A Study On Chinglish From The Perspective Of Compensation Hypothesis And Its Implications To Foreign Language Teaching

The present study aims to examine Chinglish from the contextual perspective in light of the Compensation Hypothesis (Wang Chuming, 2003) and its implications to foreign language teaching. According to the Compensation Hypothesis, lack of authentic L2 context compatible with L2 incurs a mismatch of L2 forms with L1 knowledge, thus giving rise to L1 transfer. That is, L1 contextual knowledge mediates transfer from L1 to L2. Chinglish, which largely stems from L1 transfer, can be attributed to the function of L1 Chinese contextual knowledge. However, till now only few attempts have been made to study Chinglish from contextual perspective and to study its implications to foreign language classes.Due to the unsystematic and unsteady nature of Chinglish, people do not always resonate a clear and unanimous voice on what Chinglish is and hereby present diverse and incomplete definitions from different angles in light with their own understanding. Though there're different opinions on what Chinglish is, we can still get the general idea that Chinglish, which largely stems from L1 Chinese transfer, has been under an increasingly heated debate in recent years. However, most studies focused on the historical development and status of Chinese English in the past years, only few studies focused on the intrinsic mechanism of Chinglish. Professor Wang Chuming from Guangdong University of Foreign Studies proposed the Compensation Hypothesis in 2003. According to Wang, fluent, accurate and appropriate use of a language presupposed that linguistic and contextual knowledge is properly welded. The FL learning setting is characterized by a lack of authentic context, compatible with L2 use. By way of compensating for this lack, L1 contextual knowledge comes in, activating those L1 forms that go with it and incurring L1 transfer. The compensatory process doesn't simply entail replacing a L2 form with a L1 form.Rather the superficial replacement is mediated and effected by learners'L1 contextual knowledge. So Wang claimed that Chinese learners'internal contextual knowledge played a significant role in inducing Chinglish according to his Compensation Hypothesis. The Hypothesis has attracted attention from scholars in the field of SLA.The present study aims to find out whether Chinglish comes from the mismatch between Chinese context and English forms or not, and then to prove the correctness of Compensation Hypothesis. Thus, a qualitative study was carried out. Forty second-year English major students took a writing test and their data were analyzed. There're mainly two stages. In the first step, participants were asked to write a composition titled Jobs for Graduates, and then the Chinglish in the compositions were underlined by one foreign English teacher and four Chinese researchers. In step two, participants were interviewed to check whether they have realized what they are using are Chinglish or not. The study shows Chinglish arises mainly because English forms lack the corresponding context, then the Chinese context comes in, so this is an empirical support to Compensation Hypothesis.We can get lots of insights from the Compensation Hypothesis in our English study. For example, EFL learners should be provided with rich and contextually appropriate L2 input in foreign language learning. Compensation of L1 contextual knowledge is by no means a good phenomenon in learning a foreign language, but it cannot be completely eliminated in a L1-dominant environment. What we can do is to provide as much L2 contextual knowledge as possible in the learning process, so that L2 linguistic forms can be properly contextualized from the beginning. Meanwhile, for those L2 forms which have already matched with contextual knowledge of their L1 equivalents, we can increase L2 input so that learners will have more opportunities to learn the L2 in different contexts, and hence promote the integration of L2 contextual knowledge with L2 forms. So this study also talked about the applications of contextual knowledge in English study especially in foreign language classes.