A Study Of First Language Thinking In English Speaking Process Of Senior High School Students

In recent years, long with the increasingly development of globalization, spoken English has become more and more important, however the students’ spoken-English ability is quite low, can not reach the expectation. The influence of the first language(L1) is a profound research topic in the area of the second language acquisition, but the question of what specific roles native language plays in the second language(L2) learning awaits answers, although there are rich researches on this topic. But most of the researches are concerned with L1effect on the writing and reading and the researches about the effect on L2speaking, especially for the senior students, are rare. So, it is necessary to research in this area.The author chose10students in one class of XiongYue Senior High Middle School where the author worked as a internship to take a part in a think-aloud experiment. This study mainly use thinking aloud, observation and retrospective interviews to collect data which were student speakers’ verbal protocols of their speaking processes. At first, every student was given a training of the think-aloud method,after that,10students were chosen which according the training results they were asked to speak aloud two tasks, the first was picture speaking and the second was argumentation speaking. For a better understanding of the L2speaking process, the speaking process was recorded and observation was made during the speakers’ speaking processes.The research has some findings. Firstly, there are two language systems while the students speaking in L2. L1plays an important role in the process of L2speaking, the average number nearly49.6%. Secondly, It is not so easy to illustrate the relationship of L1thinking and L2proficiency. Generally, the more fluent with L2, the lower L1being used. Thirdly, in the output of L2, these functions are easily being seen, such as task reacting, ideas producing categorizing ideas, constructing sentences, and controlling process. L1thinking is easily used in these activities except constructing sentences which is rarely used L1but rather L2.There are some implications in this study. Theoretically, the study enriches the knowledge of the role of native language in the the second language speaking process in particular and in the second language learning in general, and argues for a dynamic approach to the role of native language in the second language learning. Practically, the study has some implications for the second language speaking instruction and offers suggestions on how to implement the think-aloud method effectively.