A Study Of Chinese ESL Learners' Request Fossilization

Fossilization is one of the common phenomena in second language acquisition, and it becomes a barrier on the way to second language improvement and makes it impossible for language learners to move towards the target language. As a result, many scholars in the field of applied linguistics pay more and more attention on this phenomenon. So far, scholars from domestic and abroad have manifested the common existence of fossilization from the perspective of phoneme, vocabulary and grammar; however, as part of linguistic competence, pragmatic fossilization gradually becomes the focus."Interlanguage"is the language acquired by second language learners in the process of second language acquisition. It is a transitional state between the source language and the target language. The study of interlangauge from pragmatic perspective is called interlanguage pragmatics, which is a continuum in the process of learners'pragmatic competence acquisition of second language, and after some development for a period of time, it will stop moving on, which becomes the interlanguage pragmatic fossilization. Scholars from domestic and abroad have made some researches on the fossilization phenomenon, but few analyses on the specific pragmatic competence fossilization.This paper begins with the request speech act, and follows the DCT method to make researches on the use of request speech act of the three groups—altogether one hundred students and analyze the cause of request fossilization. It bases on the classification of request strategy made from Takahashi (1996), and by analyzing the rate of using different request strategies, the author tries to find out whether there is apparent distinction among different groups and if the fossilization occurs in request. Meanwhile, twenty native English speakers also finish the same questionnaire and offer a standard for this research.According to the statistics, there is little difference among the two Chinese groups of learners in terms of the rate of using request strategies, but great gap exists on the pragmatic competence between second language learners and native speakers. Such result suggests that when learners have reached certain level the language learners'pragmatic competence will not improve with the development of linguistic knowledge and the phenomenon of fossilization occurs. Furthermore, this paper also analyzes the types of pragmatic failure on the basis of classic pragmatic error, and summarizes the causes of fossilization among Chinese English learners.