Five Chinese Undergraduates’ Development Of English Vocabulary And Grammar

DST(Dynamic System Theory)takes language as a complex and dynamic and non-linear development system and the variables in the system interact and change over time.As a complete system,language can enter into the attractor or repller state through self-organization so that the development of the system changes unpredictable and the development of language will show S shape or U shape development trajectories.The development of language from DST perspective mainly focuses on the research of mother language and second language,vocabulary knowledge or syntax.However,there were not so much empirical research of vocabulary and grammar subsystem and the variables in these two subsystems for the learners who take English as second language.In order to explore the use of vocabulary and grammar,this thesis conducted case study of five undergraduates for five semesters from the perspective of DST,hoping to find out the answers to the following questions: 1)What are the individual variation and group tendency of the five undergraduates in their use of words and collocations in their English narratives over the five semesters? 2)What are the individual variation and group tendency of the five undergraduates in their use of grammar in their English narratives over the five semesters? 3)What is the relationship between the development of vocabulary and grammar for those five undergraduates?These Chinese English major undergraduates’ have 6 tests within five semesters.They were required to write a narration in English according to picture.The author selects the compositions of five typical participants,analyzes some aspects of vocabulary and grammar.Lexical complexity and collocations were selected in vocabulary level.Meanwhile,tense and syntax were selected in grammatical level.Through the case qualitative analyzing of the longitudinal corpus of the five undergraduates,we found that: 1)At vocabulary level,the group tendency of lexical complexity at first increases and then decreases.There is no remarkable individual variation of it.YX shows clear individual vibration in the use of adjective-noun collocations,verb-adverb collocations and adjective-adverb collocations.The group tendency of verb-noun collocations and adjective-adverb collocations is upward trend and the group tendency of adjective-noun collocations and verb-adverb collocations is downward trend.The quantity of verb and noun collocation is higher than other collocations and the non-target uses of it are more than others too.2)At grammatical level,YX has clear individual variation in the use of simple present tense.In addition,the individual variation of simple past tense is clearer than simple present tense.The development of simple present tense shows downtrend but the use of simple past tense increases.The quantity of simple past tense in higher than simple present tense and the non-target use of simple past tense is higher than simple present tense which show the slightly decrease.The individual variation of simple and compound sentences is clearer than complex sentences and the individual variation of finite verb ratio is not so remarkable.JJ has clear individual variation in the use of simple and compound sentences and KL has clear individual variation in the use of complex sentences.The development of them is stable.3)In terms of the relationship of vocabulary and grammar,the progress of vocabulary is not always before syntax and tense,and the interaction of the three variables are changeable.The development of variables in vocabulary and grammar shows progress and regress.The five undergraduates have individual variation and not all of them coincide with the group development tendency.Based on the above findings,some suggestions have been raised for the language research from DST perspective.The future research can focus on the participants with different English proficiency and observe the group tendency of their language development trajectories.In addition,future vocabulary and grammar research would better take a wide range of variables into consideration.In order to examine the influence of other elements for language development the range of empirical research from a DST perspective expands to the environment and cognition.