英语学习者口语复述与独白中的句法复杂性对比研究EFL Learners’ Syntactic Complexity in Oral Retelling and Monologues文献综述

 2023-04-20 01:04

文献综述

1. Introduction1.1Research backgroundTraditional EFL learners and teachers tend to ignore the cultivation and improvement of English oral proficiency. However, motivated by social requirements and talent reform implementations, English oral proficiency is of more importance in SLA.Generally, complexity, accuracy and fluency are considered as the the most effective way to evaluate language proficiency (Skehan, 2003). According to the previous literature related to complexity(Brown,1995; Xu, 2005; Xu s finding. While later, study results differ again. Xu Li, 2015) but seldom explore how these indexes vary in different types of tasks.Considering the above limitations of previous studies, the purpose of this study is to compare the specific syntactic complexity measures of EFL performance between EFL learners retelling and monologue tasks. To be more specific, this study aims to explore whether there is a difference between the tasks in terms of both T-unit length and clausal density. 1.1 Need for the studyThe significance of the present thesis lies in that it will be theoretically and practically positive in the field of language development relating to the study of SLA. On the one hand, from the theoretical perspective, the implementation of this research will enrich previous studies relating to oral performance. From the practical perspective, on the other hand, this research will be useful for L2 teaching and learning in the aspect of oral performance. Since if the teachers only emphasize oral fluency and do not pay attention to the sophistication of structural types, the students cannot make evident progress and their L2 abilities may linger at the low proficiency level (Wen, 2008), which will cause great losses of intellectual resources. Whats more, in most cases, teachers pay more attention to students of intermediate and low-proficiency, high-proficiency learners are thus found to be in a state of undernourishment or starvation, which results in their potential being buried (Wen, 2006). Realizing this current situation of the cultivation of English majors, the present thesis attempts to explore the syntactic complexity features displayed by learners of different oral ability in 2 task types, which will contribute to the cultivation of high-level English majors and to the improvement of the current oral English teaching in China.1.2Research purposesThe purpose of this study is to compare the specific syntactic complexity measures of EFL performance between EFL learners retelling and monologue tasks. To be more specific, this study aims to explore whether there is a differecne bewteen the tasks in terms of both T-unit length and clausal density. 2. Literature review2.1 Measurement of Syntactic ComplexityComprehensively，there are two ways to measure syntactic complexity. The first one is Unit for Analysis of Speech which is short for AS-Unit. It is 'a single speakers utterance consisting of an independent clause or subclausal unit, together with any subordinate clause (s) associated with it' (Foster et al. , 2000). The second one, which is also be widely applied is T- Unit. It refers to a main clause plus any subordinate clauses that may be attached to it. As defined by Kellogg W. Hunt (1964), the T-unit, or minimal terminable unit of language, was intended to measure the smallest word group that could be considered a grammatical sentence, regardless of how it was punctuated. In this study, the second one will be applied.Syntactic complexity can be measured by unit length and clausal density. These two aspects have their own measurement methods. The unit length refers to the measurement T unit length and clause length. An increase in the length of the T unit is an indication of the increase in dependent sentences, nominalized phrases, participles, etc. It is more revealing of the breadth of syntactic complexity. Clause density whose measures include the T-unit complexity ratio and the subordinate clause ratio. The increase in clause density indicates an increase in the content of subordinate clauses per unit length or an increase in the number of words used. It reflects the depth or subordination of syntactic complexity (Bao, 2009).2.2 Emperical Studies of Syntactic Complexity in Oral Production According to the previous literature, both retelling and monologue tasks should bebeneficial to the cultivation of oral proficiency, and usually the monologue tasks are more effective on increasing oral proficiency (Li amp; Sui, 2020). Since syntactic complexity reflects the extent to which EFL learners apply the second language, it is worthwhile to investigate comparatively which task contributes more to syntactic complexity. In an experiment conducted by Zhang (2012), 145 students were divided into an experimental group and a control group. The students in the experimental group were asked to retell a story. In contrast, students in the control group were required to to tell a story with a similar theme. This experiment mainly measured syntactic complexity in two dimensions, including C- unit length and subordinate clauses within a unit. The results showed that there was no significant difference in the syntactic complexity between the two groups of subjects. Obviously, the result of this experiment were quite different from the expected outcome. What accounts for this result is that Zhangs oral test is very abrupt and the subjects tend to use simple structure to avoid mistakes. This phenomenon is closely related to interaction among complexity, fluency, and accuracy. Although under different tasks, the development of lexical complexity and the development of syntactic complexity always seems to be in a state of competition (Wang, 2015), which is consistent with previous conclusion put forward by Skehan (1998). That is SLA learners are of limited focusing resources, which leads to competition for limited attention resources among fluency, accuracy, and complexity of oral language output. If attention is allocated to one aspect of oral language output, other aspects will be negatively affected, and this competition exists especially between the accuracy and complexity.In contrast, the previous experiment is conducted for six months. That is, in the long run, the monologue task is more beneficial for students to output sentences of higher complexity. Additionally, most studies on the syntactic complexity of English oral proficiency usually set the task types as the variables of the experiment and all the subjects are considered as a whole group. Huang Qiang (2009) concluded that unconceivable task which involves the least cognitive load and the least difficult task types can improve syntactic complexity more than conceivable task types. It is worth mentioning that her division of task types is not limited to concrete task types, but abstracts them into conceived tasks and unconceptualized tasks, so that the subsequent analysis of syntactic complexity can be extended to recognition field. While her findings seem to be different from Jackson 以任务后语言形式聚焦为情境，《外语与外语教学》，06：42-48。

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