The Research On Daily Conversations Of American Learners

Discourse analysis is a new field of research in current linguistic research. Up to now, the majority of the discourse analysis is limited to the groups with the same or the similar social and linguistic backgrounds while the research on the cross-cultural communication is inadequate. In terms of Second Language Acquisition and Teaching, the research on those who study Chinese as a second language is fewer than the analysis on the domestic English learners. In recent years, the focus of foreign language education has been gradually converting to cultivating the student’s aptitude of communication for the class is not able to reflect the conditions of students. In order to acquaint how students grasp the language, it is indispensable to get closer to their daily life and investigate their discourse with different people in different circumstances.The thesis takes advantage of sociology means, such as recording, transferring and analyzing, to study the daily conversations of six high-grade American learners selected. The corpus-based research is analyzed in the light of discourse analysis theories from different perspectives, such as feedback project, rules of turn-taking, dialogue structure and so on, looking forward to discovering some characters and explaining the reasons. Moreover, I will provide some advice with respect to the oral Chinese class for high-grade foreign students.The body of the thesis can be divided into three parts: In the first place, I introduce the reason of selecting the subject, the related research background at home and abroad, as well as the design of research. Then I explain the common terms like discourse analysis, conversation analysis. In addition, I point out the means of my research:recording, transferring, analyzing and so on. In the research, we select six high-grade American learners, collect the corpus from their conversations in daily life and employ the methods of sociology, with the purpose of discovering the common ground, along with its cause.In the second part, I analyze the corpus transferred. Based on the corpus from the six high-grade Americans, I find the following characters:(1) Turn of single sentence is more than that of clauses.(2) Native language is mingled in the discourse (3) It is challenging to distinguish the errors.(4) The phenomenon of sending the signals of giving up at the end of turn is fewer than the Chinese.(5) It is common to disturb others on purpose to start a new turn.(6) The adjacent two-part structure is frequent in dialogues.(7) It is possible for them to take advantage of diverse skills.(8) The expression ways is single, especially in terms of ask questions and feedback project.Finally, I make a summary of the characters of the conversations with respect to high-grade American students and I try to provide some advice to enhance the oral class. In the end, I state the disadvantages of the thesis and offer proposals to the following research.