英语专业--影响第二语言习得的主要因素.doc

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1、AcknowledgementsThanks for giving me this chance to achieve this paper and to make the conclusion for my four years education. Through writing this paper, I have gained more knowledge than I supposed.My sincere thanks are due to my supervisor, Mis. Hu Xiaorong for helping me to clarify my thought an

2、d sharpen my thinking.Here, I also want to give my thanks to other teachers and my classments who gave me much help. Thank you!AbstractWith the development of language, people gradually pay more attention to the second language acquisition. This paper mainly makes analysis of the factors that affect

3、 the second language acquisition and illustrates the individual differences and social environment and ananlyzes problems and developing trends. The factors play a crucial role in the second language acquisition learning, and become an integral in the second language acquisition. Key Words: Second L

4、anguage Acquisition; Factors; Age; Social Environment摘 要随着语言的发展，第二语言的习得逐渐被人们所重视和研究。本文在对影响第二语习得的因素的主要研究成果进行分析和比较之余，着重从学习者个体差异中的年龄和外在因素的社会环境两个方面进行分析。浅要分析了其中的问题或发展趋势。由于他们在第二语习得的学习中起着至关重要的作用，并已成为第二语习得模式不可或缺的一部分，因此本文的分析对第二语习得的学习有着实际的指导意义。关键词: 二语习得; 影响因素; 年龄; 社会环境Contents1. Introduction11.1 Background of

5、Second Language Acquisition11.2 The Importance of the Study Second Language Acquisition22. The Main Factors on the Second Language Acquisition22.1 Age22.2 Social Factors52.2.1 Seond Language Proficiency and Parental Occupation72.2.2 Second Language Proficiency and Parental Economic Status73. Conclus

6、ion10Bibliography12Main Factors Influencing Second Language AcquisitionMain Factors Influencing Second Language Acquisition1. IntroductionWith the development of globalization, todays intercultural encounters are becoming more and more abundant and significant. We can now go anywhere in the world no

7、 matter of hours, and the reality of a global economy makes todays contacts far more commonplace than in any other time of the worlds history. But whatever we do, language is at the center of the encounter. When we do intercultural communication, a second or foreign language is usually necessary. In

8、 China, like elsewhere in the world, knowing anther language, English in most cases, may mean: getting a decent job; a chance to get better education; the ability to take a fuller part of life or the opportunity to go abroad; an expansion of ones horizons in literature, culture, science or technolog

9、y. It affects peoples careers and possible futures. Indeed, what he demands is to learn English that there are now far more students of English in China than there are native speakers of English across the world. English learning and teaching is, in short, one of Chinas greatest growth industries. T

10、here are many research on Second Language Acquisition.1.1 Background of Second Language Acquisition Chinese students who learn English usually spend, from primary school to university, more than ten years learning the language. Such a long time endeavor drastically affects their exposure to other co

11、urses in academic fields, even affecting their all-round development. What is worse, after such a long time, it is hard to say that a lot of students have acquired the English skills effectively, especially those of litening and speaking. Consuming too much while achieving so little” is a true pictu

12、re of learning English in most areas of the country. As statistics show, 72,6% of college graduates cannot speak English in their daily conversation after 8 to 10 years study of language. There are many factors affect second language acquisition, such as ones mother tongue, culture, age, individual

13、variable, social factor and provincial key institutions of higher education and so on. Hence much concern from the educational administrations, the school authorities and English language teachers, linguists and researches has been given. It is argued that its because of the lack of English learning

14、. The negative influence of the traditional education system tends to produce examination-oriented learners who are of “high grades, but low abilities”. And due to the traditional teacher-centered approaches, the students, accustomed to being spoon-fed, are often treated as the passive recipients of

15、 linguistic knowledge. Recent years, however, there has being the most fundamental change in L2 acquisition researchers, which has been a shift from concern with the teacher, the textbook and method to an interest in the learner and the acquisition processes, As is known, it is the learners who are

16、internal factors that play the main role in the learning process rather than the teachers who are external factors. 1.2 The Important of the Study Second Language Acquisition On the basis of other researches, this paper will try to use a new and more professional method, to analyse the affect in sec

17、ond language acquisition from two aspects: age and social factors. In the first part, the paper express the background information and important of the study of the research. Then the paper mainly analyse the factor from two aspects: age and social factors. In this part, the paper try to make a deta

18、il and specific explanation to the reason. 2. The Main Factor on the Second Language Acquisition 2.1 Age There are a good deal of comprehensive reviews of the SLA literature dealing with age. At first sight, the SL age results look chaotic, some studies appearing to show child superiority, some favo

19、uring adults. There is a prevailing belief that children are good at the second language (L2) learning. It is based on many peoples experience that children who immigrate to a foreign environment are able to learn the language more easily and quickly than their parents. It seems that children can ac

20、hieve a native-like level easily, while adults study hard and diligently for years only to find that the results are unsatisfactory. It seems that children are intrainsically better learners. But this assumption has not been confirmed by all researchers in this field. On the contrary, a lot of evide

21、nces prove that the orlder children grow the more effectively they learn and that teenagers are probably the best learners(Ellis, 1994: 484-94). The only exception might be pronunciation, which is learned more easily by younger children. But there are still some evidences to support the fact that ad

22、ults can also learn native-like pronunciation. Some researchers have argued for the existence of a critical period in L2 learning. They deny that a learner will have much more difficulty in learning a foreign language if he/she has passed the optimum period. Oyama studied 60 Italian male immigrants

23、whose arrival age is between 6 and 20, who live in American about 5 to 18 years. The research indicates that the children whose age is under 12 immigrant in the USA can have the same language ability as the native American. The length of residence of immigrants learning English in American related l

24、ess to the SLA, but the age of immigrants have an important fact on the SLA.Payne, Oyama, ect found that it can be explained by the critical period hypothesis, the critical perod hypothesis shows that there is a period hypothesis. The critical period hypothesis states that there is a period when lan

25、guage acquisition takes place naturaly and effortlessly. Penfield and Roberts(1959) argued that the perfect age for language acquisition is the first ten years of life. During this time the brain retains plastiity, but with the onset of puberty this plasticity begins to disappear. They think that th

26、is was the result of the lateralization of the language function of the left hemisphere in the brain. The neurological capacity of understanding and producing language that primaryly involves both hemispheres of the brain, is slowly concentrated in the left hemisphere for many people. The increased

27、difficulty which older learners supposedly experence was seen as a direct result of this neurological change.A second generalization made by Krashen et al. is that older children acquire more faster than younger (agin in arly stages of morphological and synatactic development where time and exposure

28、 are held constant). Representative results are those by (Rosamn Mitchell et, al :1998,145-146). Ektrand studied 2,189 eight-to seventeen-year-olds learning Swedish as a SL over a two-year period. He found a linear improvement with age,and that older children performed better than younger children o

29、n measures of listening comprehension, reading, free writing, pronunciation and speaking. In an analogous ESL study, Fathman studied 200 children aged eight to fifteen, lived in the USA from one to three years, assessing their English morphology, syntax and pronunciation using the SLOPE (a picture-c

30、ued sentence-completion test) and a picture-description task. Eleven-to fifteen-year-olds outperformed six to ten-year-olds on morphology the younger group did better on pronunciation. Similar findings regarding the superiority of older learners on rulegoverned aspects of language are reported by Er

31、vin-Tripp(1974), chun (1978), Snow and Hoefnagel-Hohle (1978), and Harley (19 86). Ann Fathman made a study in 1982 to examine the relationship between certain aspects of the second language acquisition process and age through on oral production test. The subjects for this study were 200 children (a

32、ged 6 to 15) from diverse language backgrounds who were learning English as a second language in public schools. The results indicated that there is some relationship between age and rate learning. The older children performed better in the production of correct morphological and syntactic structure

33、s whereas the younger children were superior in the use of correct English pronunciation.Rate and success of SLA appar to be mainly influenced by the age of the learner. Here rate is concerned, there is evidence to suggest that older learners are better. That is to say, if learners,at different ages

34、, are matched according to the time which they have been exposed to the L2, it is the older learners who reach higher levels of proficiency. This generalization needs to be modified in two important ways. First, as Snow and Hoefnagel-hohle(1978) have shown, the learners who make progress most rapidl

35、y may be adolesents. In their study of Dutch L2 learners, they found that although the adults (15 years and older ) outperformed the children (6 to 10 years), It would appear that although age improves lnguage learning capacity, performance may peak in the teens, after which performance declines. Th

36、e second modification to the generalization concerns the aspect of language that is being investigated. The study by Snow and Hoefnagel-hohle is also relevant here. They found that age was a factor only when it came to morphology and synatax. There were only very small differences on pronunciation t

37、ests. However, even though pronunciation is concerned, the common belief that children are superior was not upheld.1. At first, adults have the superority on the learning rate, especial on the synatax. However, if children make a longer exposure to the L2, they will do better than adult. 2. Starting

38、 age affects the rate of learning. Grammar and vocabulary are concerned, adolescent learners do better than either children or adults, when the length of exposure is held constantly. When pronunciation is concerned, there is no appreciable difference.3. Both number of yeas of exposure and starting a

39、ge affect the level of success. The number of years exposure contribute greatly to the overall communicative fluency of the learners, but starting age determines the levels of accuracy achieved, particulaly in pronunciation.2.2 Social FactorsSocial factors are the main factor in the SLA . The role o

40、f social factors in second language acquisition affects the power and scope of any innate linguistic or cognitive contribution. It becomes necessary to posit in the learner. Social institutions and the regulation of interpersonal and group relations: family, religion, economic-occupation organizatio

41、n, political and judicial systems, education, intellectual-aesthetic and recreational institutions, communseication. Social norms, social stratification. Conflicts and resolution of conflicts.” (Stern: 1983,252) after all, the social factors can be analyzed into different factors, which have being b

42、eared on language learning. Stern (1983:275) ,slightly modifying Spolskys categories social factors as: liguistic, social-economic/political, geographical, economic-technological and educational factors. It is easy to make correlation with language learning with this classification. Certainly not al

43、l the social factors are covered in the thesis. And those mainly dealt with are all the social factors are covered in the thesis. And those mainly dealt with are socio-economic/cultural factors especially concerning family background and learning area, which I would like to define as the effects of

44、social aettings.In the Study of Secind Language Acquisition, Rod Ellis made a conclusion of the greate development in SLA reseach. The first great one is the shift from the traditional linguistic and psychological study to the contact of social sciences with language pedagogy,i.e. the study of the e

45、xternal factors of the language learner. What is the exact role in acquisition these factors, remain controversial issucs. Behaviorisits theories view external factors as of central importance, while mentalist theories lay emphasis on learner internal factors. But there has reached an agreement that

46、 social factors do affect second learning.However, there has been relatively littele research which has investigated the effects of particular social factors on second language proficiency. The IEA study of French states “the students socio-economic status as such is not a relevant consideration in

47、foreign language achievement” (Carroll,1975). While on the other hand, the British study, Primary French in the Balance, (Jo McDonough et al:1977,171) claimed that there is a high correlation between achievement in French and the socio-economic status of parents; “For pupils of both six in each grou

48、p of primary schools, high mean scores on the listening, reading and writing tests coincide with high status parental occupation and low mean scores with low status parental occupation.” (Charles M. Judd,1991,17) also found moderate correlations between the family background of secondary school chil

49、dren in Bristol and both language learning aptitude and foreign language achievement in French and German. Again the middle-class children did better than the lower-class ones.Anyway there is no consensus on the correlation between socio-economic status and second language proficiency. And the results to date suggest that middle-class children achieve high