聚焦“程式化语言”提高初中生英语写作能力的实验研究

发布时间：2016-05-18 22:18

Chapter One Introduction

1.1 Research Background  
One of the teaching objectives in new syllabus of junior middle school is “ to develop students’  writing  skill,  and  cultivate  their  ability  of  initially  employing  English  in  oral  and writing to communicate”. Based on this purpose, some educational experts design the junior middle  school  English  textbooks  with  the  orchestration  of  the  plates:  listening,  speaking, reading  and  writing.  It  is  known  to  all  that  the  ability  of  listening,  speaking,  reading  and writing  are  the  four  respects  to  evaluate  English  proficiency,  among  which  listening  and reading are the input of information, while speaking and writing are the output. Writing, as a main  form  of  output,  plays  a  vital  role  in  both  English  teaching  and  English  learning.  It reflects not only students’ comprehensive knowledge of vocabulary and grammar, but also the ability of English thought. Therefore, it is necessary for teachers to consciously carry out the writing in the routine instruction among the students. Students should be aware of following grading measurements in the entrance exams: key points of contents, the application of words and grammatical structure, and the accuracy, coherence, appropriateness of language.  An excellent composition should be with enriching contents, comprehensive key points, accurate  and  appropriate  language  usage,  as  well  as  coherent  writing.  Among  the comprehensive  language  application  skills,  writing  has  the  highest  demand  on  students.  It requires that students should not only have sufficient language storage but also properly use the  foreign  language  thinking  mode  to  express  ideas  logically  and  creatively  (Liu  Jinming, Zeng Xiaopeng, 2010). 
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1.2 Research Purpose and Significance
The  present  study  aims  at  investigating  the  juniors’  recognition  of  formulaic  language and  its  use  in  writing,  exploring  an  effective  teaching  mode  to  integrate  the  formulaic language  training  into  English  instruction  in  junior  middle  school,  thus  enhancing  the students’ writing performance. Writing,  as  a  productive  skill,  plays  an  important  role  in  language  studying  and  high school entrance examination. The gap between the requirements of this examination and the present situation reflects that it is urgent for teachers to enhance students’ writing ability under the  guidance  of  some  useful  approaches.  Since  traditional  teaching  approach  on  writing focuses on the final products of writing and the cultivation of writing skills are often ignored,  some teachers as well as students themselves assume that writing proficiency forms naturally if they can smoothly express themselves, not due to some effective writing skills. Although  most  of  the  finding  suggest  a  positive  role  formulaic  language  in  second language development, a question remains about how these findings can be applied to junior high school students’ English development in a formal class setting. In order to advance the writing ability of junior middle students, researchers have adopted many theories into practice in recent year, which include formulaic language. In recent years, foreign language teachers and  linguists  are  becoming  aware  of  the  importance  of  formulaic  language  in  language learning  and  teaching.  Many  linguists,  such  as  Payley  &  Syder,  Nattinger  &  DeCarrico, Becker,  Lewis  and  willis,  have  carried  out  comprehensive  studies  on  formulaic  language. Krashen  and  Scarcella(1978)  indicated  that  learners  who  were  under  the  communicative pressure had to develop some formulas, namely, to memorize the ready-made expressions in order to encode the creative speech as well as compensate the lack of the knowledge of the rules  of  the  second  language.  Pawley  and  Syder  (1983)  called  formulaic  language  as lexicalized or institutionalized sentence stems. 
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Chapter Two Literature Review

The theoretical basis of this research is presented in this chapter. It includes four parts. At the beginning, it introduces theoretical foundations related with formulaic language. Next, it discusses  formulaic  language,  where  its  definitions  and  categories  are  presented.  Then, researches  on  the  functions  of  formulaic  language  are  introduced.  Finally,  it  introduces previous researches on formulaic language instruction both abroad and at home.  

2.1 The Theoretical Foundations
The  author  of  this  thesis  introduces  the  theoretical  foundations  related  with  formulaic language  including:  the  dual  mode  system,  corpus  linguistics,  and  language  acquisition theory.It is the fact that formulaic language is not a complete theory, but a study based on the dual nature of language, namely, analytical and formulaic nature, which is called “dual mode system”  (Skehan,  1999).  The  dual  mode  system,  on  one  hand,  is  using  knowledge  of  the language to generate and create sentences to express ideas, which is based on the grammatical rules of system. On the other hand, it is acquiring some bricks of the language, namely fixed phrases  and  sentence  patterns,  which  is  based  on  the  exemplar  system.  The  former characterizes by taking up a few space of long term memory, high abstraction and flexibility, while  the  latter  can  be  extracted  quickly  from  memory  to  meet  the  needs  of  real-time communication, then the expression is accurate. But the gain of such a system is processing speed  in  the  utterance  units  do  not  require  excessive  internal  computation.  It  is  argued  that neither  the  rule-based  system  nor  the  exemplar  system  is  ideal  independently.  The  formal leads  to  the  development  of  an  open,  form-oriented  system,  while  the  latter  emphasizes meaning  and  is  less  appropriate  for  underlying  system  change.  
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2.2 Formulaic Language
Recently,  an  increasing  number  of  researches  put  the  formulaic  language  at  the  very center of language acquisition, which is of crucial importance for second language learners. At  the  same  time,  its  further  development  and  applicable  researches  have  been  paid  great attention, which contribute to the further study. In this section, definitions and categories of formulaic language are presented. Formulaic  language  is  the  general  definition  of  ready-made  language  structures,  which can  be  referred  to  the  common  but  negligible  linguistic  phenomenon  in  the  acquisition process.  Rather  than  being  subject  to  analysis  and  generation  by  the  grammar,  formulaic language can be stored and retrieved whole from memory at the time of use. There are some typical  formulaic  language:  collocations,  idioms,  preferred  ways  of  saying  things,  turns  of phrase, routines, prayers, proverbs, etc.  Many corpus researches reveal that these modeling linguistic structures are the minimal and  the  most  ideal  units  of  language  usage  ,  which  can  be  saved  as  whole  in  the  human memories.  Wray  (2002)  found  over  fifty  terms  to  describe  the  phenomenon  of  formulaic language,  including  prefabricated  routines  and  patterns  (Brown,  1973),  lexical  phrases (DeCarrico & Nattinger, 1992), formulaic speech (Ellis, 2004), lexical chunks (Lewis, 1993), speech  formulas  (Peters,  1977),  prefabricated  chunks  (Widdowson,  1989)  and  etc.  Though these terms are various, each of them is coined by researchers according to special historical background  and  implications  and  to  different  researchers  they  may  not  refer  to  exactly  the same kind of word sequences because that each of them may particularly focuses on certain aspects of language. It seems that though many researchers would like to use different terms to refer to inherently similar language phenomena, no one of them provides the whole story. Take the following definitions as examples both at abroad and at home. 
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Chapter Three Methodology ..... 29 
3.1 Research Questions ......... 29 
3.2 Research Subjects ..... 30 
3.3 Research Instruments ...... 30 
3.4 Data Collection ......... 32 
Chapter Four Research Procedure ....... 35 
4.1 Pre-Experiment Investigation and Reflection .... 35 
4.2 Goals of Experimental Instruction for Trainee .......... 37 
4.3 Training Approaches ....... 37 
4.4. An Overview of Formulaic Language Instruction .... 39 
4.5 Teaching Procedures ........ 41 
Chapter Five Data Analysis and Discussion .... 63 
5.1 Analysis and Results of Questionnaires ...... 63 
5.2 Analysis and Results of the Two Tests ........ 67 
5.2.1 Analysis and Results in the Pre-Test between EC and CC ......... 68 
5.2.2 Analysis and Results in the Post-Test between EC and CC ....... 69 
5.2.3Analysis and Results in the Pre-Test and Post-Test of EC .......... 70 
5.3 Analysis and Findings of the Interview ....... 70
5.4 Discussion ......... 72 

Chapter Five Data Analysis and Discussion

The author  presents  the  results  of  analysis  in  this  chapter,  which  contains  the  data collected from questionnaires, writing tests and interview, so that the research questions can be  answered.  Afterwards,  the  effect  of  formulaic  language  instruction  on  writing  will  be discussed. 

5.1 Analysis and Results of Questionnaires 

Will  the  English  instruction  on  the  basis  of  formulaic  language  contribute  to strengthen  learners’  formulaic  language  awareness  of  writing  and  advancing  their  writing proficiency? After the training, do the students really do better in the post-questionnaire than in  the  pre-questionnaire?  The  answers  are  definitely  positive.  The  results  of  the  following tables  prove  that.  The  following  tables  are  the  collected  data  from  the  questionnaires  in experimental class before and after the experiment. The questionnaires are all handed in, with no one invalid. All of the 70 students have given their answers to the 20 questions 4 options. 

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Conclusion

In this concluding chapter, the author concludes what we have learned from the middle school  writing  instruction  on  the  basis  of  the  formulaic  language  training.  And  then  some practical implications for English teaching are made. At last, some limitations of the present study and suggestions for the future study are presented. At  the  beginning  of  the  paper,  the  hypothesis  is  raised  that  students’  English  writing ability  can  be  improved  by  formulaic  language  training  in  junior  middle  school.  Then  the author divides the formulaic language teaching into four phases: awareness training, input and output training, application training. Different teaching strategies are adopted to help students identify, internalize, and collect the rich formulaic language. And a bridge between the input and output of formulaic language is established to improve students’ writing ability. Based on the  analysis  and  discussion  of  the  statistics  gathered  in  this  study,  the  author  makes  the following conclusions:According to the survey by pre-questionnaire and pre-test of writing, the results and analysis of data show that students in middle school seldom use formulaic language in their dairy English learning. Although they sometimes use it, they do it unconsciously and not very often.  Therefore,  it  is  very  necessary  to  instruct  students  in  adopting  formulaic  language knowledge.  
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