The Effect Of Task Frequency In English Phonetic Error Correction On The Basis Of The Microgenetic Approach

Error correction is an important topic in the field of the second language acquisition, the importance ofwhich is self-evident. The premise of error correction is the appearance of errors, especially in the field ofsecond language acquisition, which is inevitable. The key of learning is how to deal with these errors andhow to correct them. Meanwhile, Microgenetic approach was a new method emerging in cognitivepsychology over the past twenty years. An increasing number of the researchers have adopted this methodto study the path and mechanism of change in cognitive development with a focus on variability within agroup and within a subject. The essential properties of carrying out this method include a sufficiently longobservation span, a high density of observations and an intensive analysis of the observation data. It candistinguish among five dimensions of change: its path, rate, breath, source and variability. The mostoutstanding feature of this method is that it can be used to do research on diversified current areas andpopulations, and can make up for some of the limitations of cross-sectional and longitudinal studies. Byusing microgenetic approach, we can detail this research topic to help us explore the source of the change.The paper finally explores frequency effects on the phonetic error correction of students with the help ofthe microgenetic approach to make efforts to provide a more micro view in the study of the secondlanguage acquisition.The paper describes the background, purpose, significance and structure of the study and overviewsthe studies of task frequency and achievements of using microgenetic approach in second languageacquisition both at abroad and home and states the theoretical foundation: Information Processing Theory,Skehan’s Cognitive Mode and then elaborates on the research design, including subjects, researchhypotheses, instruments and data collection and analysis and results of study. The participanta are the twofreshmen (male and female) of English major from Longdong college, who both have developed arelatively high level of English learning and whose oral English ranked in the middle of the class wassampled. Before they went into the college, they both had pronunciation training. The paper mainly usesthe microgenetic approach and analyzes the different effects of input frequency and output frequency onthe correction of the[n]/[l] and half–years tracing investigation is involved to observe the effect andinfluence of the phonetic error correction. Specially, the researcher raises the following three researchhypotheses:1) Task frequency can affect the correction of the [n]/[l] from the change of its rate, path,breath, source and variability.2). Input frequency and output frequency can create the different effects on the correction of the[n]/[l].3). Task frequency can help the learners to maintain long–term memory afterthe correction of the [n]/[l] and its trend of change. The dates of this research are collected by means ofqualitative and quantitative procedures. Qualitative data are mainly from the interview. Quantitative datawere gathered by scores and graphed the data with EXCEL.The results of this study are as follows:1) Task frequency can affect the correction of the [n]/[l] from the change of its rate, path, breath,source and variability and frequency practice could play positive role in the correction of the two sounds[n]/[l].2) Input frequency and output frequency both have effects on the correction of the pronunciation andcompared with output frequency, the effect of input frequency is more obvious. The high-frequency inputand output in very short-time memory stage could lay a solid base for the learners to correctly master thepronunciation. In this phase, input frequency is dominant. During the short-time memory stage, outputfrequency plays a role and input practice just arise the learners’ phonetic consciousness. In the stage oflong-time memory, the frequency of the input and output practice become lower than before, the masteringof the pronunciations tends to be stable and even.3) The data of the three tracking tests show that the process of the effect of frequency on the long-timememory is “forward-backwards-forward-basically stable”, which coincides with the backslidingproposed by Selinker(1972) This shows that the phonetic development of the learners is not always linear.The regression and stagnation at some stage is not occasional and the progressive model could be various.