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.