A Corpus-based Study On Students' Spoken Discourse Form CET-SET

This thesis aims to explore the problems existing in Chinese college students'spoken English. The data is a part of the corpus - College Learner Spoken English Corpus (COLSEC). The theoretical premise of the study is the typical micro-linguistic and macro-linguistic features of spoken language found by linguists. In order to be feasible to the further research, the micro-linguistic features are generalized into grammar, lexis, lexicogrammar and categories of discourse markers in this study; macro-linguistic features are generalized into functions and patterns of spoken language. Based on lexis, lexicogrammar and categories of discourse markers, three questions are raised:1. Can students be aware of avoiding the repetition of the same word in conversation?2. Are students aware of the differences between spoken and written language in terms of the use of lexico-grammatical construction?3. Are students skillful to use the linguistic features unique to spoken discourse, such as spoken discourse markers?The results of the study prove that the three problems do exist in Chinese college students'spoken English. First, they tend to repeat one word to express the same meaning as I expect; unexpectedly, some words preferred by native speakers in written language have high frequency in COLSEC and to some extent this indicates that students are unaware of the lexical distinctions between written and spoken language. Second, they are unaware of the lexico-grammatical differences between spoken and written discourse. Last, they are not skillful to use spoken discourse markers.It is hoped that the significance of the discoveries can call much attention to the teaching and learning of spoken English. Three suggestions are proposed in regard to teaching and learning: new materials concerning spoken language need to be introduced in oral classes; communicative teaching method should be adopted in the classroom; corpus accompanied by its corresponding computer program should be encouraged in the universities because self-built learners'corpus by teachers can give them teaching feedback and English transcripts in corpus can offer students an access to real conversations and self-study.