On the causes and teaching strategies of language rigidity among college students

Paper Keywords: Teaching Strategies for the Causes of Rigidity in Foreign Language Learning

Paper Abstract Rigidity is a psycholinguistic phenomenon in the process of foreign language learning. It often causes foreign language learners to lose a certain listening ability. Stagnation after speaking of literacy. This article analyzes the causes of college students’ language rigidity and the corresponding teaching strategies from the perspective of internal factors (learners’ motivation, learning strategies, emotional factors) and external factors (social environment, teaching environment).

1 Introduction

In the process of second language acquisition, the language system used by learners between the mother tongue and the target language is called an intermediary Language (interlanguage, IL). Nemser calls this type of language an approximate system, meaning that learners can only get closer and closer to their native language, but never reach native level. Similarly, today's situation is that although college students have started learning English from junior high school or even elementary school, no matter how long it takes and no matter how hard they try, they still cannot reach the level of native speakers of the language. Why is this happening? This is because when they learn English, the interlanguage will undergo such a process: when the learner's target language level improves, those erroneous language forms (phonetics, vocabulary, grammar, etc.) that often occur during the learning process will still appear. appear frequently, that is, remain permanently in their interlanguage, as a way for learners to understand or produce language. This stubborn error frozen in interlanguage is language fossilization (fossilization).

The phenomenon of language rigidity is a common phenomenon in the process of second language acquisition, and to a large extent it restricts the improvement of second language learners. Therefore, it is of great significance to explore the causes of language rigidity and teaching strategies to break this deadlock and improve learners' proficiency in the target language.

2. Causes of language inflexibility among college students

Through researchers’ direct or indirect research on inflexibility from various levels and angles, a series of factors have been identified as leading to learner intermediation. The reason for the rigidity of language. These factors can be divided into two categories: internal factors and external factors. Internal factors can be further divided into cognitive factors, neurophysiological factors, social emotional factors, etc. The author's analysis related to college students is classified as follows:

2.1 Internal factors (internal factors)

2.1.1 Learner motivation (motivation)

Learning Students' learning motivation can be divided into comprehensive motivation and instrumental motivation. Comprehensive motivation means that the purpose of learning is mainly to interact with speakers of the language, or to be interested in the national culture, history, etc. of the language; instrumental motivation means that the purpose of learning is for a certain practical effect. Generally speaking, learners with comprehensive motivation will not have their learning motivation affected by changes in the environment, and their intensity and persistence exceed that of instrumental motivation. For example, the main purpose of learning English for most college students in our country is not to enter an English-speaking country, but to pass an exam, obtain a certain position to change their social status and qualifications, or read scientific literature. So once they achieve their goal, their instrumental motivation will disappear and English learning will stagnate.

2.1.2 Learners’ learning strategies

Learning strategies refer to the learning methods, management methods and various activities using language used in the learning process. This includes cognitive strategies, metacognitive strategies, social strategies, etc. When learning strategies are used successfully, they can promote foreign language learning; on the contrary, they can lead to rigidity. This is the most common phenomenon of rigidity in the learning process. For example, in the learning process, most students place too much emphasis on memorizing learning methods, especially rote memorization of the meanings of foreign language words. It seems that learning English is just about learning the meaning of new words. As for how to use words to communicate in the target language, they do not fully understand them. Pay attention to.

The result is often that students cannot remember the newly learned knowledge when using language, and they still use the limited and simple language forms they used in high school or even junior high school, which leads to rigidity over time.

2.1.3 Emotional factors

The factors that can lead to language rigidity mainly include interest factors and willpower factors. Learners' interest in learning is an important prerequisite for foreign language learning. A strong interest in learning can enable learners to maintain strong curiosity and thirst for knowledge during the learning process, so that they can learn proactively. At present, all students from kindergarten to doctoral students in our country learn English. This nationwide craze for learning English seems to be a manifestation of Chinese people's love for learning English, but is this actually the case? Dong Yanping's (2003) investigation found that as the English class front lengthens, students' interest in learning gradually decreases. 1,200 key teachers who responded to the survey claimed that the number of students who like English classes dropped from 88 in the first grade to 75 in the sixth grade. This means that at least a quarter of our children no longer like English classes after learning English in primary school. College students may be less interested after studying in junior high school and high school. In addition, our country has a vast territory, and the level of English education varies from place to place. Students' deficiencies in English application ability are exposed. Faced with the basic use of English in college English teaching, they find that they can neither understand nor speak, and they suddenly lose their ability to learn. interest and confidence. Can’t understand? Can’t learn well? Don’t like it? Can’t even learn well. This forms a vicious circle and rigidity arises from this.

2.2 External factors

External factors mainly refer to environmental factors, emphasizing the impact of social and cultural differences and the psychological distance caused by them on learners' learning psychology.

2.2.1 Social environment (social environment)

China’s emphasis on English teaching over the years has indeed achieved certain results, but English is not a second foreign language for us. But a foreign language. There is no language community in mainland my country that uses English as the main communication tool. The English learning of school students is basically carried out in school according to the teaching plan. It is either a major or a course.

2.2.2 Teaching environment (teaching environment)

Regarding the relationship between teaching and rigidity, it is generally believed that teaching plays a positive role in accelerating the learning process and preventing rigidity. However, teaching may also have limitations. If used improperly, it will have a negative effect and promote the formation of rigidity. The teaching environment mainly includes classroom input, pedagogic strategies and opportunities for practice.

1). Classroom input

Input refers to the target language materials that foreign language learners are exposed to. Acquisition occurs when learners have the opportunity to receive target language input. It can also be said that there is no acquisition without input. In terms of form, input can be oral or written; in terms of the way it occurs, input can occur in a two-way communicative environment or in a one-way non-communicative environment; in terms of nature, The input can be positive corpus or negative corpus.

Teacher’s words are particularly important in the classroom. In many European and American countries, English teachers must be native speakers of the target language. However, most English teachers in China are native speakers of Chinese and lack any experience in studying, living and working in English-speaking countries, so they are also second language speakers. Learners, the form of discourse in the classroom is interlanguage. If measures are not taken to make their utterances closer to the target language form, then students' second language learning will be negative, such as the use of Chinglish. The teacher's rigid language use is one of the reasons for the rigidity of students' interlanguage.

In addition, the use of unauthentic language in the preparation of teaching materials is also a factor causing the rigidity of English. The English intensive reading tutorials used by many universities, especially the listening and speaking tutorials, were published at least 5 years ago, or even 10 years ago, and there is a certain distance between them and actual communication. Therefore, the use of language will be rigid and rigid.

2). Teaching methods (pedagogic strategies)

In classroom teaching, the student-centered concept has already been deeply ingrained in teachers’ concepts, but in the specific operation process, it is easy to Falling into the misunderstanding of crowd-pleaser. The number of students in a college English class ranges from dozens to hundreds. It is difficult for teachers to follow the classroom teaching rules of dialogue theory and cannot carry out cooperative and functional exercises. They can only use indoctrination teaching, which makes students lose the ability to learn language. interest, leading to the phenomenon of interlanguage fossilization.

　3). Opportunity for practice

Students’ use of English for communicative purposes in the classroom is very limited, so the teaching environment is not sufficient to meet students’ communicative needs. When learners are often under communicative pressure outside class, that is, when their foreign language abilities cannot meet the needs of communicative tasks, rigidity will also result. In actual communication environments, most learners focus on the meaning expression of language, but often have no time to consider the correct expression form of language. If the learners' expression errors are not noticed and corrected for a long time, they will remain permanently in their interlanguage, resulting in rigidity.

3 Teaching Strategies

The above processes involving language rigidity involve social factors, emotional factors, quantity and quality of language input, etc. The understanding and analysis of these factors have certain enlightening significance for foreign language teaching.

3.1 Help students develop the correct motivation for learning and enhance their interest in learning English

Learning a language is a long marathon, and teachers have the responsibility to provide students with psychological and spiritual support and inspiration. Students are exposed to and use English through a variety of channels, so that students' motivation to learn English is not limited to coping with exams, but also gradually develops a desire for the target language culture. At the same time, when designing teaching tasks, teachers should comprehensively consider the difficulty, interest, challenge of the task, and the learner's ability to learn and judge independently to ensure that students can complete the task while maintaining a certain level of confidence in it. Be interested and avoid ending in an anticlimax.

In addition, teachers should also help students build up their self-confidence in learning English, establish short-term learning goals, formulate step-by-step learning plans, and encourage and praise students' progress in a timely manner to enhance their courage and courage to continue learning. Confidence, constantly improve the requirements for yourself, and achieve it through unremitting efforts.

3.2 Improve teaching strategies and create the best environment for learning English listening and speaking

The lack of language environment is the biggest learning difficulty faced by English learners in our country. In terms of teaching, teachers often give up trying to interact with students because of their passivity, and students sometimes become passive because they are not interested in the topic. Therefore, teachers should pay attention to how to mobilize students' enthusiasm and attract students' attention, and should work with them. Students work together to create a good environment and integrate English learning into daily life. For example, classroom teaching is interspersed with English humor, current affairs news, cultural background knowledge, etc.; after class, teacher-guided English corners, English debates, English song singing competitions, English movie appreciation, etc. can be organized. In addition, multimedia-assisted teaching is a good way and is very popular among students in teaching practice. Using multimedia, teachers can learn a large number of rich and authentic language materials, and expose students to as many original language materials as possible.

3.3 Pay attention to language input and strengthen teacher training

Language input is the link most closely related to foreign language teachers. Make sure that the information students receive is closest to the target language. For example, textbooks should be updated to new versions in a timely manner to keep up with the times.

English listening materials should be selected from English-speaking countries such as VOA and BBC as much as possible, and try to avoid collecting corpus from other non-native radio or television stations. Grasp the difficulty of language input. Only when the input level is slightly higher than the learner's current level and can be converted into comprehensible input, otherwise it can lead to rigidity. When learners reach a certain level of language proficiency, the quality of target language input should be appropriately improved, that is, its interest, diversity and difficulty. This can prevent and prevent learners from repeatedly using previously learned expressions and grammatical structures.

Since English teachers themselves are second language learners, theoretically speaking, the English used in English classroom teaching is also an interlanguage. Therefore, teachers themselves should use classroom language carefully to avoid pragmatic errors and make it closer to the target language. Improve the teaching level of teachers and try to avoid the rigidity of interlanguage from the source. In addition, teachers should understand students' language proficiency levels and design exercises and tasks that are appropriate for students' levels and challenging to their abilities.

4 Conclusion

Rigidity is a common phenomenon in foreign language learning and is the result of the interaction of various factors. This article first briefly introduces the phenomenon of interlanguage fossilization, analyzes the reasons for its formation, and finds corresponding teaching strategies, so as to achieve the ultimate goal of studying fossilization: to maximize the role of learners, improve the quality of language, and accelerate learning. process.

References

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