A Study On L2 Oral Fluency Development Of English Majors From The Perspective Of Dynamic System Theory

Previous research on second language acquisition has mainly focused on static description of language system,with emphasis on the research of learning results and too little attention paid to the research of learning process.In recent years,Dynamic System Theory has provided a new perspective in the study of second language acquisition.As a result,more researchers have begun to focus on the dynamic development of language.From the perspective of Dynamic System Theory,this research regards the development of oral performance as a complex system.The purpose of this research is to find out oral development tendency of English majors by observing the development track of oral fluency.Specifically,this research proposes the following four questions:(1)What are the development features of speed fluency for English majors from Grade 1 to Grade 3?(2)What are the development features of breakdown fluency for English majors from Grade 1 to Grade 3?(3)What are the development features of repair fluency for English majors from Grade 1 to Grade 3?(4)Which index of oral fluency can predict the overall oral performance of speakers effectively?In order to solve the above research problems,the author chose 36 English major students from three grades in a university in Jiangxi Province as the research participants.With cross-sectional design,the author selected one class from each grade to take the oral test in the language laboratory.After the test,the author randomly selected 36(12×3)oral production samples from Grade 1 to Grade 3 for further analysis.With the help of audio software Cool Edit Pro,the author conducted quantitative analysis of oral production from three dimensions with seven indices:speed fluency(Speech Rate,Mean Length of Runs,Mean Length of Pauses),breakdown fluency(Pause Rate)and repair fluency(Repetition Rate,Self-repair Rate,False start Rate).Descriptive statistics,One-Way ANOVA and multiple linear regression were adopted to analyze the data.Finally,this thesis has the following main findings:(1)Among the three indices in the speed fluency,Speech Rate and Mean Length of Runs show significant improvement from Grade 1 to Grade 3(P =.045 and.021respectively).The Mean Length of Pauses(P =.994)does not show any significant improvement.(2)As to the breakdown fluency,no significant difference is found across the three grade(P =.127).(3)Among the three indices in the repair fluency,with the increase of grade,Repetition Rate shows continuous decrease(P =.031),while Self-repair Rate shows continuous increase(P =.032).The False start Rate(P =.812)does not show any significant improvement.(4)Among all the seven indices,Mean Length of Runs,Self-repair Rate and Repetition Rate have high predictive power to the overall oral performance.These three indices can predict 36.9% of the Standard Deviation of overall oral performance.And the standardized regression coefficients of the three variables are.292,.381 and-.298 respectively.The results above show that oral fluency development is a dynamic process.Though oral fluency generally shows the track of progress,it also shows the track of regression in some aspect such as Self-repair Rate.Meanwhile,the development of oral fluency is also affected by many factors,such as the storage of vocabulary(especially chunks),grammar and scopes of controllable topics.Based on the findings,the following suggestions can be put forward for future teaching:(1)Teachers should train students to reduce pause time consciously;(2)Teachers should encourage students to speak with less repetition and self-repair;(3)Since oral fluency shows little development from Grade 2 to Grade 3,teachers need to provide more opportunities for students to practice oral English in Grade 3;(4)In order to improve oral performance in the test,teachers need to encourage students to speak longer length of runs and pay attention to the balanced development of fluency and accuracy.