| In the cause of the second language acquisition, fossilization has been the focus of debate and controversy. As a barrier for the improvement of learning, fossilization arouses the researcher’s interest. With literature reviews of the previous and recent studies on interlanguage and fossilization, especially grammatical fossilization, the research intends to investigate the writing output of the college students to detect the evidence of the existence, the categories, and frequencies of grammatical fossilization.The research consists of a questionnaire study and an experimental study.The purpose of the questionnaire study is to investigate the subjects’beliefs in grammatical fossilization, by means of eliciting the self report of the subjects,120sophomores of Fu yang Teachers’ College. The study proves the beliefs of the subjects that grammatical fossilization exists in the process of English learning.The experimental study chooses two intact classes from two grades. Group one is made up of45freshmen while group two is made up of45sophomores. Each participant is required to hand in one essay by choosing one title from the3given titles in half an hour. The writings from the two groups are collected separately and errors are identified, analyzed and compared. Fossilized grammatical errors are marked out, calculated and then the frequencies are generated. Analysis and discussions will be made to figure out the source of the grammatical fossilization. The main findings are:Seven kinds of grammatical fossilization errors of the learners’written output are revealed, which makes the existence of grammatical fossilization much more evident;Grammatical fossilized errors comprise a significant proportion of grammatical errors in writing;The categories, frequencies of grammatical fossilization are analyzed and discussed, from which we can see that morphological errors occupy the largest proportion of all the errors, and next are lexical errors, nominal errors, verbal errors, cohesive errors, and syntactical errors, which are in the order from the highest to the lowest. The total errors of each category descend obviously. These general characteristics revealed from the collected data from the study concerning grammatical fossilization will help the further research of this field. The causes of grammatical fossilization are discussed and analyzed and different strategies are put forward accordingly. To enhance the input quality and quantity is to lessen the learners’negative transfer and facilitate the process of learning; to provide effective feedback and instruction can make significant difference in the student’s learning motivation and the performs; Learners’attention will be directed to the neglected and stabilized errors with the help of consciousness-raising treatment.This research will contribute to the growing body of theory and research that has addressed fossilization and hold significant implications for language pedagogy in China. |
