A Study Of The Relationship Between The Use Of Formulaic Speech And The English Speaking Proficiency Of Shs Students

The study of formulaic speech of English is arousing an increasingly strong interest among second language acquisition researchers and language teachers. With an integration of form and function, formulaic speech overcomes the problems from both traditional grammar approach and communicative approach, and offers a comparatively ideal approach of language teaching. It is quite necessary to discuss the use of formulaic speech. The subjects of previous studies relating the use of formulaic speech with the proficiency of English speaking are mostly college students, and those researchers have not paid much attention to senior high school students. However, nowadays English speaking proficiency of senior high school students is attracting more and more related researchers'attention.The aim of this thesis is to find out the relationship between the use of formulaic speech and English speaking proficiency of senior high school students. Three research questions are addressed as follows:1. What are the differences among the students with different English speaking proficiency in the use of formulaic speech based on the structure?2. What are the differences among the students of different English speaking proficiency in the use of formulaic speech based on the function?3. Is the use of formulaic speech related to the English speaking proficiency? If yes, how are they related to each other?Topic presentation as a speaking task and an interview are employed as research instruments. And based on qualitative analysis and quantitative analysis, this article has attained the following research findings:Firstly, in terms of the structure, in both of the high proficiency and the low proficiency groups the phrase constraints take the largest proportion in the total formulaic speech used by the subjects, followed by polywords, sentence builders and institutionalized expressions. The proportions of polywords, institutionalized expressions and sentence builders in the total formulaic speech in the high proficiency group are larger than that in the low proficiency group.Secondly, in terms of the function, the use of formulaic speech of the high proficiency group appears greater variety, though the high proficiency group and low proficiency group show similarity in the frequent formulaic speech they employ in the oral expression.Lastly, the data analysis with SPSS 18.0 shows that the use of formulaic speech is closely related to the proficiency of English speaking. And with an interview, some reasons for the relationship are concluded.At the end of the thesis, some important implications are drawn as follows: When the teachers are teaching formulaic speech, they should pay more attention to sentence builders and institutionalized expressions. As for formulaic speech with different functions, the teachers should improve students'realization for formulaic speech. Lastly, the teaching and acquisition of formulaic speech should be conducted within certain contexts.