a common phenomenon, it exists in the English learning process of Chinese non-English majors and has been an important problem to be solved in foreign language teaching.Nowadays, there have been published many works on fossilization at home and abroad, those works mainly discuss the definitions and interpretations of fossilization, or its causes; and propose some possible strategies in overcoming or reducing fossilization. However, most of these researches are limited to theoretical analysis and hypothesis of the causes of fossilization, while few of them based on the empirical study.After literature reviews of previous studies in recent 30 years, an analysis of fossilization errors have been made in this thesis, the data all from compositions produced by first-year students of Wuhan Technical Collage of Communications in their English writing assignments. By the use of error-analysis, The author found that after many years of English study, the same kind of errors still has been found in some Chinese vocational college English learners'compositions and the most common errors in these compositions are perceived as fossilized errors. The purpose is to find the distribution and frequency of fossilization errors so as to reveal that fossilization is a common phenomenon in Chinese non-English vocational college students; In addition, the author tries to make an analysis on the cause of fossilized errors, on the basis of this analysis, the author also proposed some teaching strategies of defossilization:strengthening learners'motivation, emphasizing quality L2 input, providing proper feedback, reducing negative language transfer, helping learners getting rid of bad habits, reinforcing awareness of fossilized errors, etc. The analysis helps us to know more about fossilized conditions of Chinese non-English major students and it's also very meaningful whether to English teacher or to college students.