摘 要

近年来，由于高等教育的急剧扩张，高校培养出来的英语专业人才的质量不能很好满足社会发展的需求，该问题在理工科院校的外语类专业显得尤为突出，这离培养多元化高质量的英语专业人才的目标还有一定距离。本研究着眼于当前英语专业教学现状以及英语专业学生口语学习情况，基于第二语言习得理论——语言处理论对大学英语专业学生口语能力进行实证研究，进一步验证该理论在英语口语教学及学习中的科学性，同时也不断完善对二语习得者中介语发展及学习阶段的研究，为我国理工类院校外语类专业培养方案的改进提供可行性借鉴和建议。

关键词：语言处理论；二语习得；英语口语

Abstract

In recent years, due to the rapid expansion of higher education, the quality of college English majors cannot well meet the needs of social development in China. The problem is particularly prominent in foreign language schools at the science and engineering colleges, which makes the goal of cultivating professional talents of diversified high-quality English majors more difficult. Focusing on oral-English problems among English majors, this study utilized Manfred Pienemann’s (1998, 2005) Processability Theory to conduct an empirical investigation of the staged development of L2 acquisition on English-major students' oral-English ability in China to further test the plausibility of Processability Theory in oral English teaching and learning, and constantly improve the learning stages of the second language acquisition research, providing feasibility reference as well as suggestions for science and engineering colleges and universities.

Key Words: Processability Theory; second language acquisition; oral English

Contents

1 Introduction 1

2 Literature Review 4

2.1 Morpheme order studies 4

2.2 Studies on acquisition sequence of syntactic structures 5

3 Theoretical Framework: Processability Theory (PT) 8

3.1 Theoretical bases 8

3.2 The tenets of Processability Theory 9

3.3 Hierarchy of L2 processing procedures 9

3.4 PT-based empirical studies on ESL 10

3.5 Summary 11

4 Research Methodology 12

4.1 Research questions 12

4.2 Informants 12

4.3 Course setting 13

4.4 Data collection 13

5 Results 16

6 Discussion 22

7 Conclusion 24

References 26

Appendices 27

Acknowledgements 35

An Empirical Study of Staged Development of L2 Acquisition on English-Major Students' Oral English Ability

1 Introduction

With the expansion of economic globalization, the demand for language talents is increasing. Since the beginning of the 21^st century, China has achieved remarkable achievements on education, but meanwhile, the extension of education has accumulated a lot of problems. One of the notable problems is that there is a gap between the quality of talents and the demands of social development. In the context of the rapid expansion of higher education, foreign language majors in science and engineering colleges in recent years have also attained large-scale development, while due to the specific concept of talents’ cultivation has not been firmly established, unreasonable teaching methods, single training mode and so on, high-end English talents are scarce.

The higher education department of China's Ministry of Education “College English Course Teaching Requirements” (2007) emphasized that “the teaching aim of College English is to cultivate students’ English integrated practical skills, especially speaking and listening abilities to enable them to communicate effectively with others in future work, study and social activity” (p. 131). For English majors, two researchers put forward that the cultivation to those students should achieve sustainable development by facilitating aspects such as curriculum setting, teaching models, teaching evaluation, achievement tests and the quality of teachers (Wang amp; Dai, 2014). According to a research about Chinese college students’ oral English level (Liu, 2008), a few of the informants are weak in oral communication, which is manifested in the lack of voice and intonation of native speakers, lack of communication skills, and lack of verbal communication skills. Based on Chen’s (2013) standard of being a professional English major-(1) academic program focusing on language and literature studies; (2) use-inspired program focusing on English for professional communication studies; (3) advanced skill program focusing on interpreting and translation studies, though most of the English majors’ ability of expression is above the general level compared with other majors, they still cannot meet the requirements of being professionals. Therefore, it is necessary to take into consideration innovative reform, quality of talents cultivation and discipline development for English majors.

In order to further look into the oral-English problem among English majors, the current study attempts to utilize Processability Theory (Pienemann, 1998, 2005) to investigate the staged development of L2 acquisition on English-major students' oral-English ability in China. In addition, making interviews with two English majors will assist the researcher: 1) to assess the extent to which English majors as language professionals meet the requirements for the cultivation of talents; 2) to evaluate the relevance of education, teaching concept and patterns; and 3) to find the deficiencies of current teaching models and explore more efficient ways to improve the level of English-majors’ oral-English ability.

Research on language acquisition addresses two core issues: 1) how is a language acquired? and 2) how does language acquisition proceed? The first issue comes from the observation of the mismatch between the language input that a child receives and the linguistic knowledge that he or she finally attains. The second issue is motivated by L2 research findings dating back to the 1970s (e.g., Brown, 1973) and relating to the existence of a natural order in the acquisition of a certain range of English morphemes. Scholars at the time attempted to examine whether and to what extent universal stages can be identified in the fixed order along which learners develop their knowledge of L2 grammatical structures over time (Tang, 2017, p. 42). Following this line of research, this study thus will examine the staged development of L2 acquisition on English-major students' oral English ability through empirical study and aims to put forward some pedagogical suggestions from multiple perspectives, such as national standards of teaching quality, objectives of talents cultivation, curriculum development, teaching models, teaching evaluation, achievement tests and teacher development, so as to promote the sustainable development of English major.

2 Literature Review

This section reviews previous empirical ESL studies on the developmental sequence of English questions, including the ‘morpheme order studies’, the ZISA study on German as a L2 word order, and Clahsen’s speech processing, which paves the way for the exposition of Processability Theory.

2.1 Morpheme order studies

In the 1970s, a lot of longitudinal and cross-sectional studies have been done to explore the acquisitional sequence of English grammatical morphemes, which are known as ‘morpheme order studies’. Dulay and Burt (1973) carried out a cross –sectional study of oral productions of 155 L1 Spanish children whose ages were from 6 to 8. They used the Bilingual Syntax Measure to make the respondents make some spontaneous production to investigate acquisition of eight English grammatical morphemes. Their results showed that the acquisition order of morphemes was extremely similar across the learners of diverse L1s. Thus, they pointed out that there might exist a universal order in children’s acquisition of L2 English morphemes. Later in 1974 and 1975, Dulay and Burt provided further evidence for the universality of the acquisition order of English grammatical morphemes irrespective of their L1 children’s backgrounds, learning environments, or levels of L2 proficiency. Subsequently, the researchers turned to look at the adults’ acquisitional order of grammatical morphemes.

For instance, Bailey, Madden and Krashen (1974) applied the studies conducted by Dulay and Burt to 73 adults of English as L2. These adults aged 17–55 came from Spanish speaking and non–Spanish speaking countries. The result consisted highly with the findings of Dulay and Burt’s and showed that the acquisition orders for the two groups were quite similar. Morpheme order studies did a further research to L2 acquisition. However, there still have so many problems. Larsen-Freeman and Long (1991) pointed that: 1) Morphemes studies were language–specific and therefore not amenable to cross-linguistic generalizations; 2) They suffered a lack of the theoretical motivations and explanations of the observed order of L2 acquisition.

2.2 Studies on acquisition sequence of syntactic structures

Johnston (1985) and Pienemann amp; Mackey (1993) paved the way for the exposition of Processability Theory. They conducted studies within the so-called “Predictive Framework” (Pienemann amp; Johnston, 1987, as cited in Pienemann, 1998, p. 142), a forerunner of PT. The Predictive Framework is aimed at investigating the development of ESL morpho-syntax. Later Johnston (1985 as cited in Johnston, 1997) conducted a sample project called ‘Syntactic and Morphological Progression in Learners’ English’ to extend the Multidimensional Model (MDM), developing the MDM to ESL. The MDM was established and developed in the ZISA project, which is one of the most significant attempts to describe and explain the observed sequence of L2 acquisition of syntactic structures conducted by the Sweitspracherwerb Italienischer und Spanischer Arbeiter (SIZA) group in Germany in the early 1980s (Tang, 2017). The ZISA project explored the acquisition of German word order rules. Through a cross-sectional study of 45 German learners from Spain, Italy, Portugal, the researchers found that a five-stage developmental sequence for German as a second language (GSL) word order rules (see Table 1), which suggests learners (both children and adults) can not only produce isolated words or formulae, but also follow a five-stage developmental order in future acquisition.

As shown in Table 1, in the first stage, the acquisition obeys a fixed order (subject-verb-object). The second stage ‘adverb preposition’ needs to put the adverb first. At the third stage, learners put non-finite verb elements into clause-final position. At the fourth stage ‘inversion’, learners need to invert subject and inflected verb after preposing of elements. In the final stage, verb should be inserted in final position in a subordinate clause. Clahsen (1984) put forward that the developmental sequence found for German word order could be explained from a cognitive perspective by three “speech-processing” strategies, namely, a “canonical order strategy”, an “initialization strategy” and a “subordinate strategy” (Li, 2011).

1. The Canonical Order Strategy

This strategy does not allow permutation or reordering of constituents in a structure.

1. The Initialization-Finalization Strategy (IFS)

This strategy allows only the movement of an initial or final position of a sentence.

1. The Subordinate Clause Strategy (SCS)

This strategy avoids permutations in subordinate clauses but allows the movement to occur in a main clause. (Tang, 2017)