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硕士英语毕业论文范文篇一
Chapter OneINTRODUCTION
1.1 Background of the Study
In the English academic field, as teachers are the important organizers and guiderswhose efforts cast great influences on the students’ acquisition of the specificknowledge, a great number of researches have centered their focus on teachers. Sincethe college learning environment is much freer for the students, English teachers’guiding function appears to be of great value in assisting students’ English learning.According to College English Curriculum Requirements (Requirements hereafter), itsuggests that “a system of faculty development should be established.” Requirementsalso emphasize the importance of faculty’s development by stating that teachers’ qualityis a vital element to the advancement of the whole educational quality, and to thedevelopment of the college English program, colleges should lay emphasis on thetraining and development of college English teachers (2007, p 38).Accordingly, reflective teaching, as an effective approach for teachers’professional development, has met the Requirement’s demand and consequentlyreceived many researchers’ exploration. In the initial researches on reflective teaching,scholars such as Dewey (1933), Schon (1983) from abroad and Xiong Chuanwu (1999)at home have taken theoretical level of reflective teaching as their focus. As time goesby, empirical studies became the mainstream. A considerable number of scholars haveconducted a sequence of studies on reflective teaching and teachers’ development (Duff,2011; Farrell, 2007; Gao & Wang, 2003; Li & Xu, 2012; Ren, 2006; Schon, 1987;Wallace, 1991). Even though many scholars prefer the validity of quantitative studies,qualitative researches have gained others’ credit with its distinguished merits. AsFreeman and Richards (1996) points out that some qualitative methods are believed tobe suitable for investigating teachers’ ways of learning and their working conditions.These qualitative approaches contain action research, case studies, life stories, andethnographies and so on.
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1.2 Purpose and Research Questions of the Study
The initial purpose of the present research is to give a more vivid description of thecontents of four college English teachers’ reflection through which the positiverelationship between reflective teaching and teachers’ development is capable oftestifying. Considering the advantages of qualitative research methodologies inexploring teachers’ development, case study is adopted in the present research. Firstly, ittries to get an overview about the main contents of college English teachers’ reflectiveteaching based on the reflective diaries written by the target teachers. And then itanalyzes and summarizes the features of their reflection to give a more detailedpresentation of their actual reflective teaching. In the next phase, it intends to explorethe teachers’ real attitude and feelings towards their reflective situations in presentcollege English teaching environment; both supporting factors and restrictive factors aretaken into consideration. Upon the knowing of teachers’ attitude, it finally manages tosee how reflective teaching promotes the four teachers’ professional development.
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Chapter TwoLITERATURE REVIEW
A systematic literature review helps the researcher uncover the existingachievements and research gaps in a specific domain, provides a solid theoreticalfoundation for the proposed study, and justifies an appropriate research methodologyfor use (Levy & Ellis, 2006, p. 183). In chapter two, formed by four parts, a primaryreview of relevant literature is done with the aim of probing into relevant empiricalresearches and theories concerning the present research. The first part manages to give athorough description of reflective teaching, which contains theoretical bases ofreflective teaching and some related fundamental concepts about reflective teaching. Inthe second part teachers’ professional development was illustrated, including thedefinition of teachers’ professional development and the relationship between reflectiveteaching and teachers’ development. The third section revolves around some previousstudies concerning about reflective teaching and teachers’ professional development.Finally, a summary of the previous three parts is presented in the fourth part.
2.1 Reflective Teaching
To carry on an intensive research concerning about reflective teaching, we shouldget an overall view of its theoretical basis and fundamental concepts. Theoreticalknowledge is the foundation for the further research.Meta-cognition is defined as “cognition about cognition”, or “thinking aboutthinking”. The American developmental psychologist John Flavell first came up withthis term in the 1970s. His definition is the knowledge about cognition and control ofcognition. Different fields define meta-cognition from different perspectives. Itvariously refers to the study of memory-monitoring and self-regulation, meta-reasoning,consciousness/awareness and auto-consciousness/self-awareness. In practice thesecapacities are used to regulate one’s own cognition, to maximize one’s potential to think,to learn and to evaluate the proper ethical/moral values. According to Flavell’sunderstanding, meta-cognition is composed of three parts: meta-cognitive knowledge,meta-cognitive experience and meta-cognitive regulation. So in this way it is believedthat teachers’ teaching meta-cognition consisted of teachers’ self-awareness,self-evaluation and self-regulation of their teaching practices. Teachers’ self-regulationis the main part of their meta-cognition ability, including teachers’ pre-planning of theirteaching activities, self-monitoring of their face-to-face teaching and self-adjustmentand self-control over their teaching practices. In this way meta-cognition hasconstructed the psychological foundation of teachers’ reflective teaching.
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2.2 Teachers’ Professional Development
According to Requirements, faculty’s professional development should besystematically formed. It is quite obvious that teachers’ quality is crucial to theenhancement of the teaching quality, and to the development of the College Englishprogram (2007, p. 38). Teachers’ professional development is a long-term process justas Wallace illustrates that “any occupation aspiring to the title of profession will claimat least some of these qualities: a basis of scientific knowledge; a period of rigorousstudy which is formally assessed; a sense of public service; high standards ofprofessional conduct; and the ability to perform some specified demanding and sociallyuseful tasks in a demonstrably competent manner” (1991, p. 5).As for English teachers’ professional development, many researches have provedthe importance and necessity of teachers’ long-term development. From teachingtraining to teacher education and then till the emergence of teacher development, thelast one which consists of higher requirements has gained most researchers’identification, this evolution process reflects the emphasis on the significant role ofteachers themselves. Wallace (1991) hold the view that the distinction between “teachertraining or education” and “teacher development” is that training or education could begained from others; whereas development can only be completed by and for oneself. Itmeans that training and education are essential for teachers; however, the mostimportant thing is to internalize and reflect on all the information, knowledge, skills andtechniques they received from training or education. From this perspective, teachers’professional development has an intimate relationship with reflective teaching.
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Chapter Three METHODOLOGY .........21
3.1 Participants........21
3.2 Instruments........22
3.3 Data Collection .......24
3.4 Data Analysis ....25
Chapter Four RESULTS AND DISCUSSION ....27
4.1 The Main Contents of the Four Teachers’Reflection .........27
4.2 The Main Features of the Teachers’Reflection ......33
4.3 How Does Reflective Teaching Facilitate College English......43
Chapter Five CONCLUSION....49
5.1 Summary of the Study ........49
5.2 Pedagogical Implications ....50
5.3 Limitations of This Study .........51
5.4 Recommendations for the Future Research ......52
Chapter FourRESULTS AND DISCUSSION
4.1 The Main Contents of the Four Teachers’Reflection
In this part the researcher attempts to answer the first research question from boththe teachers’ diaries and the interviews and classroom observation. In the light of theanalysis of the data, a summary table is presented at the end of this chapter to give aclear and direct view of the teachers’ reflection contents.The researcher gets the strong feeling by reading and looking through the fourteachers’ diaries that, the target teachers have maintained serious attitude toward thistask. Meanwhile, teachers’ thoughts about preparing lessons and a microcosm of theteachers’ teaching scene are clearly conveyed to the researcher via the journals. Themain pattern of their diaries, “teaching procedures---practice---problems---reflection”,has been summed up during the time when careful analysis proceeded. However, as aresult of different teachers’ specific reflection focus, this main pattern has been alteredinto distinct branches that embody the four teachers’ reflection features. In this part theresearcher mainly displays the variety of their reflection contents appeared in theteachers’ diaries. Moreover, one of the most important information revealed from theirwriting is the hidden emotions of the target teachers’ inner world, which is quite hard tocapture when the researcher using other research methods.
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CONCLUSION
The final chapter of the thesis provides a synthesis of this research. It will bepided into four parts. The first part summarizes the major findings got from all thequalitative data that we collected. The second one is the illustration of somepedagogical implications with the academic contributions to the current researchliterature. Then, existing limitations pertaining to this research is illustrated in the thirdsection. Finally the conclusion chapter ends up with some recommendations for futurestudies.Taking college English teachers as the target objects, the present qualitativeresearch intends to make an investigation of teachers’ reflective teaching andprofessional development. We adopt the qualitative research method in hoping to enrichthe research realm of teachers’ development. And with the overall analysis of the datacollected from reflective diaries, classroom observation, face to face interviews and lifehistory records, it is much easier for the researcher to discover some significant findingsabout college English teachers’ reflective teaching and teachers’ development, whichare listed as follows:The contents of the four teachers’ reflection is various and persified. It seemsthat it has covered all the detailed things existing in their classes like students’involvement and performance, teacher’s performance, the whole teaching flowand their own teaching steps and so on. Some contents which are distinguishedfrom other teachers are due to different teachers’ educational background,teaching age and title.
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References (omitted)
硕士英语毕业论文范文篇二
Introduction
1. Research Background
Listening, speaking, reading and writing are common abilities which Englishlearners are supposed to master, among which writing reflects students’comprehensive level. Students are not only required to master abundant vocabularyand accurate grammar, but also supposed to use each written expression flexibly.Therefore, writing is considered as the most difficult to master. The importance ofwriting exists in many aspects ranging from teaching to examinations and job hunting.Hence, how to improve students’ writing level becomes the issues which manyresearchers take interest in. This thesis tries to apply memetics into high schoolEnglish teaching.Memetics is a provocative new theory built on evolution theory, trying tointerpreting the evolution rule of culture diachronically and synchronically. Memeticstheory regards meme as a kind of phenomenon which is similar to gene. Just as genesmultiply by heredity, as the basic unit of culture, memes are spreaded by means ofimitation. The life cycle of memes include four stages: assimilation, retention,expression, transmission. These four stages just reflects the whole process of Englishwriting, namely the assimilation and retention stages input a large amount ofinformation, while the expression and transmission stages output the informationwhich was just input, forming a new writing teaching mode: elaborately select classicwords, sentences, paragraphs and chapters or other aspects of language memes fromthe teaching materials, which are in the brain and stored in the host’s brain, that isteacher’s brain, then assimilate learners by a certain way, learners imitate and finallyachieve innovative applications.
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2. Purpose and Significance of the Research
This subject is to study how to use memetic theory to guide high school studentsin English writing, thus to enhance students' writing competence. Memetics offers anew angle of language teaching, which enables scholars to associate the teachingpractice with language memes duplication and transmission feature. The application of memetics to English teaching expands and enriches this theory and also provides anovel perspective. Studies of memetics at home involve in a variety of fields, most ofwhich are limited to the theory itself, with less systematic study in the application tohigh school English teaching. As memetics is studied relatively late at home, thisthesis can deepen the education workers’ understanding of memetics, offering certainbasis for English teaching method.In addition, this subject studies the feasibility and effectiveness of memeticssupported by the high school English classroom via teaching practice and researchmethods such as questionnaires and writing tests. Memetics can reduce students’mental anxiety and improve the writing ability, which owns certain practical value.
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Chapter One Literature Review
1.1 The Definition and Features of Memes
Memetics theory views that, a meme is a phenomenon similar to gene. The latterone multiplies by inheritance, while the former one is spread by imitation. As thecultural transmission unit, a meme has various patterns of manifestation, such asmusic tunes, ideological concept, proverbs, clothes fashions, building styles, chainletters, E-mail virus, religions and so on(Blackmore, 1999). Any information belongsto memes provided it can get imitated and replicated, that is to say, those languages,cultural customs, conceptions or social behaviors that can be duplicated, imitated ortransmitted can be called memes (Blackmore, 1999). Memetics had been existed forages. In early ancient Greece, philosophers like Democritus, Plato, Aristotle proposedimitation theory. Democritus once said: we learned weaving and sewing from spider;we learned how to build the house from the swallow; we learned singing from theswan and other singing bird such as orioles (Wu LiFu, 1979). That is to say, imitationis the source of acquiring knowledge, life and art creation. Plato emphasizes thatliterature and art is the imitation of material objects. Aristotle views that imitation ishuman's natural inclination and one of human’s instinct. Darwin thinks that mostanimals have the instinct to imitate. This instinct theory of imitation has a greatinfluence on the field of social psychology. In late nineteenth and early twentiethcentury, Gabriel Tarde (1903) also held this view.Dawkins defines memes as the cultural communication unit, which jumps intoanother person’s brain from a person’s brain through a process. Broadly speaking, theprocess is named as imitation (Dawkins, 1976). The definition of a meme in theOxford English dictionary is: the basic unit of culture, transferred in non-genetic way,especially imitation. These two definitions summarize that a meme is the copiedcultural information, which is reproduced and transferred by imitating (Chen Linxia&He Ziran, 2006).
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1.2 Four Stages of Memes
Francis Heylighen (1998) proposed that the successful duplication of memesmust go through four stages: a. Assimilation b. Retention c. Expression d.Transmission, which equals to the order: understand and accept—perceive andmemorize—imitate and output—transmit and replicate. These four stages of languagego full circle, forming a copy circuit.a) Assimilation, which refers that a valid meme is supposed to be like "virus" thatcan infect the host and to be noticed, perceived and absorbed by the host smoothly.“Notice” means the meme carrier can draw the attention of the host, "perceive" meansmemes tally with the cognitive schemata of the host, who can re-render it. Forinstance, when hearing the word “JIUJIE(纠结)” for the first time, people will thinkthat a lot of buckles intertwine together, leading a depressed and gloomy sentiment.When you are bothered by a lot of things or have a lot of choices but don't know whatto do, you would like to say: “About this matter, I am very JiuJie”. Therefore, thememe “JiuJie” get assimilated and expressed.b) Retention. Memes must remain in mind for a long period. When stays muchlonger, it will have more possibilities to infect the host. Be similar to assimilation,retention also makes a choice, that is to say, not all memes can be kept in mind. Mostof what people hear, see and experience every day can only stay in our brain for a fewhours.
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Chapter Three Results and Discussion........32
3.1 Pre-test Data Comparison ....32
3.2 Post-test Data Comparison........32
3.3 Questionnaire Data Analysis .....33
Conclusion ........36
1. Major Findings....36
2. Implications of the Study........36
3. Limitations of the Study ....38
Chapter Three Results and Discussion
3.1 Pre-test Data Comparison
During the first week, the relevant subjects take the same pre-test, who areobliged to finish the assigned writing tasks in half an hour without any materials forreference. The data collected were processed by SPSSv16.0. The results are includedin the tables displayed as below:The full writing part takes up three fifths of the whole score, rating of 25. Thecompositions will be rated as required by College Entrance Examination gradingcriteria, which specific the score standards from the contents, vocabulary, organizationand coherence etc.As illustrated in Table 1 hereinabove, the two classes have basically equalwriting proficiency as indicated by the mean scores. While the standard deviation ofthe experimental group is 5.529 and 5.532 for the controlled group. Besides, since thep-value far exceeds 0.05, we can also firmly believe that both the controlled groupand the experimental group are at the same level before taking the experiment.After many weeks, students received another writing test as the end ofexperiment, whose components are identical with the pre-test. To testify whether thisteaching approach is feasible, a post-test data comparison is carried out just asrepresented in the Table 2. Seeing from which, we can find apparent change.
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onclusion
Genotype and phenotype memes provide a more reasonable explanation for thelanguage rules used by people, giving us a new perspective direction to approachEnglish writing teaching from memetic angle, which is advantageous to help studentsmaster a faster and more effective way. By strengthening imitation from words tosentences and further passages, meme-based approach shortens the time whichstudents spend to explore direct experience. By obtaining new conclusions andrecognition derived from others’ success, it expedites the transition process oflanguage from comprehension to application, encouraging students to createinnovative writing building on an imitation foundation.Contrasting the data collected from the pre-writing and post-writing tests, we canfind that the meme-based approach receives positive feedback and that the Englishwriting proficiency of the EG has been improved upon a lot, which indicates thepracticability and availability of the teaching experiment. Seen from thequestionnaires collected, the data indicates that the students’ attitudes towards Englishwriting have been changed obviously compared with those before the experiment.What’s more, they are not fearful for English writing with the increasing confidencearoused by the meme-based approach. When English writing training drew to a close,students began to like English writing and care about their correctness andappropriateness. Most students are inclined to apply of this approach into Englishwriting, which they think enriches their writing materials in ways of words, sentenceor passage memes.
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References (omitted)
硕士英语毕业论文范文篇三
Chapter 1 Introduction
1.1 Research Background
Language is not only a symbol system but also a social phenomenon.[1]And it isnecessary for people to use language to communicate with each other in society. As men andwomen have to constantly contact in order to live in society, cross-gender communicationbecomes one of important parts in social communication, so the study of gender differences inconversation becomes important and valuable.The topic of language and gender has been discussed since 17thcentury, but there werenot many studies until 20thcentury when the pioneer scholar, Otto Jespersen, wrote Language:Its Nature, Development and Origin. And in the book, he explained the feature of women’slanguage in details.[1]Then, with the development of sociolinguistics and feministmovements in 1960s, scholars, especially scholars of sociolinguistics began to study womenlanguage. And among those scholars, it was Lakoff who leads the burst of interests in studiesof language and gender. In her paper, Language and Women’s Place, Lokaff pointed out manygender differences in language structure. And then, Lokaff’s findings brought a considerableamount of discussions in the following studies. Some scholars made efforts to verify herobservations and some scholars continued to gender differences in language based on herobservations. Due to the above studies, the research of language and gender has been pushedforward since 1960s.Of all the studies, the trend is from the static study to the dynamic study, in whichscholars study gender differences in language structure to gender differences in language use.As a result, researches begin to focus on dynamic differences in utterance structure, topicselection, topic control, amount of topic, responses of utterance and manners of utterance.And the present thesis tries to explain the above dynamic differences with ConversationAnalysis in Chinese context. Furthermore, the author wants to attract people’s attention togender dynamic differences to avoid misunderstandings or even conflicts between men andwomen in China.
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1.2Research Significance
The relationship between language and gender has been studied in sociolinguistics since1960s, and scholars already have found out many differences in different aspects, such asphonology, intonation, semantics, grammar, verbal styles and so on.[2]As the abovementioned, the static study of language and gender focuses on differences in languagestructure, while the dynamic study focuses on differences in verbal styles and strategies.However, most researches concentrate on language structures, and few on verbal styles. Andin the present thesis, the author attempts to make the dynamic study with ConversationAnalysis to analyze gender differences in language use, so as to study social life and clear upmisunderstandings.There are two research questions in the present thesis: the author tries to find out genderdifferences in language use in Chinese context; the author aims to analyze whether genderdifferences in language use in English context exist in Chinese context. At last, the author putsforward some suggestions to avoid misunderstandings in Chinese cross-gendercommunications.Furthermore, this study deepens the theoretical understanding of gender differences inChinese context. And as for the practical aspect, more people will pay attention to genderdifferences in language use and find ways of avoiding language conflicts between men andwomen through the present thesis. At last, the study shows the linguistics’ practicalapplications which using the theoretical knowledge to explain and solve daily problems whichexist in real life in China.
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Chapter 2 Literature Review
2.1 Studies of Language and Gender Abroad
Generally speaking, studies of language and gender abroad can be pides into twoperiods: scattered early studies and systematic studies.As early as 17thcentury, differences in language between men and women were detectedby European colonialists who thought men and women had different languages when theystepped on the new lands firstly. But the issue of language and gender attract scholars’attention not until the early 20thcentury. And it was Otto Jespersen who wrote the firstacademic documentary on the relationship of language and gender from a linguisticperspective, in which he described features of women’s language with one chapter, and foundthat men and women have differences in language, such as phonetics, vocabulary andsentence patterns. At last, he concluded that social labor changes language between men andwomen. And most of Jespersen’s ideas are still popular nowadays. Although genderdifferences have been discussed early, the studies in this period are still not systematic. Butthey provided research directions for the later studies.In 1960s, with the development of sociolinguistics and statistics and survey researchwhich began to be used to study human language features from gender, age, occupation andother factors, the systematic research method began to be used by some linguists.[4]Meanwhile, the women’s liberation movements started at this time, which pushed the study oflanguage and gender forward, and more and more women asked for equalities, not only askedfor social and political positions, but also pursued cultural equalities.
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2.2 Studies of Language and Gender in China
In 1928, Zhao Yuanren put forward gender differences in pronunciation at first, butsystematic studies of language and gender began from 1970s, when the sociolinguisticsspread to China.[13]From then on, Chinese scholars got a lot of achievements in studies oflanguage and gender. It can be pided into two study periods in China: the period thatintroduce Western theories and the period that Chinese scholars study gender differencesindependently.In the period of introduction, Chinese scholars reviewed theories of gender differences inlanguage abroad through translating foreign dissertations and books. For example, DaiWeidong wrote an overview of language and gender in English context from features ofwomen language. And Yang Yonglin published many articles in terms of gender differences inpronunciation and intonation, grammar and vocabulary in details in English context.[14]Chinese scholars in this period got a better understanding of western theories, and it isuseful to studies of gender differences in Chinese context.And independent studies include studies of gender discrimination in language, forms ofgender language and gender differences in language use.[15]Chinese scholars try to studygender differences in Chinese context based on western theories.
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Chapter 3 Theoretical Framework..... 11
3.1 Conversational Structure.... 11
3.2 Conversational Strategy..... 14
3.2.1 Turn-taking Model...... 14
3.2.2Responses of Utterance...... 17
3.3 Conversational Style ........ 19
Chapter 4 Analyses of Gender Differences in Chinese Communication..... 20
4.1 Gender Differences in Conversational Structure ...... 20
4.1.1 Opening Sequence...... 20
4.1.2 Closing Sequence....... 22
4.2 Gender Differences in Conversational Strategy ....... 23
4.2.1 Turn-taking .... 23
4.2.2 Responses of Utterance ..... 25
4.3 Gender Differences in Conversational Style ...... 31
4.4 Suggestions for Cross-gender Communications in Chinese Context ........ 39
Chapter 5 Conclusion...... 43
5.1 Major Findings ..... 43
5.2 Limitations and Suggestions .... 44
Chapter 4 Analyses of Gender Differences in Chinese
CommunicationThe present thesis aims to analyze gender differences in language use based onConversation Analysis in Chinese context. In this chapter, it will discuss gender differences inlanguage in Chinese context based on gender differences in language abroad. Study results ofgender differences in language abroad refer to the differences of topic selection, topic control,the amount of topic, the manner of topic and communicational strategies between men andwomen. Men tend to choose topics of business, economics, sports and so on, while womentend to choose topics of family, children, fashion and so on. And men usually speak morewords than women in cross-gender communications. Furthermore, As men are competitive,while women are polite and cooperate in conversations, men always control the topic inconversations，and men use more interruptions and minimal responses than women do incross-gender communications.
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Conclusion
This chapter is the conclusion of the thesis. Firstly it introduces major findings of thepresent study. Then it discusses some limitations in the present study and puts forward somesuggestions for the future studies.Based on Conversation Analysis, the thesis makes the dynamic study of genderdifferences in languages use in Chinese context from conversational structure, conversationalstrategy and conversational style. And the author also intends to explore whether findings ofwestern studies can explain gender differences in language use in Chinese context. The majorfindings will be present in the following.Firstly, the author finds that gender differences in language use in Chinese context haveno significant differences with results of western studies in conversational structure. That is tosay, domestic women are inclining to starting their topic indirectly to show their politeness,while domestic men are used to starting their topic directly. And for the closing sequence,domestic women pay more attention to how to end the conversation than men do, and womentend to use the final closing sequence in their conversations, especially when talking withmen.Secondly, the author finds that there is one nuance in conversational strategy betweenresults of western studies and results in Chinese context. In the aspect of using minimalresponses, results of western studies show that women use more minimal responses than men,while the present study shows that women and men have almost the same number in usingminimal responses. In addition, in China, men also like to use more overlaps and interruptionsto get their turn than women do, and women like to use more questions to attract other’sattention in the communication than men do in both cross-gender conversations andsame-gender conversations.
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References (omitted)
硕士英语毕业论文范文篇四
第一章：绪论
一、 研究背景
前苏联心里学家维果斯基提出，最近发展区(zone of proximal development,简称 ZPD)是“实际发展水平”(actual developmental level)和“潜在发展水平”(potential developmental level)之间的差距,即独立解决问题的能力和通过教学所能获得的潜力之间的差距。这个发展区存在于学生己知与未知,能够胜任和不能胜任之间,是学生需要“支架”才能够完成任务的区域。1教学支架的功能就在于帮助学生扩大其能力范围，为学生知识的获得、问题的解决提供辅助性的支持。而在课堂教学中，学生穿越其最近发展区的脚手架就是教师课堂上所搭建的“教学支架”。在中国，英语作为第二语言，与母语不同，它缺乏语言环境的支持，它所属于印欧语系中的西日耳曼语支，它的语法结构、发音规则等都有别于汉语，这些都决定着学生在英语学习过程中需要支架的帮助来习得这门二语。学生对英语的学习主要还是在课堂中进行，教师需要为学生学习新知识提供支撑,将学生的认知发展从实际水平提升到潜在水平以获得知识能力的进一步的发展,使学生能够顺利穿越“最近发展区”。然而,在小学英语课堂上,有哪些教学支架形式、不同的教学支架形式的分布特征是什么? 教学支架的动态生成状况如何? 哪些因素影响着教师对教学支架的选择? 教学支架对课堂互动的影响如何? 为回答上述问题,笔者将深入小学英语课堂中进行观察,通过数据统计和分析,探索背后的原因。
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二、研究目的、意义及内容
（一） 研究目的
本研究旨对小学英语课堂中教学支架的运用情况进行调查研究,了解当前小学英语课堂教学支架使用的情况,包括教学支架的类型、动态生成状况、影响因素等,并对该现状进行分析,总结出在小学英语课堂中，教学支架应用中不尽如人意的地方,提出改进意见和有效策略, 提高小学英语教师使用教学支架的有效性,提高学生英语学习的水平，同时促进学生课堂参与度以及构建师生互动、和谐的课堂。对小学英语课堂教学支架的研究首先可以满足理论上的要求。目前众多最教学支架的研究集中于对课堂教学过程中所出现支架的描述性研究，对于小学英语课堂教学的研究尚处于空白阶段，与现实情况相对照，研究是滞后的。因此本研究在对现有文献资料研究总结的基础上，架构出小学英语教学支架的类型、功能及特征等，以此为框架对课堂中的教学支架使用情况进行分析，分析总结当前小学英语课堂教学支架使用中存在的问题，可以丰富了当前关于支架教学的研究，有利于改善这方面研究缺失的现状。
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第二章：小学英语教学支架概述
一、 小学英语教学支架的基本内涵
“支架” (scaffold) —词最先是在建筑行业中使用，是指工人们在建房子时所使用的临时性的脚手架等,其在建房时所起的作用是一种临时性的支撑架构。Wood, Bruner 和 Ross 是最早提出用“支架”概念，他们把“支架”比喻成专家或中介者为学习者达成某一任务或某一水平所给予的帮助和支持。瑞格依和伯尔对“教学支架”是这样定义的: 在儿童语言习得的过程中,成人需给儿童提供各种不同的、临时的结构和框架,即各种语言支架帮助孩子理解语言，从而习得语言,形成有效的互动交流。普利斯里等人 的“支架”定义是这样的:在学生学习过程中，根据学生的具体学习需要提供给学生具体的学习帮助,并且这个学习帮助应在学生能力增长时逐渐撤去。纳撒及和斯万对 “教学支架 ”所下的定义则更为宽泛，他们将“教学支架”定义为一种合作，是学习者和成人在学习者的最近发展区内的各种合作。Wood, Bruner 和 Ross 对“支架”所下的定义过于宽泛，把“支架”定义为一种帮助和支持，仅仅突出了支架的作用，并没有突出“支架”的特征，所以该定义不够全面。瑞格依和伯尔把“支架”定义为结构和框架，将“支架”的作用范围缩小了，不能充分的描述“支架”的总差，但是其定义中突出了支架的暂时性特征。纳撒及和斯万的定义则更加宽泛。因此在本文中，笔者综合上述等人的定义，把“教学支架”理解为是以建筑行业中的建筑脚手架为蓝本的一种支撑教学活动的框架。具体到教学活动中,是指对学生问题解决能力的提高和认知能力的提高起辅助作用的各种手段或方式。教师在支架的帮助下，把学生的认知水平从现有水平引领到即将达到的一个更高的水平,学生在这个学习过程中在支架的帮助下就像沿着脚手架那样一步步向上攀升。笔者将之定义为：教学支架是在学习者学习新知或解决问题的过程中, 教师为了达到教学目的，在学习者的最近发展区内，提供给学习者的各种暂时的、渐进的辅助框架。
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二、小学英语教学支架使用的必要性
每个儿童生来就具备语言习得机制，语言包括口头语言和书面语言，英语作为一门外语，小学阶段学生才开始接触英语，对于低年级的学生来说，他们缺乏先天的英语视听说的经验，这对于小学阶段学生的英语学习是一个挑战。英语教师必须要为学生提供语言支架来激发学生的语言学习兴趣， 鼓励、帮助学生，降低英语学习的难度来激发和维持学生英语学生的兴趣。对于中高年级的学生来说，更多的新单词、新词组、新句型，英语的可理解输入量越来越大，英语学习的难度越来越大，那么学生英语学习的受挫感将会慢慢产生，就更加需要英语教师在教学过程中建构新旧知识之间的联系，激发学生的英语语言学习兴趣，帮助学生重建语言学习的信心，不断地跨越其最近发展区。同时，英语的学习需要大量的可理解性输入，教师可理解性输入是指学习者听到或读到的能成功理解的语言材料,这些材料的难度应该稍微高于学习者目前已经掌握的语言知识。24每个学生的语言习得机制并非在任何情况下激活，大量的超出学生最近发展区的语言输入并非可以激活语言习得机制，学生在这样的语言输入下，英语学习难度将会大大增加。而只有输入大量的可理解性的英语语言材料，才能激活学生的语言习得机制，才能对学生的语言发展起积极作用。在小学阶段，英语教师在英语教学过程中更具不同学习阶段的学习者的特点，采用游戏、歌谣、绕口令等，或借助动画、图片等教具，增加英语学习的趣味性，提高语言学习的效率。通过教学支架丰富学生的可理解性输入，有利于建构学生对语言知识的理解，从而进一步促进学生的语言输出。
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第三章 小学英语课堂教学支架使用的现状观察........23
一、观察目的.........23
二、观察对象.........23
三、研究方法.........24
（一）课堂观察.........24
（二）访谈.......25
四、研究实施.........25
五、研究结论.....33
第四章 小学英语课堂教学支架使用中的问题与对策.........35
一、小学英语教学支架的分配特征中存在的问题.........35
二、小学英语教学支架动态生成状况中存在的问题.......38
三、对学生话语输出及课堂互动的影响中存在的问题.....38
四、小学英语教学支架使用的建议.........43
第四章 小学英语课堂教学支架使用中的问题与对策
随着新课改的不断推进，越来越多的一线教师意识到 “灌输式”教学的弊端，逐渐意识到学生才是课堂的主体，教师的各种教学步骤、教学工具等都是为了学生服务。如何突出学生的主体地位，如何让学生更高效的学习，越来越多的教师倾向于在教学过程中使用教学支架。笔者在对教师的访谈中了解到，目前教师对教学支架的运用都较为重视，对不同类型教学支架的功能也有相对清晰的了解，并且能够在不同的教学情境中选择适合学生发展的教学支架。通过课堂观察和对课堂录音转录的文本材料进行的分析，我们可以发现现在的课堂教学中已经有了多样化的教学支架，有讲授、提问、提供词汇句型图表、示范、重新阐释、纠错、提示引导、鼓励这八种类型。灌输式的讲授已经不再是教师唯一使用的教学手段，这说明的教学观念已逐渐转变， 已经逐渐以学生为中心，教师正逐步以学生学习活动的支持者、引导者而存在，而不再以学生学习活动的支配者、主宰者的身份而存在。教师在教学过程中的主要任务是为学生提供学习所需要的支架，并且在适当的时候撤走支架。学生则在教师的教学支架的帮助下逐步习得知识与能力，不断的跨越其最近发展区，从而为下一个发展阶段的学习奠基础。在分析语料文本资料时，笔者还发现由于“讲授”、“提问”、“提供词汇句型图表”这三类教学支架要求教师课前进行详细的备课，所以这三种教学支架几乎都是预设性支架。其他的教学支架需要在具体的教学情境中根据学生的具体学情而随机生成的，因此在动态生成的教学支架中，随着学习内容的难以程度以及学习任务的差异，教师的教学支架就具备了差异性和情境性。这是在研究中发现的可喜之处。然而，教师对教学支架的实际应用情况也存在一些问题。
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结语
通过研究，本文得出以下结论: 当前小学英语教学支架使用中，小学英语教学支架的分配特征中，提问支架使用较多，其中展示性问题太多，学生的有效话语量输出较少；讲授支架占主导，学生被动接受知识；重新阐释、提示引导、示范、纠错在课堂教学中所起的辅助作用较小；鼓励支架的使用频率几乎为零，有待进一步的提高；小学英语教学支架大多是课前备课时设计，课堂中根据具体教学情境、学生的具体学情而动态生成的教学支架较少；提问、输入新知教学支架虽提供了许多的语言输出机会，学生语言的输出量相对较少，课堂互动处于初级阶段。提供词汇句型图表、重新阐释、示范、提示引导能最大程度的引导学生话语量的输出,但支架撤离不及时。纠错、鼓励促进教学支架所引发语言输出有限，无课堂互动效果。本研究的局限主要在于所观察的课是真实课堂，所收集的数据也是源于真实课堂，但受到客观条件的制约，笔者仅仅只对一所学校的三位老师进行课堂观察与访谈，并且该小学是该市最好的一所小学，学生的英语基础较好，家长比较重视学生英语的学习，研究中没有对不同英语基础的学生进行分析，观察时间也不长，也仅仅分析了 12 节课录音材料，并不能代表三位老师在教学过程中的全部行为，属于小范围的调查研究，难以准确反映普遍的现象，且数据分析仍存在一些局限性。本文对教学支架的分类是根据具体行为进行分类，在研究过程中因此本文的研究结果只能作为有限的参考。另外对于小学英语教学支架的分类中，对于支架的分类维度没有突出英语学科的特色，这也是笔者在今后的研究中还需深入探讨的方向。
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参考文献(略)
硕士英语毕业论文范文篇五
Chapter One Introduction
1.1 Background of the study
As a foreign language, English has gradually become one of the importantlanguages in our country. In the rapid development of knowledge economy today, it isnecessary for the students in primary school to start learning English when they areyoung. Although, some people may feel it unpractical, for the reform is about topublish, and the status of English will probably be debased and the primary schoolsdo not have adequate conditions to offer English classes. The education expertsanalyze that the reform only reminds the students to be able to grasp thecomprehensive use of language, and should master it more freely, not just answer thequestions in the examinations. However, because of the geographical limitation andconstrained educational resource, it is really difficult to establish the English course inthe primary school in the countryside. The voice of cancelling the primary schoolEnglish is from two aspects. One is the problem of teachers’ shortage and the other isthe problem of English teaching. Most primary English teachers are qualified and theyhave enough educational background and can achieve high teaching level. Therefore,it is feasible for the primary schools in the city to offer English courses. But theEnglish teaching in primary schools has problems, for the traditional teaching methoddeduces students’ learning interest and enthusiasm. Some of the students in primaryschool do not have interest in learning English. Therefore the teaching method shouldbe improved in order to increase the primary school students’ interest in learningEnglish.
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1.2 Significance of the study
The research on the fairy tale teaching method can bring theoretical significanceand practical importance to the primary English teaching.Based on analyzing the situation of the current English teaching, the researchaims to dig out the essence of the fairy tale and then applies the fairy tale teachingmethod in primary school extensively. The study of the fairy tale teaching method is apromotion of the primary teaching method. By doing well the research of the fairytale teaching method, it is also an effective way to improve the situation of theprimary English. The theoretical significance is vital for the development of theEnglish teaching methodology. The study of the fairy tale teaching method can enrichthe English teaching theory and can guide the English teachers in their teaching. Thestudy of the fairy tale teaching method is a newly attempt for primary school teachingmode which has significant influence on primary school English teaching.The study of the fairy tale teaching method can also provide effectiveness ofEnglish teaching in practical way. If the study goes well, then the fairy tale teachingmethod can be applied in numerous countries to help primary school students learnEnglish.
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Chapter Two Literature Review
2.1 The characteristics of the fairy tales
The characteristics of the fairy tales will be discussed in two aspects. One is thecharacteristics of language expression and the other is the characteristics of thecontent. The fairy tale is a genre of children’s literature, through the rich imagination,fantasy and exaggeration to write for children to enjoy the story. The fairy tale is astyle of children’s literature, known as the most pure good human language.The language expression of the fairy tales which has its own trait is typical.Firstly, the fairy tale is reflected through the fantasy of life. Its main readers arechildren. Considering of this characteristics, the fairy tales not only include therequirements of the general literature language, but also meet the age, temperamentand psychological characteristics of children readers. Secondly, from the languagestyle of speaking, children language requires accuracy, simplicity and vividness. Withthe regard to the effect of language expression, the language of the fairy tales uses themethod of personification, repetition, comparison and exaggeration which can makeunfamiliar things become familiar and visualized. The Fisherman and the Fish is oneof the famous works of Pushkin (1835). In the fairy tale, the very different behaviorsof the goldfish fisherman and the cruel old woman stand stark. Those repeating plotsand scenes, forming the rhythmic repetition, highlight the personalities of thecharacters and the plots that twist and turn which have strongly increased the tone ofinterest and humor.
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2.2 The characteristics of the primary students
The characteristic of the primary students will be presented in three aspects. Thethree aspects include the characteristics of cognition, the characteristics of languageexpression and the characteristics of psychology. The main characteristics of students’ cognition include the characteristic ofperception, attention and memory and the characteristics of imagination and thinking,and also the characteristic of emotion and will. The primary students’ trait can befound according to these aspects. Primary students’ attention which is often closelyrelated with interest is not stable and not lasting. Their mind is unconscious, and theirmemorization is based on specific image and mechanical memorization. Students’thinking transits from concrete image to the abstract logical thinking. But the abstractlogical thinking is still largely related with the perceptual experience which haslargely specific image. Along with the growth of the age, the emotion of primarystudents has gradually become more stable, rich and deep. Although low gradestudents can primarily control the emotion themselves, there often exists thephenomenon of instability.
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Chapter Three Research Design .....15
3.1 Research questions........15
3.2 Subjects ........15
3.3 Instruments........15
3.4 Procedure.....19
3.5 Experiment ........20
3.6 Data analysis......23
Chapter Four Results and Discussion ........25
4.1 primary school students’ interest in learning English ......25
4.2 primary schoolstudents’ written English ability .........32
4.3 primary schoolstudents’ oral English ability.........36
Chapter Five Conclusion.....42
5.1 Major findings.........42
5.2 Implications .......44
5.3 Limitations of the study and suggestions for future study ....46
Chapter Four Results and Discussion
In this chapter, the results of the research questions will all be demonstrated bythe data from questionnaires, tests, and interviews to find out whether thefairy-teaching method will arouse student’s interest in learning English and improvestudents’ written English ability and oral English ability.
4.1 The effect of the fairy-tale teaching method on primary schoolstudents’ interest in learning English
Item 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 in the pre-questionnaire are used to investigate the students’attitude towards English learning and the English class. The comparison of thestudents’ attitude of the experimental class and the control class towards Englishlearning and English class in the pre-questionnaire are shown in Table 4-1. In item 1and item 2, most students do not like to attend the English classes and do not like English as option C is chosen by the students at most in both theexperimental class and the control class. In item 5, half of the students in theexperimental class and the control class believe that the English learning material isboring. The results show that there is no obvious difference in the investigation of theexperimental class and the control class of item 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5. The students’ attitudetowards English learning and English class are almost at the same level. The datacollected from the experimental class and the control class show that the students donot take active part in English learning and they think English class is not attractive tothem.
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Conclusion
This chapter is going to present the major findings of the research. Besides, theimplications will be concluded and also the limitations of the study and suggestionsfor future study will be stated. From the collected data of the questionnaire, test and the interview, the majorfindings of the research can be stated as follows.The fairy tale teaching method in the primary school can arouse the students’interest in learning English. From the results of the questionnaires, we can find thatbefore the experiment the interest of the students in the experimental class and thecontrol class of English learning is at the same level, however, after the experimentthe students in the experimental class are more interested in English. In addition, thestudents in the experimental class are more willing to take active part in answeringquestions and acting out the roles in the fairy tales, and their attitude towards Englishclass is more active. Therefore, more students have increased the enthusiasm oflearning and using English in the experimental class. In class, the fairy tale teachingmethod offers more chances to use English with different roles of various interestingstories. These findings show that the fairy tale teaching method which can arouse theprimary school students’ interest in learning English is beneficial for the students’language learning.
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References (omitted)
硕士英语毕业论文范文篇六
Chapter 1 Introduction
1.1 Significance of the Study
Actually and Qishi are linguistic items which are frequently used in dailycommunication and it appears to be more frequently used in spoken discourse thanthat in written text. Indicated by the online Oxford English Dictionary actually is inthe list of top 1000 frequently used words. Considering the significant role that theyplay in communication, this paper conducts a comparative analysis of actually andQishi by studying the text or discourse in which they occur. Many scholars havenoticed that there exists a special word category, which is in the overlapping part ofadverbs and conjunctions. Scholars have various interpretations or terms to define theword category. Yuan Surong (2013: 4) indicates that the research on this specialcategory is not thorough and he tried to make an overall research on it. In bothEnglish and Chinese, adverb is a controversial word category which is complex andconfusing for a second language learner. The categorization of adverbs is ambiguousand it sometimes does not have precise definitions or boundary like other wordcategories. And some adverbs function as conjunction in discourse. Yuan Surong(2013) uses the term adverbial conjunction to define the word, which an adverb actsas a cohesive tie in discourse or text. This paper aims to study the adverbialconjunctions actually and Qishi used in English and Chinese discourse from threedimensions of language respectively, namely, syntax, semantics and pragmatics.Actually and Qishi are studied separately by English and Chinese scholars. Actually isoften considered as a meaningless word or as an adverb emphasizer and Qishi isstudied within the category of adverbs. But the functions of these two words in text ordiscourse are far more complex and important. This paper tries a comparative methodto study actually and Qishi as adverbial conjunctions, which has hardly been donebefore.
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1.2 Layout of the Thesis
This thesis is pided into seven chapters. Chapter one introduces thesignificance of the study, the thesis structure. Chapter two gives the review ofprevious studies on Actually and Qishi at home and abroad. It also introduces thetheoretical basis of the study. Chapter three provides the description of the twoadopted corpora and methodology. The main body includes three chapters. Chapterfour is to analyze and describe the syntactic positions of Actually and Qishi in theselected examples. The statistical analysis is made based on the collected data to mapout the syntactical distribution of Actually and Qishi. The interpersonal function andtextual function are also explained in this chapter with examples. Chapter five is thesemantic configuration of the two adverbial conjunctions; the cohesive devices ofcomponents in Actually and Qishi clause are discussed based on cohesion theory. Thelogical relationship between the elements in the clause and lexical collocations isfound. Chapter six is concerned with the pragmatic function of the two words in thetext on the theoretical basis of discourse markers.
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Chapter 2 Literature Review
2.1 Definition of Adverbial Conjunctions
This thesis aims at comparing Actually and Qishi as adverbial conjunctions fromthe perspective of functional grammar. Adverbial conjunction is a term coined byYuan Surong which refers to adverbs and adverbial expressions which function ascohesive ties in sentences and discourses. (Yuan Surong 2009) Adverbial conjunctionsrefer in particular to the correlative adverbs, the conjunctive adverbs used in texts andadverbial fixed phrases and patterns with discourse functions. (Yuan Surong 2011:126)We put forward correlative adverb. The reason is that there must be a continuum fromadverb to conjunction. That is, there is a transitional zone between adverbs andconjunction. His concept of adverbial conjunction can be shown in the figure below. The existence of adverbial conjunctions in in both English and Chinese has beenrecognized by many scholars at home and abroad, yet the terms they adopt foradverbial conjunctions are slightly different. Larson (1985), Schwarz (1999), Chalker(2001: 5) and Johanessen (2005) propose the term “Correlative Adverbs”. They claimthat Correlative Adverbs refer to such semi-fixed phrases as “either...or...”,“neither...nor...”, “both...and...”, “not only...but also...”, “whether...or...” etc.Meanwhile, they have done in-depth researches on such phrases.
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2.2 Researches on Actually and Qishi
In OED (Oxford English Dictionary1), actually is in the top 1000 frequently usedwords. In online etymology dictionary, it is formed by the way actual+-ly. Actual firstappears in English in early fourteenth century and it is borrowed from Old Frenchactuel, but etymological origin is from Late Latin actualis meaning “active,pertaining to action” adjectival form of Latin actus.2The broader sense of “real,existing” (as opposed to potential, ideal, etc.) is from late fourteenth century. Actuallybecame an English word in early fifteenth century. The meaning of Actually as “infact, in reality (as opposed to in possibility) actively, vigorously” is from mid-fifteenthcentury and that of “at this time, at present” is from 1660s. As an intensively added toa statement and suggesting “as a matter of fact, really, in truth”, it is attested from1762. SUN-YOUNG OH (2000: 243) attempts to compare the differences andsimilarities between actually and in fact. Actually and its variants (as a matter of fact,in fact) have not been previously studied as a linguistic phenomenon. However,actually has not escaped the attention of the prescriptivists. It is possible that the wordactually originated in Britain with a fairly near recent (Aijmer 1986). In spokenEnglish, actually can be replaced by definitely, really or surely to emphasize the tone,but sounds fancier. If you like, you can insert it into any part of the sentence.
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Chapter 3 Research Methodology........26
3.1 Corpus -based Study ........26
3.2 Description of Corpora ....26
3.3 Research Objectives and Questions .........28
3.4 Research Method .......28
Chapter 4 Functional Analysis of Syntactic Features ........30
4.1 Syntactic Structure and Distribution ........30
4.2 The Functional Explanation of Syntactic Structure....46
4.2.1 Interpersonal Function ......46
4.2.2 Textual Function .........48
4.3 Summary ........49
Chapter 5 Functional Analysis of Semantic Relations .....51
5.1 Classification of the Semantic Relation and Characteristics .......51
5.2 Semantic Configurations of the Adverbial Conjunctions ......5
5.3 Cohesive devices of Actually and Qishi ........56
5.4 Summary ........67
Chapter 5 Functional Analysis of Semantic Relations
In this chapter, semantic features of adverbial conjunction actually and Qishi areexplored. Classification and the semantic configuration of the two are made.Combined with cohesion theory, the cohesive function from semantic perspective ispresented. Actually and Qishi signal that a fact goes beyond one’s expectation andpeople use the adverbial conjunctions to make explicit commitment to the truth of theutterance. There are different views when concerning with the semantic meaning andclassification of the semantic meaning of these two adverbial conjunctions. Accordingto Yuan Surong (2013), he indicates that there are two dominant logic-semanticrelations of actually and Qishi. One is the adversative cohesion and the other isadditive cohesion, which can be also called explanatory cohesion. In this chapter thesemantic relation of actually and Qishi are classified into two types in the followingdiscussion.
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Conclusion
Since discourse itself is a process, cohesion is also a process. Cohesion indiscourse can be created in four ways: by reference, conjunction, ellipsis and lexicalcohesion. The grammatical cohesion is realized by reference, ellipsis and substitution.As a cohesive means, actually is often used to indicate the semantic relationshipsbetween the following clause and the preceding one, thereby contributing to thecoherence of the text. Actually is very useful when what the speaker is going to say isunexpected on the part of the reader. Without the help of actually, it may be difficultfor the reader to figure out how these two sentences are related to each other. Reference refers to a particular element in a text can be regarded as the referencepoint or explained by the other element. It is a relationship between the reference itemand the referent. Reference is most likely to be evolved from an exophoric relation.The situational reference is exophoric which link outward to some object or person inthe environment. The textual reference is endophoric, which can be further pidedinto anaphoric and cataphoric. The three types of reference are personals,demonstratives and comparatives.
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References (omitted)
硕士英语毕业论文范文篇七
Chapter 1 Introduction
1.1 Research Background
Translation is defined as a cross-cultural communication, of which the essentialtask and requirement is to accurately understand and express the meaning of theoriginal text. With the ever in-depth reform and opening up, after China’s access intoWTO in particular, a great number of Chinese laws, regulations, legal documents aswell as works of jurisprudence that have been translated into English as legalexchanges between China and foreign countries become increasingly more and morewith each passing day both in scope and depth. Legal language, as a special languagevariety, has its own rules and characteristics, which makes it much more important toresearch into translation theories of legal texts. The translation of Chinese legal textsundertakes the responsibilities of passing the legal cultures of China on to foreignreaders. And any minor mistake may lead to disputes of business, culture evensovereignty, which illustrates the importance of translation of Chinese legal texts.Compared with the Chinese-English (hereafter shortened as C-E) translation ofliterature, science and technology, and commerce, the C-E translation of legal texts,however, is far from satisfactory. Accurate translation of Chinese legal texts exerts afar-reaching impact on the protection and promotion of indigenous and excellent legalcultures, and safeguard of dignity as well as standardization of Chinese legal language,which explains that there have been a surge of researches into C-E translationtechniques carried out by an increasing number of scholars and translatorstheoretically and practically.
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1.2 Purpose of the Study
Currently, the C-E translation of legal texts in translation circles is basically stillat the exploring stage, although there are translation strategies with the guidance ofSkopostheory and functional equivalence theory as well as translation strategies likedomestication and foreignization. All the achievements mentioned above have auniversal sense for the theoretical innovation in the current translation of legal texts,presenting a researching outline and the difficulties in translating legal texts. But ingeneral, the current studies on translation of Chinese legal texts embrace somethingnew but lack highly-summarized theories.This thesis aims to apply the adaptation theory as guidance in C-E translation oflegal texts and attempts to analyze the main aspects to note from four angles, namelycontextual correlates of adaptability, structural objects of adaptability, and dynamicsof adaptability and salience of adaptation processes in a rounded and systematic way.
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Chapter 2 Literature Review
2.1 Previous Studies of Legal Text Translation
Among abundant researches of C-E translation of legal texts, domestication andforeignization strategies, functional equivalence theory and Skopostheory are themostly-applied ones. The following paragraph will summarize the researches into C-Etranslation of legal texts under the guidance of these strategies and theoriesrespectively and analyze their deficiencies in dealing with translation. Raised in 1995 by Venuti, foreignization and domestication are undoubtedly twovery important strategies. In compliance with him, domestication is defined as a wayto adopt a transparent, fluent style to minimize the strangeness of the foreign texts forTL (target language) readers (Venuti, 2004:15). In other words, by domestication, thetranslators are trying to take advantage of language and culture features of targetreaders to replace those of the original, in order to eliminate the estrangement anddifferences between Chinese and English as a way to help the target readersunderstand the work better.Foriegnization is otherwise defined by Shuttleworth and Cowie as "deliberatelybreaks target conventions by retaining something of the foreignness of the original"(Shuttleworth and Cowie 2004:59). To a certain extent, this strategy retains all theinformation of the original like language, culture and styles, trying to convey theinformation to the target readers as authentic as possible without making anyalteration.
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2.2 Previous Studies of Adaptation Theory and Translation
Within the framework of adaptation theory, translation, like all the other speechcommunication is a process of continuous making of choices. In other words, suchchoices of a source text, usage of vocabulary and sentence pattern of the targetlanguage and application of translation strategies are inundated with every stage of theentire translation activity. The aim of selection is to ensure the success ofcommunication since each choice in translation is closely related with communicationneeds.Translation, as a course of choices involving bilingual or multilingual activity ofspeech communication is much more complicated when compared with commonlanguage-selection processes of communication activities. It is not only a process oflanguage choosing, but a multi-tier and complex course of choices in conversionbetween languages. Additionally, the choices of language manifest comprehensivelythe essence of translation and complexity during translation activity, and at the sametime provide a starting point to research into the adaptation's guidance on translation. Recently, there are a growing number of scholars researching into translation incombination with adaptation theory. For instance, Song Zhiping (2004) proposes thattranslation is a kind of conduct of a combination of multiple choices. To choose is toachieve the objective of adaptation from different levels and angles, and hence tocarry out the functions of translation. Each activity of translation has a correspondingaim which needs to be accomplished as much as possible. The choices made intranslation serve to the fulfillment of the aim. This aim, however, is not necessarily anultimate goal, but sometimes a phase in the whole process. Accordingly, there are anumber of related aims in different phases through the entire process. But thetranslators must choose a specific objective in keeping with the very context andevery choice in translation is seen as an endeavor for adaptation to objective.Consequently, we can pide aims into several levels and regard translation as acombination of choices to research into the aims of translation choices and outerfactors that restrict translation choices. Only in this way translation can be analyzedfrom a more macro level.
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Chapter 3 Theoretical Foundation.........14
3.1 Characteristics of Language.........14
3.2 Four Research Angles of the Adaptation Theory.........15
Chapter 4 The Application of Adaptation Theory to TranslatingChines.........23
4.1 An Overview of Legal Text........23
4.2 Contextual Correlates of Adaptability.........29
4.3 Structural Objects of Adaptability and Translation.........32
4.4 Dynamics of Adaptability and Translation of Chinese Legal Text.........37
4.5 The Salience of the Adaptation Processes and Translation.........42
Chapter 5 Conclusion.........46
5.1 Major Findings.........46
5.2 Limitations of the Study.........47
5.3 Suggestions for Further Study..........47
Chapter 4 The Application of Adaptation Theory to Translating Chinese Legal Text
4.1 An Overview of Legal Text
Li Kexin and Zhang Jiahong (2006:2) state that text type, as a matter of fact, isdeemed as a lingual product which gradually becomes standard and hipping throughlong-term application. Accordingly, each text type is used to express a specificpragmatic intention on the part of language user or major functions of specific text.Text type determines the keynote and functions of texts, which explains that a correctgrasp of type of a target text contributes to a better understanding of those of theoriginal. Legal text, as a special type of text, has increasingly proved to be a criticalpart of legal culture. As a result, legal text, serving as a foundation for legalapplication, has exerted an influential impact on strategic options of legal translation.Hence, the features of legal texts become a top priority for the translators.Legal texts and legal language are both conducted to realize normalization andbinding force of law. Legal language is a kind of legally professional jargonparticularly used by legal practitioners, while legal texts composed of legal languagethat hugely differs from other kinds of language, have distinctive characteristics. LiKexin and Zhang Jiahong (2006:11) propose that legal texts could be pided into twocategories: (1) prescriptive legal texts (2) mainly prescriptive and some descriptivelegal texts.Law codes, laws and regulations are classified into the first, the major functionsof which are standardizing human behaviors, setting social involvers' responsibilitiesas well as what they shall or shall not do. The second category is a combination ofprescription and description, which consists of answer brief, judgment, request, casebrief, petition for revision and judicial decisions.
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Conclusion
Along with the deepening opening and reform in China, the economic exchangesbetween China and other economic entities have been much more intense, whichresults in a priority of foreign publicity and a great upsurge in translation of Chineselegal text. But because of the distinctions in terms of legal systems, habits of languageand culture between China and English-speaking countries, the difficulty oftranslation of legal Chinese becomes invincible. Though there are quite a few scholarshaving devoted themselves to the researches in relevant areas and explored a series oftheories and methods for guidance, a systematic and proper mechanism of translationof legal Chinese has not yet developed. For this reason, all kinds of difficulties comeacross by the translators have prevented the promotion of Chinese laws to the world.However, the appearance of adaptation theory has provided a brand-new,systematic and appropriate direction for development for C-E translation of legal texts.As a comprehensive pragmatic theory, adaptation theory proposes and theorizes aview that language using is a process of constant choices. And translation of legalChinese as an interlingual communication of Chinese and English will definitelyinvolve language choices. So the thesis tries to analyze the translation from a newperspective--a perspective of adaptation theory. By investigating all levels of legallanguage, such as contextual correlates of adaptability, structural objects ofadaptability, dynamics of adaptability and the salience of the adaptation processes, thethesis presents a rounded interpretation of translation of legal Chinese. Morecomprehensive and systematic than former theories for translation of legal Chinese,adaptation theory is not only a new research angle, but has enormous directivefunctions for the translation of Chinese legal texts.
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References (omitted)
硕士英语毕业论文范文篇八
Chapter One Introduction
1.1 Introduction to the study
For half a century, the study on language transfer has made significant progresswhether in domestic or abroad. Recent years, more and more linguists pay attention tothe relationship between mother tongue and the second language acquisition. From1950s, scholars began to study the language transfer in Second Language Acquisition(SLA). In the field of linguistics, researchers insist that the influence on foreignlanguage learning is often referred to as the ‘transfer’. Long and Richards made apreface for Odlin’s Language Transfer, pointing out that language transfer has been thecore problem of pragmatic linguistics, second language acquisition and language studiesat least a century. In the field of psychology, transfer means that learning A has an effecton another kind of learning B, that is to say, skills, knowledge and attitudes of a certainsituation will influence these of another context. In the past half century, people haddifferent opinions on the influences of language transfer in second language acquisition.Especially in the 1970s, the importance of language transfer in second languagelearning has almost been ignored. Until recent years, language transfer appears widelyin foreign language teaching and learning, and it is again in people’s vision. Then manyresearchers constantly study it with theories and practices to put forward better andnewer ways to solve the teaching problems.
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1.2 Purpose and significance of the study
Studying English for so many years, a large number of English learners stillcannot use English freely and appropriately. Although Chinese college students can passthe CET4 and CET6 even can get a high mark in these tests, in fact some of the studentshave difficulties to use English in a native-like way. They always describe somethingwith correct grammatical structure in a wrong context, or with the wrong language formin an appropriate context. Therefore, both English teachers and students tempt to findout the available methods to acquire the foreign language.Even if language transfer has been an increasingly controversial debate for manyyears, and preceding studies on language transfer have been conducted from variouslinguistic aspects, such as syntax, phonology, semantics, interlanguage pragmatics, andso on. Few researches have explained the phenomenon of language transfer on the basisof contextual factors, especially in the EFL learning environment where the lack of L2input may lead to L1 transfer. This thesis aims to investigate how learners’ L1 influenceSLA, probing into the probable linkage between L2 linguistic forms and learners’ L1contextual knowledge in EFL atmosphere.For a long time, people always deem that the method of using both native languageand foreign language is the same. Once you master the grammatical rules, correctphonology, enough vocabulary, and do more exercises, then you can use a languagenaturally. However, it is still difficult to have a comprehensive application as peoplemeet all above requirements. This shows that there are other factors that restrict the useof language, except for the language itself. According to psychological linguistics, theprocess of learning a foreign language is different between children and adults.
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Chapter Two Literature Review
2.1 Studies on language transfer in SLA
Language transfer has been the core of research for decades. It involves almost allthe aspects of second language learning. Long and Richards made a preface for Odlin’sLanguage Transfer, pointing out that language transfer has been the central issue ofpragmatic linguistics, second language acquisition and language studies, and it has beenundergone at least a century. The study on language transfer can be dated back to 1940sand 1950s in America. Scholars have experienced a complicated period which mainlydiscusses what role the native language plays in SLA. There exist two dominatingschools: one group insists that mother tongue can promote second language learning,while the other group believes that mother tongue impedes second language learning.Recent years, many scholars point out that language transfer and SLA areinterdependent and interact each other deeply. During the past 50 years, with thedevelopment of SLA, language transfer has experienced Contrastive AnalysisHypothesis and Interlanguage Hypothesis.
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2.2 Studies on context in SLA
“Exactly as in the reality of spoken or written languages, a word without linguisticcontext is a mere figment and stands for nothing by itself, so in the reality of a spokenliving tongue, the utterance has no meaning except in the context of situation”(Malinowski 1923, p.307). Context has been extensively studied in SLA, while it is not easy to give it a simpledefinition. Many scholars investigated context with perse ways in differentbackgrounds. Malinowski was one of the founders of functionalism, who first probedinto the problem of context. He pointed that “The utterance has no exact meaning onlyif it appears in a certain context of situation.” (Malinowski, 1923). In his opinion,context was the context of situation and context of culture. The context of situationrefers to what happens when people are speaking, is the situation where language takeplaces. And context of culture refers to the cultural background that the speakers own.Malinowski focused on the outside macro context, and paid no attention to the internalmicro context. J. R. Firth, the father of the functional theory of language, inheritedand extended the idea of situational context. He pided context into two kinds: one ofthe context comes from the internal language, which consists of different relationsamong vocabularies, phrases, sentences and paragraphs, in other words linguisticcontext; the other context stems from outside language, which involves the relationbetween language and its social environments, that is situational context. Based onFirth’s situational context, English linguistics M.A.K. Halliday proposed register theory,piding register into field of discourse, mode of discourse, and tenor of discourse. In1964, Halliday established the systemic-functional theory, put forward the concept of“register”, and analyzed language context theory from the perspective of languagefunction. He took the functional angle to consider language as an instrument of socialcommunication, and believed that all language should be used in a certain context ofsituation. He claimed that context can be pided into situational context and culturalcontext.
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Chapter Three Research Design.......17
3.1Research Questions......17
3.2 Subjects.....18
3.3 Instruments......19
3.4 Procedures.......21
Chapter Four Results and data analysis......24
4.1Results........24
4.2 Discussion on the underlined expressions.......27
4.2.1Classification of internal contextual knowledge......27
4.2.2 Various types of the underlined errors........29
4.3 Influential factors of the underlined expressions.......32
Chapter Five Conclusion and Implications....... 37
5.1 Major findings of the current research......37
5.2 Practical implications of the study......39
5.2.1 Theoretical implications......39
5.2.2 Pedagogical implications.... 39
5.3 Limitations of the study.... 43
5.4 Recommendations.......44
Chapter Four Results and data analysis
4.1Results
The questionnaire, writing task and the interview are one of the most majorresources of the research analysis. There are sixty valid questionnaires have beencollected, which has been pided into three groups on the basis of their scores. Namely,there are twenty-one students in the group1, twenty-two students in the group2, andseventeen students in the group3. The data in the research is reliable. The twelfthquestion: “When you learn a new word, what method will you adopt?” “A. learning thewords by rote B. learning the words by pronunciation C. learning the words in the textD. others” After calculating, it shows that there are eleven (18.3%) students learn newwords in the text, in which group1 has six students, occupies10.0%, group2 has fivestudents, occupies 8.3%, and in group3 nobody study new words in the text, most ofthem learn new words by rote. The thirteenth question is: “If you come across a difficultsentence in the reading comprehension, how will you do?” “A. Guess it based on theco-text B. look it up in the dictionary C. Ask classmates and teacher D. Pass it overdirectly” It presents that there are thirty-one (51.7%) students comprehend aninaccessible sentence through guessing according to the context, in which group1possesses fifteen students, occupies 25%, group2 possesses nine students, occupies 15%,and group3 possesses seven students, occupies 11.7%.
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Conclusion
Just as Grass once insisted that (1996) a transfer theory should not merely containthe language transfer phenomenon itself, besides it should illustrate and summarize inwhich conditions the language transfer is likely to occur. Therefore, the following partaims to describe what is probably to happen when there is deficiency of correct L2contextual knowledge in SLA.In the first place, if learners’L1 contextual knowledge is congruent with that of L2:when he is lack of related L2 context in the process of speaking or writing, at the sametime his L1 contextual knowledge will come up and trigger its corresponding L1linguistic forms to compensate, in this case it may come about idiomatic English,namely, L1 plays its positive role.In the second place, if the learners’ L1 contextual knowledge is different from thatof L2: when the learner has trouble in describing what he wants to say or write, whilethe L1 contextual knowledge occurs and activates its correlated L1 linguistic forms tomake up. During this procedure, owing to the lack of L2 contextual knowledge learnershave the habit of translating Chinese to English one by one to convey his intendedmeaning, which may result in wrong expressions or inappropriate description. In thiscase, L1 may play a negative role in SLA.From the interview and collected data, it obviously reveals that if the original ideais accordant with the L2 context, then the L2 linguistic forms and contextual knowledgecan be matched properly and correctly. Otherwise, it may lead to the mismatch of L1contextual knowledge and L2 linguistic forms.
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References (omitted)
硕士英语毕业论文范文篇九
Chapter 1 Introduction
1.1 Background of the Study
Theoretically, English Curriculum Standards of Compulsory Education has beenannounced in 2011, it has some distinct characteristics: firstly, it pays more attention tothe coordinated development between language knowledge and language skills; secondly，it puts forward several levels of the objectives and requirements about language skillsbased on the students' physical and psychological characteristics, cognitive developmentand emotional needs. English Curriculum Standard proposes task-based teaching model,which means that it requires the language goals through completing the tasks given byteachers. In the basic education stage, the English classrooms，projects are: to inspire andcultivate students' interest in learning English, make them build up self-confidence,develop good study habits and form effective learning strategies, develop autonomiclearning and cooperative learning, and make the students master some basic skills ofEnglish: listening，speaking, reading and writing so as to form a comprehensive abilityfor language use. In order to develop students' language skills, teachers should allocatetasks to students. Also, under the guidance of teachers，teachers should help studentsachieve the target and gain feelings of success through the perception, experience,practice, participation and cooperation. At the same time, from the aspect of theevaluation of students' comprehensive language skills, only by optimizing the evaluationmode，we can guarantee the effectiveness of the evaluation.Actually, with the development of English teaching reform, task-based teachingmethod has drawn more and more attention of English teachers in middle school, but thetask-based teaching method has not been applied in the whole middle school writingclass. At present, the result of writing teaching is not as good as expected. Most of thestudents who have learned English for many years still couldn't effectively listen, speak,read or write in English. What's worse, the students have even kept away from English,many students regard writing as a different task (Li Xiuling, 2008:36).
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1.2 Theoretical Significance
Portfolio evaluation is based on the file cover, it devotes to give a comprehensiveevaluation of the objects. The portfolio evaluation belongs to a kind of developmentalevaluation. It's aroused in the United States in late 1980s, as a new teaching evaluationmethod which appears with the movement of educational evaluation reform. The contentof the portfolio evaluation is the description of students' progress, but not just thematerials piled up by students. As an assessment tool，the file cover is made by studentsand teachers，they are conducted to collect related materials systematically which is usedto check some students' efforts，progress and achievements (Li Zhaozeng，2003:61).Task-based teaching is mainly based on the theory of constructivism and payingattention to the integration of learning and doing (Long and Crookes, 1992). Thetask-based teaching method puts the basic concepts of language application into concreteclassroom instruction by means of “learning in doing，，，which helps the students learnand use language (Cheng Xiaotang, 2004:125).Constructivism is sprung up in 1990s in the west, and it is extensively used in ourcountry in 21th. It mainly emphasizes that the central position of students are in the class，the topic of the constructivism is that lea) \g is an active process. Task-based teachingmethod is an inheritec communicative teaching method which is based on the idea thatlanguage is used for communication, aiming at developing students' communicativecompetence (Fang Wenli, 2003:9).
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Chapter2 Literature Review
2.1 Present Situation of Portfolio Evaluation at Home and Abroad
The study on portfolio evaluation is relatively rich abroad, but the special study ofEnglish writing portfolio is little (Zhou Xiaorong，2007(3):93-95). The research mainlyconcentrate on the differences between traditional writing evaluation and record bag(Gearhart and Whittaker, 1992:4-15); the application value of portfolio is makinglearners and evaluators be willing to participate in it positively (Kemp, 1998). As for theportfolio evaluation, the study of the theoiy and the range of the application have beenmoved from the first language to the second language (Weigle, 2002).The portfolio evaluation has been introduced relatively late to China. In the earlystage, the concentration was just the theory itself. Zhang Lili started from the definitionof growth process portfolio in 2002 (Zhang Lili，2002:36). In 2003, Huang Guangyangstudied from the philosophical foundation of portfolio evaluation (Huang Guangyang,2003:50-55). In recent years, researches have mainly stressed on the practical applicationin domestic; Cheng Junrong explored an effective way to improve students' self-directedlearning ability, which is the way of establishing the archives for students' writingachievement in 2008. Zhen Li (2009) pointed out that the portfolio evaluation conformedto the current trend of the development of foreign language evaluation when she studiedthe portfolio evaluation in the English reading course. In 2009, Wang BenfU pointed outthat the portfolio evaluation had been widely used in various types of management andachieved good results. Throughout the domestic research, the possess of researchersstarted from the initial stage of the portfolio evaluation theory, then committed to apply itinto various of disciplines，but they were all at the initial stage at present; the research ofusing it in English writing was relatively less, it still has not formed a systematic andlocalization theory. In a word，the application of portfolio evaluation is also in anexploration stage.
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2.2 Task-based Teaching Research Status at Home and Abroad
Task-based leaching method is one of the most important language teachingmethods. It is put forward by the foreign language teaching researches and the secondlanguage acquisition researchers in the 1980s on the basis of a large number of practices.Meanwhile, task-based language teaching approach is a kind of foreign teaching method,which is developed in the modem time and embodies the advanced educational concept.It is a kind of development pattern from the communicative approach, and it is first putforward by Prabhu who is a communicative teaching advocate. Many researchers abroadhave done plenty of studies on task-based teaching method, such as Long, Ellis, Breen,Nunan, Krashen. Task-based teaching method has got rapid growth in foreign languageteaching since it was introduced into China in the 1980s. Both He Anping and FengYufang thought that task-based teaching method was the trend of current foreignlanguage teaching in China. Cheng Kela，Cai Lanzhen and Liu Fusheng considered thattask-based teaching method contained the second language acquisition theory. Gong Yafii，Luo Shaoqian hold that task-based teaching method comes from the integration amongthe second language acquisition theory, social constructivism theory and curriculumtheory (Gong Yafu,Luo Shaoqian, 2003:96-106). Ge WenShan，Lu Li and Li Zhen hassearched for a task-based teaching class mode for middle school English teaching (LuYan, 2008:58-60). Lu Ziwen, Gong Yafu, Luo Shaoqian, Cheng Xiaotang have donesome detailed discussions on the basic concept, the main principle and the design of thetask, they gave an important guiding role for middle school English teachers in their dailyteaching (Cheng Xiaotang, 2004:125).
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Chapter 3 Theoretical Foundations..........10
3.1 Constructivism.........10
3.1.1 Learning Theory and Epistemology in Constructivism.........10
3.1.2 The Conception of Constructivist Teaching.........11
3.2 Portfolio Evaluation.........14
3.3 Task-based Teaching Method.........20
Chapter4 Experiment of Task-based Teaching in English Writing.........26
4.1 Research Design.........26
4.2 The Application of Portfolio Evaluation.........27
4.3 Model of the Task-based English Writing Teaching.........38
Chapter 5 Analysis and Discussion.........44
5.1 Case Analysis.........44
5.2 Experimental Data Collection and Analysis.........50
5.3The Result of the Experiment.........56
Chapter 5 Analysis and Discussion
5.1 Case Analysis
According to the manipulation steps of portfolio evaluation and the principles of thetask-basea writing teaching, the aiu. designs a task-based writing class combined withthe portfolio e\ iluation . Following is a case.Guide students to read the article introduced the city in the text. Through thediscussion and summary, teach them determine how to introduce a place, which aspectsshould be involved. Finally, choose some aspects to write a letter to introduce to ourhometown - Xinyang to the new-comingsStudents conduct to summarize, imitate and combine based on the existingmaterials. And do some writing used the related vocabularies and grammar. In theprocess of writing, students will encounter many problems.
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Conclusion
This paper has summarized the theory about the portfolio evaluation and thetask-based method，and also studied the relationship among them in the writing class.Therefore, the author carried out the task-based teaching method and the portfolioevaluation in middle school English writing class, aiiring to ；plore whether theportfolio evaluation is the feasible or effective for the task-based writing class. Afteranalyzing of the questionnaires and experimental data，the empirical study has shown thatthe training of task-based writing teaching and the portfolio evaluation could yieldsignificant results, and the improvement of students in English writing is obvious，what'smore，student's comprehensive language application ability has got some increase. The portfolio evaluation can provide teachers with many opportunities tocooperate with students and bring about sense of achievement. We enforce multipleprinciples to assess students' growth, which is based on students' self-assessment，peer-assessment assisted by teacher，s assessment. The process of portfolio evaluation isdynamic and it treasures the process of thinking and making progress. It enhances theunderstanding and cooperation between English teachers and parents, making sure bothsides are proud of students' progress and achievements. This way would be in favor ofboosting parents responsibility so as to cooperate with teachers closely on educatingstudents.
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References (omitted)
硕士英语毕业论文范文篇十
Chapter One Introduction
1.1 Motivation of the Study
In writing the grammar of any language, a linguist will classify the lexicon of thelanguage into a number of word classes or “parts-of-speech”. While word classdistinctions are found in every language, it is a well-known fact that there is aconsiderable variations across languages with regard to the number of distinctions madeand the places in the lexicon where the piding line between word classes are drawn(Schachter, 1985). Within this range of variation, however, there is at least onepart-of-speech distinction that is attested in all languages, namely the distinctionbetween the major word classes, i.e., nouns and verbs. As opposed to the nouns andverbs, adjectives do not constitute a universal linguistic category. While inIndo-European languages, for instance, a distinction can be made between nouns, verbsand a third open class of adjectives, this is by no means the case for all languages.Unlike most of the Indo-European languages, of which word classes in most cases canbe easily distinguished from each other even at the first glimpse of their spelling forms(that is, from their derivative suffixes or inflectional morphology), Mandarin Chinese,as a typical isolated language, has no pure suffixes to form a certain kind of words ormorphological changes to represent the grammatical categories like number, case, tense,or aspect, etc. This, to some extent, brings about a great difficulty in piding wordclasses of Chinese lexical items and it has remained to be a tough issue for a long time.
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1.2 Objectives of The Study
More often we can distinguish verbs from adjectives by some criteria, but in somecases, for instance, when we move our eyes to ‘aspect’ - what is generally thought to bethe main feature of verbs, we confront with the fact that there remains a discrepancy inidentifying the word class of “X” in the construction “X + aspect markers (i.e.,zhe/le/guo, etc.)” in Mandarin Chinese - here, to be easily distinguished from theadjectives used in other context, we temporarily use “X” to stand for the adjectives usedin occurrence with the aspect markers. Although quite a lot of scholars have made theirefforts to analyze and interpret it, yet they failed to reach a consensus even on thecategory that “X” in the construction belongs to.Thus, our great interest is evoked by the distribution and interpretation of differentsorts of adjectives in the construction. In the thesis, we will firstly present the debate onthe A-V pision in the construction “X + aspect markers”, and give a brief review ofthe previous research achievements on the construction from different perspectives aswell as a comment on them. Afterwards, as it is a fact that the use of aspect makerssomehow influences the interpretation of these adjectives in the construction, the thesis,on the basis of analyzing the compatibility of different kind of adjectives with aspectmarkers, holds that in Mandarin Chinese, some adjectives (it can be easily found outthat most of them are those so-called monosyllabic dynamic adjectives.) inco-occurrence with the aspect markers, to a certain extent, have some properties ofverbs as they are used as predicates, and we will attempt to sort out their subtle semanticfeatures from several dimensions.
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Chapter Two Literature Review
2.1 Introduction
As mentioned above, adjectives in Mandarin Chinese have been studied by a lot ofscholars and many interesting facts have been revealed. When we focus on theconstruction “X + aspect markers (i.e., zhe/le/guo, etc.)”, there is a problem. A numberof scholars have also noticed the construction “X + aspect markers” and have madetheir efforts to analyze and interpret it, yet there is still a debate even on the categorythat “X” in the construction belongs to.In the following part we will at first provide a brief a brief review of some of theprevious researches on the construction. For the lacking of finite verbs and inflectionalmorphology, Chinese aspects are often marked by some optional particles. Theseparticles are called aspect markers, which are used to represent different state of eventin the time of a situation described by the sentence. Most analyses of Chinese aspectfocus on the four aspect markers: le, guo, zhe, and zai. The following part will firstlypresent these aspect markers.
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2.2 The Four Aspect Markers in Chinese
In the following section, we will account for the use of the four aspect markers.But we should keep in mind that there are great differences between Chinese andEnglish. This difference between Chinese and English is based on the analysis thatChinese is “result-oriented” whereas English is more “action-oriented” (Li, 1990). Weshall see how these aspect markers in Chinese signal the aspectual system of thelanguage and how they influence the semantic interpretation of predicate as follows. In general, the markers le is thought to be a perfective marker, which expresses an event in a whole duration, as a situation, with no reference to its internal structure,bounded at the beginning and the end. Therefore, le has often been described as a signalto mark completion (Chao, 1968). However, there are some other scholars who attachan importance on the perfectivity of le and they argue that le does not represent acompleted event or action by itself (Li & Thompson, 1981). They hold that theinterpretation of completion often comes from the meaning of the verb followed by le.For instance, le indicates that the event comes to its natural finishing point, that is, it iscompleted when the verb describes a situation with a clear boundary in time. However,when the verb expresses a situation without a natural temporal boundary, le used in sucha situation is not to signal the completion but the termination of a situation.
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Chapter Three Theoretic Framework..........25
3.1 Introduction.........25
3.2 Tense and Aspect.........26
3.3 Vendler’s Four Aspectual Classes.........28
3.4 Chinese Aspect System.........30
3.5 Aspectual Coercion.........32
3.6 Summary.........37
Chapter Four Analysis on Semantic Features.........38
4.1 Introduction.........38
4.2 The Change of State.........39
4.3 The Semantic Features.........40
4.6 Summary.........42
Chapter Four Analysis on Semantic Features
4.1 Introduction
A long tradition of research supports the idea that the direction of derivation in thecausative/inchoative alternation is conditioned by whether the event denoted by a verbhas a cause external to the single argument of the intransitive or one brought about bythe single argument of the intransitive (Smith 1970; Croft 1990).
4.2 The Change of State
Two different types of states underlie change of state verbs (COS) like redden andbreak. Adjectival states like red (also called property concepts, Dixon 1982) entail noprior change, and hence it can be denied that there was an event leading up to the state,as in “The dirt is red, but nobody reddened it”. With result states like broken, however,such denial leads to contradiction, as in “#The broken light-pole never did break”.Similarly, while result states can be modified by adverbials, owing to the fact that anevent underlies the state, as in the naturally occurring the quickly broken compromise,adjectival states cannot be so modified, as evidenced by the oddness of “the quicklyred house”.
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Conclusion
Adjectives in Mandarin Chinese have become a hot academic target among theresearchers. In most cases, we can distinguish verbs from adjectives by some criteria.But there are still cases in which the use of adjectives and verbs are mixed.After presenting the discrepancy between scholars towards the question about whatkind of word class the “X” should be classified when it is used together with aspectmarkers, the thesis provide a brief review for the previous researches from severalperspectives. This thesis has examined the semantic features of Chinese adjectives inthe construction “X + aspect markers”, by focusing the interaction between variousadjectives and aspect markers under the assumption of aspectual coercion. The mainconclusions have been drawn from the effects that the aspectual operators bring about tothe subtle meaning shift that the adjectives undergo.In this paper, I explore the derivational relationship between adjectives and verbsin Mandarin Chinese, a question complicated by a controversy over whether anindependent class of adjectives needs to be posited in the language. I argue that only onekind of regular derivational relation between these predicates is attested in Mandarin:COS verbs may be systematically derived from adjectives, but there is nocorrespondingly systematic derivation of result state adjectives from COS verbs. Thekey contrast is in the regularity of the derivation: I argue that Mandarin has bothdeadjectival COS verbs and deverbal result state adjectives, but only the former aresystematically available, while the availability of the latter is determined byconceptual-pragmatic rather than grammatical factors.
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