The Fossilzation Of University English Majors' Speech Act Of Apology In China

Larry Selinker, professor of London University, came up with the term fossilization in "Interlanguage" in 1972. Fossilization means a stage during second language acquisition. When learning a target language, second language learners develop a linguistic system that is different from both the learner's first language and his target language. Once the learner settles in this stage, it is hard for him to change. Even as he grows elder and his language competence improves, fossilization can still haunt him. Nowadays, fossilization is regarded as a common phenomenon in the process of second language acquisition, yet there is still some dispute on the causes of it and the methods to avoid it. Plenty of researches have been conducted upon this subject. To find out the causes of fossilization will helps us to improve second language teaching practice. By analysing Chinese advanced learners' speech act of apology, we will discuss the causes of fossilization in this paper, and further more, to throw some light on how to help students to overcome fossilization, we are going to look into the students'learning strategies to classroom activities.The second language learner's knowledge of the target language is quite different from the native speakers, especially in the pragmatic aspect. This phenomenon, which is called pragmatic fossilization, is realized by more and more people nowadays. This is profoundly manifested in the following aspects:the learners will encounter pragmatic failures, and what is more, the learners will find themselves lack some particular pragmatic competence. It has been proved by a lot of researchers that pragmatic fossilization is something that is closely related to learning strategies, such as the learner's motivation, his cooperative skill, etc. For example, if a second language learner has strong motivation and likes to cooperate with others while learning a new language, he is less likely to have fossilization problems. Hence in this paper, a research on the learning strategy of Chinese advanced learners will also be conducted, to find out how learning strategy influence fossilization, and also in hope of discovering a possible solution for pragmatic fossilization in Chinese learners' apology behaviour.Selinker believes improper learning strategies are the most common causes of fossilization. Learning strategies refer to certain learning methods learners use to improve their learning efficiency, which include cognitive strategies, non-cognitive strategy, and so on. Inappropriate learning strategies will make the whole learning process more difficult for a second language learner. In terms of current English teaching practice, classroom activities give second language learners the opportunity of communicating with others. On the other hand, classroom activities do expose students' fossilization problems, and that is why the learning strategies that students adopted is so important.This paper includes seven chapters. In the first Chapter, the general framework and main purposes of the research is introduced. The second chapter introduces the definition of fossilization and all the previous researches that have been done. In addition, in this chapter we will learn the definition of learning strategy, its major categories, and its relationship with fossilization. The following chapter summarizes the meaning of apology and the classification of it, the relationship between offence and apology. A brief introduction to some of the relevant researches of the speech act of apology is also included. In the fourth chapter of the thesis, the methodology, which is, in general, the Discourse Completion Test, is introduce. The strengths and weaknesses of this approach has also been discussed. In the fifth chapter, the collected data have been looked into and some major findings have been discussed. The sixth chapter is about how to reduce or to avoid fossilization by improving learning strategies.And the end of this paper is the conclusion of this research and some difficulties and limitations encountered. Some suggestions about how to overcome fossilization are being made as well.