会话中的回声式反应——中国的大学专业英语学习者与英语本族语使用者对比研究

对来自西南大学的10位英语专业四年级学生进行了一个英语会话测试以便收集其会话语料,并对他们与Zhang(2002)所报告的本族语使用者在英语会话中使用回声式反应的比率进行了对比分析。结果显示,与本族语使用者相比,学生在英语交谈中,对回声式反应使用不足。该结果的启示是,应把英语本族语使用者的口语语料库作为中国大学的英语口语课程的材料编写的最有效的来源之一,以便于学习者观察和模仿到更为地道的英语口语表达。

Echoing in Conversation:A Comparison Between Chinese College English Majors and Native English Speakers

As shown in some corpus-based studies(e.g.,Zhang,2002),native English speakers tend to respond in conversation to their interlocutors in an echoing mode.Yet it remains unclear how much Chinese-speaking college English learners differ from the native English speakers in using this mode.Thus,an English conversational test was given to 10 fourth-year English majors from Southwest University to obtain data of their conversational responses,and their frequencies of using the echoing mode were compared with native speakers’ frequencies reported in Zhang(2002).The result showed that the Chinese students tended to underuse echoing,compared with the native speakers.This result revealed an aspect of the students’ incompetence in English speaking and a problem in college oral English teaching in the Chinese context as well.The result implies that correct English may not be appropriate and idiomatic English,and that authentic oral English by native speakers from spoken English corpora can and should be introduced as important materials into oral English class in Chinese colleges.