A Study On The Correlation Between Chinese University English Majors' Second Language Metalinguistic Awareness And Discourse Competence

Improving second language learner's linguistic proficiency is always among the goal of second language teaching and learning.Hymes suggested that Chomsky's definition of linguistic competence abandoned the social and cultural feature of language,so communicative competence is suggested to replace the former linguistic proficiency notion.Since the extension,communicative approach was widely applied in second language classes.In language class guided by traditional communicative syllabus,learners are required to complete various communicative tasks without much attention on the correctness of language forms.However,soon linguists found that it was impossible to achieve communicative purpose without necessary lexical and grammatical knowledge.So there was a return of interests in language forms in classes.As two main components of communicative competence,it is significant to take a look at the relation between linguistic and discourse competence.So the thesis is designed to explore the correlation between Chinese University English major's linguistic competence especially metalinguistic awareness and discourse competence.On the basis of past related research,the study is conducted to answer the following three questions:(1)What is the correlation between Chinese English majors' second language metalinguistic awareness and their discourse competence?(2)What factors may affect second language learner's metalinguistic awareness,discourse competence,and the correlation between them?(3)What's the correlation of each sub components of metalinguistic awareness and discourse competence?To answer these questions,the thesis designed metalinguistic awareness and discourse competence tests based on Celce-Murcia Marianne,Dornyei Zoltan and Thurrell Sarah's definition and classification on communicative competence and discourse competence,as well as the construction of metalinguistic knowledge test by Rod Ellis and Catherine Elder.The data collected is processed to SPSS 16.0,and report of the result is described and analyzed in the thesis.By drawing Scatter Spot graph and doing a K-S test,the data collected proved to be suitable for Pearson Correlation Coefficient test.There are three major findings:(1)there is a positive moderate between subjects' metalinguistic awareness and discourse competence(0.4 <r <0.7).(2)Although there are a higher mean values in the third grade test results,but the difference between two tested groups are not significant,which may be the result of small gap of subjects' grade and a low discrimination of the test.In some way it proves that learning time is not a significant factor that affects the correlation.(3)There are moderate correlation and subtle differences between each sub components of second language metalinguistic awareness and discourse competence.Among all sub components of discourse competence,coherence has the highest correlation to metalinguistic awareness and language analysis ability has the lowest correlation to discourse competence.The thesis is significant in exploring what roles do language forms play in language teaching and learning.And also,the thesis is significant in providing a new method for evaluating second language learner's discourse competence.Besides,some suggestions on improving second language learner's metalinguistic awareness and discourse competence and also how to balance each competence in language teaching process is given the thesis based on the data collected and result analyzed.