On The Reduction Of Lexical Fossilization In Writing Of English Majors From The Perspective Of Output

Lexical fossilization which is considered as one aspect of language fossilization refers to aprocess during which incorrect lexical forms become a permanent part of the way a personspeaks or writes a language. It is a common phenomenon in SLA (Second Language Aquisition)and negelection of this phenomenon will prevent second language learners from improving theirlinguistic competence. Thus, finding effective methods to reduce the lexical fossilization plays asignificant role in guiding the learning process of second language learners.In spite of the significant influence of lexical fossilization on the learning process of secondlanguage learners, most of the past literatures on this topic were mostly conducted to prove theexsitence of lexical fossilization. Only a few of them proposed methods to reduce lexicalfossilization roughly without detailed discussion on the solutions. And concerning the reductionof lexical fossilization, most of the solutions are proposed based on input theory, while thefunctions of output in reducing lexical fossilization was neglected. However, lack of outputopportunities is also considered as one of the causal factors of lexical fossilization. Due to theabove reasons, the thesis plans to put forward several effective ways to reduce lexicalfossilization from the perspective of output theory and tries to provide an useful supplement tothe research field on this topic.By applying several research instruments, including questionnaires, writing tests, output taskmaterials and SPSS16.0, the author of the thesis conducted an empirical research in the thesisand tries to anwer the following questions based on the results of the experiment:(1) Does output play a role in reducing the lexical fossilizable linguistic forms in writing ofEnglish majors? If it does, how will it function? To which extent it affects lexical fossilization inwriting of English majors?(2) Based on the possible functions output serves, which kind of teaching methods aresuggested to English teachers to reduce the lexical fossilization in writing of English majors?In this research, the author of the thesis chose69students from two classes in Englishdepartment in Xingtan College, Qufu Normal University as subjects and treated33students fromclass one as experimental group and the other36from class two as control group. After carrying out a writing test at the beginning of the experiment, the author of the thesis confirmed theexistence of the lexical fossilization in English majors’ writing which was reflected by repeatedlexical errors, and then she identified and classified all the exsited lexical errors into11categories. The following step was to push output activities to experimental group by askingthem to write an English essay per week on different topics in restricted time span. Meanwhile,the control group only received conventional teaching without any pushing output activities.After four-month experiment, the author of the thesis carried out another writing test, andidentified all the11categories of lexical errors occurring in the writings of each grouprespectively, and then compared the numbers of lexical errors in the two groups. The totalnumbers of lexical errors in each group both show an obvious decrease, but after the dataanalysis by SPSS, it is found that the result of experimental group is significant while that of thecontrol group is not. From the sharp contrast of the two results, the conclusion of the experimentcan be summarized as the followings:(1) Output plays an important role in reducing the lexical fossilization in writing of Englishmajors, especially in the misuse of nouns and verbs.(2) Based on the function of output reflected by this experiment, three suggestions can beproposed to reduce the lexical fossilization. They are providing more output opportunities toreinforce learners’ awareness of fossilized lexical errors, providing effective and timelyfeedbacks to output activities, and conducting regular output activities.The thesis analyzes the lexical fossilization in English majors’ writing compositons andproves that output plays a significant role in reducing the lexical fossilization in English majors’writings. Based on these findings, the thesis finally proposes several ways to solve the lexicalfossilization from the perspective of output in hope that it can throw a light on Englishvocabulary teaching and sequentially promote the second language learners’ SLA.