The Interlanguage Fossilization In English Writing Made By Students In Vocational College

Interlanguage is a non-continuous linguistic system which is different from thelearners native and target language system. Interlanguage theory constitutes animportant part of second language acquisition theories. Interlanguage fossilization is acommon phenomenon in second language acquisition and it turns out to be a hot topicand has received growing attention of scholars. The main second language thatstudents are learning in China is English. Compared with listening, speaking, readingand translating, writing is the most integrated skill which can reflect the English levelof students.As mutually considered by both researchers and students, the interlanguagefossilization is one of the most difficult problems in second language acquisition. Forexample, the same language items and errors reappear more often in the compositionsof students, the language level has been kept stabilized and the errors can hardly becorrected. The phenomenon which should be noticed has impeded the secondlanguage development of students. This thesis pays attention to the interlanguagefossilization in students English writing and tries to figure out an efficient method ofEnglish teaching based on the analysis of errors.This thesis is centered on analyzing interlanguage fossilization phenomenon inEnglish writing of students in vocational college from both qualitative andquantitative perspectives by an empirical research on the ground of interlanguagetheory, fossilization theory and error analysis. It aims to find the main error types andcauses of fossilization, and find out the countermeasures to prevent them fromfossilization. From the quantitative perspective, the paper analyzes the following:1)some main types of errors and the percentage of students who made errors;2) analyzethe causes of fossilized errors based on questionnaire. From the qualitativeperspective, the main causes of fossilized errors are analyzed.The subjects of this study include156freshmen of Zhejiang Economic and Tradevocational college in non-English majors. The research procedures are as follows:1)to set four time periods that are the beginning and the end of the first and secondsemester in the first college year, then ask each student to write one piece ofcomposition in each period, each handing in four compositions altogether;2) to handout questionnaires and ask students to answer questions honestly;3) to put forwardteaching suggestions based on the research result. At last, the author chooses fortystudents randomly and collects their160compositions for the further analysis. The13types of fossilization errors in the writing of students have been foundbased on statistics analysis. Errors of word building, capitalization, preposition andChinglish are the main types of errors. Meanwhile, the negative learning motivation,negative transfer of mother language, inadequate input of target language andineffective feedback are the main causes of interlanguage fossilization.This thesis has five chapters. Chapter one introduces the research background,questions and significance. The interlanguage theories, fossilization theories and erroranalysis are illustrated in Chapter two. The research methods, procedures and resultsare discussed in Chapter three. Chapter four analyzes the causes and countermeasuresof interlanguage fossilization. The last chapter is devoted to the conclusion of thestudy. Pedagogical suggestions and limitations in the study are also argued in thissection.