The Correlations Between The EFL Students’ Language Sense And Their Dictation Competence

Language sense is a kind of feeling or intuition. It is the direct reflection of the objective world and language reality in our brain, or it is the user of language—Man who makes a reaction to the objective world and language reality. English language sense is the people’s acute feeling for English, which includes English phonetic feelings, semantic feelings, language emotion feelings and so on. Language sense is individually various, and it develops and changes dynamically. Language sense and its application in language teaching are the topics always paid attentions to by scholars. In the recent 15 years, language sense has been one of the popular topics discussed and studied in the field of Chinese and foreign language teaching. Most studies focus on the cultivation of English language sense, the features of language sense, language sense teaching.Dictation is one of the most important testing methods to assess the students’ language competence. Passage dictation is always the essential testing item in TEM 4. Meanwhile, in other English language proficiency tests like CET 4, CET 6, TEM 8, compound dictation takes a large proportion. Passage dictation tests student’s listening comprehension ability in general. But to be more concrete, it tests students from phonetic knowledge, lexical knowledge, syntax knowledge, logical reasoning and prediction ability, cultural background information, punctuation, handwriting speed, to short memory. Actually, dictation is a process that tests the combination of learners’ receptive skills and productive skills. In every TEM 4, a large amount of students have difficulties in passage dictation and lose scores badly. Dictation is also widely used in foreign language teaching and learning, and the studies about dictation mainly focus on the elements influencing dictation, or strategies for English dictation. Above all, the discussion on the relation between dictation ability and language sense competence is rare.Adopting the empirical approaches, the author conducts the investigation and testing for English major sophomores. This thesis discusses the correlation between dictation achievements and language sense competence on pausing and sense grouping levels. Furthermore, the author puts forward some advice on enhancing the language sense to improve the dictation ability and the English listening teaching. Through this discussion, the author hopes the thesis can provide a new vision and some valuable information for the further language sense and dictation studies.The study designs out one investigation questionnaire and two tests (one is language sense test, and the other is a dictation test). The investigation questionnaire is mainly to collect the basic information of the students. The language sense test is mainly to test students abilities like pausing, sense grouping, sentence stressing. The dictation test is done in the language lab. After the data collection, the author makes an analysis by using the software SPSS to analyze the correlation.Our research shows that the participants’dictation achievements have the significant correlation with their pausing and sense grouping competence in language sense. First, the numbers are very small of students’pausing and sense grouping which are the same with the dictator’s. Second, the students’dictation achievements are highly correlated with their pausing. The more numbers of pausing, the same with the dictator’s, the higher dictation scores will be. And the students’dictation achievements in the higher score group have the greater correlations with their pausing. Third, the students’dictation achievements also are highly correlated with their sense grouping. The more numbers of sense grouping the same with dictator’s, the higher dictation scores will be. And the students’dictation achievements in the higher score group have the greater correlations with their sense grouping. Besides, compared with pausing, the students’dictation achievements have the more obvious correlations with sense grouping. Fourth, among the nine dictation mistake types, mis-spelling, words omission and words changing appear most frequently, and they are closely related with pausing and sense grouping positions different from the dictator’s.The present study of this thesis includes five parts:Chapter one is the introduction. It introduces the background, objectives, significance and structure of this thesis.Chapter two is a literature review. It describes the English language sense and English dictation, which includes the studies on language sense and dictation, the definition of language sense, the features of language sense, the definition of dictation, and factors influencing dictation ability. Based on concluding the studies on English language sense and dictation before, the author finds the rare researches on the relation between language sense and dictation, and then puts forward this study.Chapter three is the research design and implementation. It includes research questions, research subjects, research instruments, the testing on class, and collecting the data.Chapter four is the data collection and analyses, which is a very important and main part of this thesis. First, it describes the comparison of pausing numbers and positions by the dictator and the students. Second, it compares sense grouping numbers and positions by the dictator and the students. Third, it discusses the correlation between the student’dictation achievements and their language sense, which includes the correlation between the students’dictation achievements and their pausing in the higher score students group and the lower score students group respectively, the correlation between the students’dictation achievements and their sense grouping in the higher score students group and the lower score students group respectively. Finally, it is an analysis of the mistakes students made in their dictations.Chapter five is a conclusion of the present study, which consists of major findings, implications for EFL learners and teachers, and also with limitations of this thesis. The thesis aims to make some foundations and provide some valuable information for the further studies on language sense and dictation.