影响上海浦东新区初中生的英语短期僵化现象的因素

王允芳

上海市民办尚德实验学校

Factors Affecting Temporary Fossilization in English Learning in Junior High Schools in Pudong New Area in Shanghai

Abstract

English language learning fossilization phenomenon, refers to a cessation stage for language learners in achievement, despite that language learners are continuously exposed to language input and have the opportunity to practice. This qualitative study aims at exploring the factors affecting young English learners’ language fossilization which consists of error repletion and language competence fossilization, such as the fossilization of English phonology, syntax, and lexicon. The student participants are from different middle schools in Pudong New Area in Shanghai. The data collection method involves semi-structured interview. Research finds that the top related external factors affecting students’ language temporary fossilization are vocabulary building, reading ability, lack of extension of their teaching materials, not enough time investment, invalid school homework and teaching activities, teachers’ factors and learning atmosphere. However, internal factors, such as inpidual difference and learning strategies, can also influence students’ English learning stagnant. To help students make a breakthrough to the cessation stage, schools may provide a more authentic language environment, or carry out stratified class or small-sized class; teachers can design effective class activity and arrange valid homework for students to get enough input; while students themselves should pay concerted effort to make themselves exposed to the language environment.

Key words: language fossilization internal factor

external factors Language input

Introduction Nowadays, the atmosphere of English learning in Shanghai is even fiercer. Governmental Education Bureaus set up demonstrative schools to lead the English teaching trend. Subordinate education bureaus hold teaching and research conferences to set examples for teachers to follow. Many schools have developed their school-based materials, introduce more advanced teaching technology, provide more authentic learning environment by inviting foreign teachers as well as regularly organize English teaching and research conference to cater to the needs of both parents and students. Besides, some language centers have sprung up by offering systematic English language teaching throughout China. In addition to school-based class leaning, students either willingly or forced by parents, go to the learning center in the hope of getting their English improved, especially making progress in the form of their scores. However, despite every kind of paid effort, some students’ English level are still in a stagnant state, and a fluctuation of their scores is often seen. This temporary English fossilization phenomena occurs to not only top-level students but also to low-level students. As a matter of fact, Fossilization is an inevitable process for almost every language learners (Al-Shormani, 2013) and it even occurs at the incipient level of language development (Ortega, 2009). However, more research is focuses on probing the reasons of adult learners’ fossilization in language development. Therefore, young learners’ language fossilization is often neglected. It’s worth noting that many students are suffering from the pain brought by temporary fossilization in English learning. Frustration, despair, helplessness, demotivating, and loss of interest in English learning are often shown among young language learners when the periodical fossilization occurs. Hence, a qualitative research was carried to probe the factors affecting English fossilization of junior high students in Pudong New Area in Shanghai aiming to help those young language learners to get rid of periodical fossilization and find a more effective way of learning English. Here are my research questions:

● RQ1. Why do young language learners come to language center to study? 

●RQ2.What factors affecting Junior High School students’ English learning fossilization? 

Theoretical constructs Fossilization  According to Han (2003), fossilization in the literature is generally regarded as the phenomenon of showing no progress in learning, in spite of continuous exposure to input and opportunity to practice. It can be seen that language fossilization is a cessation stage among language achievement. Fossilization can be categorized as inpidual and group types (Selinker, 1972). As Gu (2012) mentioned, inpidual fossilization comprises error repletion and language competence fossilization which refers to the fossilization of English including phonology, syntax, and lexicon. This study mainly focuses on the inpidual fossilization, especially learners’ language competence fossilization. Temporary fossilization  Temporary fossilization refers to “the stagnant process in which non-target factors are fixed in the target language to a certain stage” (Qian & Xiao, 2010, P180). For the students related in this study, they are at temporary fossilization, for after achieving a certain stage of language proficiency, their learning process seems stagnant. The learners can make a further development and reach another peak regarding linguistic ability if they are exposed to a more optimal input such as living in an English-speaking country (Qian & Xiao, 2010). Therefore, the temporary fossilization is not an end but a process which can be improved for the learners. That’s why this research is carried out to probe the reasons behind the phenomena and present effective ways to solve this problem.  Factors affecting fossilization According to Gu (2012), the causal factors of fossilization can be the internal, external and mutual effect of internal and external factors. More attention is paid to some internal factors such as target language materials, learning strategies, psychological factors, as well as the inpidual difference in the study. Besides, other external factors such as social-cultural environment are also focused on during the study. The topic of semi-structured interview questions are mainly formed based on these factors (see Appendix A). 

Research Methodology  To collect the data, a semi-in structured interview was carried out, because “the interview can provide insights into peoples’ experiences, beliefs, perceptions, and motivations at the depth that is not possible with the questionnaire (Croker & Heigham, 2009, P187)”. To make the questions cover more relevant topics and produce a naturally developing line of exploration, some questions were revised and the order of the questions was reorganized after a pilot study. Another reason to do the interview is that it is more flexible to make a further interaction with students to explore the deep factors related to the research questions, which can reveal and cover more unexpected valuable information than the fixed questionnaire. Compared with case study and action research, the interview will take less time.  Four participants in the research, aged from 12 to 13, come from three different junior high schools, two of which are famous public school and the other one is a top private school in Pudong New Area in Shanghai. They are students of my former colleagues who are also English teachers. The four participants were chosen, according to their teachers’ class observation, having both good and bad performances, which are more typical and convincing for the research. Before the interview was carried out, I first explain the purpose of the research to their parents and get their permission of audio recording. To make students feel safe and make the interview valid, I explained to each interviewee, the purpose again and informed that their name will not appear in the study. To make students understand and answer the questions well, the whole interview was carried and recorded in Chinese. The audio was transcribed into word form and then was translated into English. The analysis of the data was based on the translated data. Analysis It is worth noting that the main reason these students go to some learning centers is that there is a stagnant (see Excerpt 1) in the process of their English language learning. Some of them stay at the same level fluctuating around the average score of their school from the beginning to the end while others though making great progress, enter a cessation stage as well (see Appendix B). There is also one participant whose English level is good but never makes breakthroughs. Another reason that they come to the learning center is that neither the teaching material nor the teaching procedure at school such as teaching speed can meet students' needs. The teaching material is too easy, and most time lacks extension. Besides, due to the large size of class teaching, some demotivated students are not well-disciplined who often make noise or interrupt teaching, which causes less effectiveness of class teaching. Quite on the contrary, the small size of the learning center class, supportive learning environment, the extension of vocabulary, fexible reading materials, and valid exercises are effective for students to learn English, which provide better condition for students to make an improvement.

EXCERPT 1: Interview with student1 

T: all right, and then you think you (mmm) how long has your learning state lasted, it's always in 80, and it doesn't

make a breakthrough to 85, right? S: Yes for one and half a semester.

EXCERPT 2: Interview with student 4

T: How do you think your school work influence your English study?  S: Since it is too easy for me, I treat it like a consolidation. 

T : Do you think your school teaching activity can meet your English learning need ？ S: (Hmm) No. Not enough. T: What kind of changes and improvement can the school make to meet your need for learning English?  S: I hope that school can provide more learning material to extend our English. The current material such as English Newspaper, it is too easy for me. I hope a more advanced reading material will be available for me to improve my English. T: How do you think the learning center can do more to help you to develop your English Study?  S: I think it is pretty good concerning reading and vocabulary extension. The learning speed is faster than my school and I know more difficult words and sentence structures while my classmates actually don’t know. When referring to RQ2, the factors affecting students’ English fossilization, both internal and external factors are involved. To further analyze the transcription of the interview, the top related factors are vocabulary building and reading ability, lack of extension of their teaching materials, not enough time investment, invalid school homework and teaching activities, teachers’ factors as well as learning atmosphere. However, due to learners’ inpidual difference, learning strategies and family factors can also influence students’ language learning development. According to the interviewee, all of them think their reading ability is closely associated with their vocabulary building. Due to too easy teaching material, and invalid homework such as wasting time on repletion of simple task (see participant 1) makes students’ lack of enough input. Particularly, when the test is difficult, the school teaching material is too easy. Therefore, students need to go to language center to learn advanced knowledge to make a breakthrough of their temporary fossilization state. Besides, investing more time in math is another reason preventing students from getting enough exposure to English. To change the stagnant state in their English language learning, the original material is helpful for students to get more exposure to English. However, without time guarantees, no reading can be carried on, let alone say the vocabulary building and improving abilities. Furthermore, class activities are the most important learning procedure for students to get input, if not well designed, neither can it attract students’ learning interest nor make the class effective. To help students get more input, as is suggested by participant 2, living abroad helps a lot, which provides more opportunity for students to communicate and more exposure to learn English.

EXCERPT 3: Interview with student 3  T: Well, then how much time do you devote to your English every day except your homework? S: Learning English for an hour T: Can you keep it every day? S: Sometimes it is. Sometimes half an hour. T: Which subject do you devote most time to? S: Math EXCERPT 4: Interview with student 2 T: (Uhm) Do you think there are any favorable or unfavorable factors I that will affect your grades when doing

your exam?  S: I think if the English vocabulary is not large enough, it will be difficult in reading T: (HMM) so in your opinion so, uh, what is the biggest difficulty you have in learning English? S: I tend to forget the words I learned and need to review regularly. T: do you think there are any factors in your school that will affect your current English learning? For example, the bad factors. S: Well,differences between teachers may affect our interest in learning English

Limitations  Due to qualitative research carried on a small group of students, and these students are from good schools, there must be other factors in some other schools need to be discovered. A future quantitative research can be conducted to get a more scientific data about factors of whole Pudong New Area in Shanghai. The translation of the conversation, to some extent, may also influence the analysis of the discourse. Conclusion  This qualitative research reveals the reason that students go to the learning center hoping to improve their temporary fossilized state of English. The main reason of their temporary English fossilization is mainly not enough exposure to English due to lack of time and ineffective school arrangement, such as teaching material, homework, the speed of teaching procedure. Other factors such as learning environment and teachers’ encouragement can also work. To change this phenomenon, schools perhaps can provide a more authentic language environment, such as holding English corner once a week, or carry out smaller sized ore stratified class to ensure the same level students can get enough input and meanwhile assimilate the knowledge. Besides, curriculum design and material adaptation is also another available way for school to support students’ language input environment. As for teachers, they can design effective class activity and valid homework for students to improve learning outcome. When refers to students, they should have a continuous language exposure and concerted effort, such as keeping reading the original version of books as well as living abroad, to broaden their views until they make a breakthrough of cessation.

References

Al-Shormani, M. Q. (2013). Fossilization and plateau effect in second language acquisition. Language In India, , (2). 763.

GU, A. (2012). An Analysis of Fossilization in Second Language Acquisition And English Teaching. Overseas English, (8), 301.

Han, Z. (2003). Fossilisation: From Simplicity to Complexity. International Journal Of Bilingual Education And Bilingualism,, 6(2), 95-128. doi:10.1080/13670050308667775.

Heigham, J., & Croker, R. A. (2009). . Qualitative Research in Applied Linguistics -A practical Introduction. New York: Palgrave Macmilllan.

Ortega, L. (2009). Understanding second language acquisition. London : Hodder Education, 2009.

Qian, M. &. (2010). Strategies for Preventing and Resolving Temporary Fossilization in Second Language Acquisition. English Language Teaching, 3(1),180-183.

Selinker, L. &. ( 1979). The Role of Extrinsic Feedback in English Fossilization: A Discussion of 'Rule Fossilization: A Tentative Model'. .Language Learning: A Journal Of Applied Linguistics, 29363-75.

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