An Empirical Study On Fossilization In College English Writing

Interlanguage (Selinker,1972) refers to the intermediate system, which is different from the students' mother tongue and also different from the target language. It is systematic, permeable, dynamic, and fossilized.Interlanguage fossilization is universal in second language acquisition, and it refers to"linguistic items, rules and subsystems, which speakers of a particular native language will tend to keep in their interlanguage relative to a particular target language, no matter what the age of the learner or amount of explanation and instruction he receives in the target language"(Selinker,1972). Fossilization imposes hindrance both on instruction and learning, so it becomes a hot topic in the second language field.By taking an overall look of fossilization study in our country and abroad, we can find that there are a lot of theses on its definition, classification and causes, which are generally based on theoretical assumption and theoretical discussion. For research approaches, five are proposed, namely, longitudinal approach, typical error approach, advanced-learner approach, corrective-feedback approach, length-of-residence approach, and some researchers have carried out empirical studies by adopting one of the above methods, but among which there are no studies about Chinese English learners under Chinese learning situation. In China, the empirical studies for Chinese students about fossilization are also rare.Theoretically speaking, the adults' interlanguage can't reach the native speakers' level, and how can we make investigation of this intermediate phenomenon? The way is that we investigate and judge the fossilization at particular time and at particular stage, of course, what we have discovered at the particular time and stage may not remain fossilized for the rest of the learners' life. So based on the five researching methods listed above and the achievements already made by other researchers, the author takes an empirical study, which is comprised of 111 college non-English majors who belong to College of Geological Science & Engineering, and College of Humanities and Law and College of Civil Engineering of Shandong University of Science and Technology. The author collects the compositions finished at their fourth term. The fourth term represents a cessation of college English teaching. The knowledge learned by students, theoretically speaking, is at the highest point, so this time can be treated as a very efficient point. Then the author identifies and classifies the error types and frequency according to error analysis theory. The errors, which have high frequencies can be regarded as fossilized items, because they have studied English for at least eight years, while the accepted years for determining fossilization by a lot of foreign researchers is five years (Gao & Zhu, 2005; Selinker,1972).Later, in order to obtain the reasons on fossilization, the author designs a questionnaire, and by analyzing the questionnaires, the author concludes that inappropriate learning strategies, overgeneralization, negative transfer, lack of motivation and positive attitudes, satisfaction of communicative needs, lack of corrective feedback are the main reasons. Then the author lists some countermeasures against fossilization with reference to the above causes. First, instruction shall be improved, which includes the improvement of quality and quantity of input and providing corrective feedback; second, we should improve the learners' motivation and attitudes; and finally negative transfer shall be reduced as much as possible.This thesis is comprised of five chapters. Chapter one tends to explain the research background, significance and objectives, and by this chapter, the author hopes that the readers can sketch a rough idea about the fossilization phenomenon. Chapter two tends to make a literature review over fossilization and also tends to explain the error analysis. In this chapter, the definition and characteristics of interlanguage, the definition and classification of fossilization, together with the steps of error analysis are discussed in details. Chapter three is the main body of the thesis. In this chapter, the author carries out an empirical study to determine the fossilized items. Also the author concludes the reasons on fossilization through a questionnaire. In chapter four, some countermeasures against fossilization are expounded. In chapter five, the author makes a brief summary, and also points the limitations and the future direction for fossilization study.