The Cultivation Of Linguistic Sense Of Normal School Students

Nowadays in the world, politics and economy are developing quickly; people among countries are communicating with each other more frequently than ever before. Therefore, they demand for a higher level English, and listening, speaking, reading and writing are attracting more and more attention.In the field of education, quality-oriented education requires to cultivate students with comprehensive qualities, which is popular among people, and has achieved noticeable achievements. But it can not be denied that examination-oriented education remains firmly in China. It attaches great importance to marks and ignores the cultivation of ability; it stresses written English, but does not bring enough attention to the oral English communication.Now universities are enlarging their enrollment, which attracts more and more excellent students to senior middle school. Thus the number of students applying for Normal Schools is decreasing steadily. The reform of employment system can not ensure students any jobs in the future, which aggravates the trend again. The quality of students is getting worse and worse, year by year. They do not show any interest in study and can not adjust themselves to the life of the senior middle school. But these students are not low in intelligence. On the contrary, these students are enthusiastic in school's activities, courageous to discuss with their teachers and classmates, willing to express their own thoughts and easy to accept new ideas. So to teach English with forms and grammar as the center at present times is sure to fail. Then how to develop students'English level is a problem worth thinking and discussing.Since Xia Mianzun brought forth the term"linguistic sense", nearly eighty years have passed. And experts have done deep research in the field during the period. But not until 2001 did the Education Department of China lay the rule to cultivate the English linguistic sense in the Standard of English Course, and affirms the importance of cultivating linguistic sense. But no official documents have ever talked about it on vocational education. The author of this thesis, basing on the real situation of the education of Normal School, has done some research on linguistic sense, hoping to improve students'English level in a proper way of cultivating linguistic sense.The thesis is divided into seven chapters. At its beginning, the author introduces the background of the research, and makes it clear that the students of Normal School can not adjust themselves to the life of senior school and their knowledge is not very good. But all these are not caused by the intelligent factors. In the following six chapters, the author introduces the research in details. The first chapter is about the literature review. It reviews the research done in China first, then the research abroad. It points out that Chinese scholars do their research on Chinese, while western scholars do the research on a broad angle, but no one has ever done any research in vocational schools like Normal Schools. The second chapter talks about the definition and its characteristics. It points out that people can sense the existence of linguistic sense. Experts have defined linguistic sense from the points of psychology, linguistics and aesthetics, etc. but no one can reach a universally-accepted definition. The author, basing on his understanding, defines it: linguistic sense means a kind of ability of a person in apperceiving the utterance and words, a kind of ability of judging and correcting. It can be accumulated and developed in the process of learning and using a language. For the characteristics, this chapter mainly talks about sensitivity, promptness, wholeness, posteriority, universality and otherness among individuals. The third chapter deals with the factors that influence the cultivation of linguistic sense. In this chapter, the author talks about the students'social experiences, the acquired knowledge, the learners'mental skills and the proper learning materials, especially the last factor. He points out that the systematic materials with Natural Order Input and certain difficulty are very important in the cultivation of linguistic sense, and above all, students are willing to read them. The fourth chapter deals with the mental mechanisms on which the linguistic sense is formed. In this chapter the author learns from Xu Yunzhi and furthers the advice how students should do to improve their linguistic sense. The fifth chapter mainly talks about the ways by which students can develop their linguistic sense. In this chapter the author goes further the research on reading aloud, reading extensively, reciting and retelling. And he adheres to the notion that reading aloud is a practice by which the readers actively reprocess the information of the texts and construct it in their mind, that retelling is an oral activity in which students creatively rearrange and reprocess the text after they fully understand the contents and the structures of a text. Then the author talks about the teachers'role in the cultivation of linguistic sense, that is, the teachers should try to avoid the passive influence of the non-intelligent factors on the students. The sixth chapter is the most important part. In this chapter, the author brings forth two hypotheses: (1) The English teachers can improve students'linguistic sense efficiently and effectively by monitoring their reciting and retelling, and then correcting their mistakes naturally by restating the correct sentences. (2) English teachers can improve students'linguistic sense efficiently and effectively by providing students with enough proper materials. At the same time, teachers keep monitoring students'reciting and retelling, and then correct their mistakes naturally by restating the correct sentences Then he does an experiment and proves that his hypotheses are right by comparing the results of the Control Group and the Experimental Group. At the same time, he emphasizes that the proper materials with the help of teachers'monitor and correction brings enough input to students, and work more on the cultivation of linguistic sense. In chapter seven, the author summarizes the experiments and points out the novelty of the research and its limitations.