On Spoken Features In High School English Compositions And The Effect Of Intervening Teaching Based On Van Lier's Language Awareness Principles

On the basis of Leo van Lier' s Language Awareness principles,this thesis aims at exploring spoken features reflected in the English compositions written by the Chinese high school students in the attempt of offering constructive and hands-on suggestions on registers intervening teaching.In this thesis,the spoken or colloquial features are defined as colloquial or conversational characterization in written English language.Although research into spoken features in written language has been conducted,former researchers mainly had a choice of participants at the college level or of advanced learners,and few have taken high school students into consideration;and the study of teaching strategies on registers has rarely been discussed.This thesis focuses on the investigation of colloquial or spoken features displayed in high school students' compositions and examines these features from three dimensions of lexis,syntax and grammar.Strategies or techniques in current English writing classes have been tried to interpret so as to clarify the possible connection between strategies practiced in classrooms and colloquial characterization in English compositions.In order to identify how the spoken features are displayed in the English compositions by the participants and what possible intervening teaching instructions can be practical and effective,the author employed several research instruments,such as classroom observation,questionnaire surveys,pre/post-tests and experiment to address the two issues.Collected data is analyzed by Wen qiufang's research(2003)with Writer/Reader Visibility as a reference,and 24 colloquial overused lexical items in written language identified by Paquot(2010),and grammatical metaphors,i.e.nominalization,lexical density categorized by Halliday(1985).This study was designed to address the following questions: 1.How are colloquial features reflected in Chinese high school students' English compositions on the levels of lexis,syntax and discourse? Why does this tendency exist? 2.How are colloquial features in English compositions related with Chinese students' English learning strategies and pedagogical methods? 3.Should new features emerge in English compositions on the different levels after intervening instructions? If so,what are they? 4.After the intervening teaching,what characteristics will emerge in the spoken discourse produced by the participants with high scores in English compositions? Is there any positive connection between training registers writing competence and the growth of speaking competence?To test the effectiveness of registers intervening teaching,the researcher had a choice of the participants from two classes Grade one in NO.38 Senior High School,Dalian Pulandian District,Liaoning Province.One class(Class 6)was selected as a controlled group and the other(Class 5)was as an experimental group;both groups were received regular teaching workload and homework.Apart from that,the experimental class had undergone a semester-period intervening teaching by the researcher.Pre-tests were distributed in both classes to investigate the extent of knowledge for registers.By the analysis of statistics from SPSS and the results of post-tests the researcher was able to interpret effect of the intervening teaching so as to analyze the teaching situation in the two groups.Questionnaire surveys helped explore whether intervening instructions on registers have a positive effect on students' attitude and whether those students were interested in registers instructions and whether the writing competence have improved.The major findings of this research are briefly concluded as follows:Firstly: There still remains teacher-centered in current English classrooms.Since teachers do not pay as much attention to language awareness nor to instilling of students' awareness on registers as they do to grammatical tenses and memorization of vocabulary and phrases,which students have simply regurgitated in the classrooms,this is the main reason why these students are insensitive to language use and existing colloquial characterization in their compositions.Secondly: Registers teaching instructions can not only enhance students' understanding of language awareness on registers but also enrich their knowledge construction and the development of writing skills as evidenced by the accuracy of word use in their compositions and the growth of students' self-confidence and meanwhile they are more sensitive to language.In the process of intervening teaching,students who possess a strong sense of language awareness were able to make significant progress and they have a tendency to collect written expressions in reading materials,in which they have tried to match them with the corresponding spoken expressions.Thirdly: According to the research results,we can see that English writing lessons on registers are much easier accepted by the students in this high school and registers instructions have improved the efficiency of writing class.