语言水平和准备时间对中国英语学习者口语准确度的影响开题报告

1. 研究目的与意义（文献综述包含参考文献）

Literature Review 2.1 Theoretical issues 2.1.1 Levelts Model of Oral Production An influential model of speech production is put forward by Levelt in 1989. Declarative knowledge is distinguished from procedural knowledge. Automatic processing is differentiated from controlled processing. Levelt`s speech production model consists of the following components: a knowledge component, a conceptualized, a formulator, an articulacy and a speech-comprehension system. What is most close to oral output is the conceptualization, the formulator and the articulator. In the conceptualization, the speaker chooses the declarative knowledge related to the intentions and orders the information for pre-verbal message. In the formulator, the speaker selects acceptable language forms from the mental lexicon to convert pre-verbal messages into phonological plans. Then the actual speech is realized in the articulator. 2.1.2 Language proficiency The definition of language proficiency is the ability of an individual to perform or speak in an acquired language. To some degree language proficiency implies SFL learners language skill. Reading English journal articles has been an important way for English learners to improve their language proficiency. The relationship between language proficiency and oral output is a little complex--there exists a linear relationship between language proficiency and oral accuracy, which implies that compared with complexity and fluency, accuracy is the most significant index to explore oral competence. 2.1.3 Planning According to L2 studies and task-based studies, planning is the cognitive process of considering or organizing what you will do in the event of something happening. This process covers both preverbal automation (Levelt, 1977; Baars, 1980) and long-range organization of expression. In light of preceding studies, giving learners the opportunity to plan a narrative before they speak it (i.e., pretask planning) brings about momentous gains in accuracy. Many SLA learners especially learners who are at low levels, they are unable to obtain immediate plans in most cases and have to recreate the plan. In addition, the process of recreating the plan is under control of high-intensity consciousness. In order to ease the tenseness, pre-task planning is recommended as an effective solution to improve oral output and reduce communication pressure (Crooks, 1989:11; Foster Skehan, 1996:18). It is witnessed that pre-task planning has a significant effect on SLA learners lectures. 2.1.4 Accuracy The fact that in most the researches settling similar questions is taken into consideration, a criteria for evaluating accuracy includes phonological, grammatical, morphological, social-linguistic and other elements. However in oral-accuracy-related researches, grammatical accuracy is believed to be the major element. Some of the researchers (Crookes 1998; Wigglesworth 1997) concentrated on a certain part of grammatical accuracy, for example the correct use of articles, while testing accuracy. Foster, Tohkyn As-unit" to measure the oral accuracy of 10 freshmen of English major (Xu, 2005). That is, accuracy is reflected by REFAS (ratio of error-free As-unit), REW (ratio of errors per100 words) and SRE (ratio of self-repairs). 2.1.5 The interplay of language proficiency and planning on oral production For decades, a lot of studies have been carried out to investigate oral accuracy, planning time and language proficiency separately both at home and abroad (Yang, 2008; Gu, 2007; Zhang, 2003), but there are much fewer studies conducted on the interrelationship among oral accuracy, planning time and language proficiency of Chinese EFL learners. Therefore, the interplay of language proficiency and planning on oral production is still unclear. 2.2 Empirical studies 2.2.1 Studies on the effects of language proficiency on oral production There are differences in accuracy among learners in the same proficiency level no matter which language proficiency level they are in. only a minority of learners can attain high accuracy. Middle and low level learners can make much progress in oral accuracy. In combinations with oral performance, learners with the highest accuracy may not obtain the highest grade (Pan, 2013). Based on Chen and Yues experiment, 35 English majors were tested by story-retelling and spontaneous speech tasks. The analysis indicated that language proficiency has different influences on accuracy and complexity with significant influence on accuracy. 2.2.2 Studies on the effects of planning on oral production The form and the meaning of the target language can be taken into account by China EFL learners with pre-task planning. By virtue of pre-task planning, EFL learners have more chances to reconstruct the internal language knowledge involving integrating new language items and restructuring the language knowledge that EFL learners have mastered. The first meaningful research on pre-task planning was done by Ellis. By means of the task of describing some pictures, Ellis compared the accuracy of using the past tense based on different planning time. After comprehensive analysis, it was found that pre-task planning indeed improved oral output accuracy to some degree (Ortega, 1999: 221). Compared with linguists who study pre-task planning from the angle of the length of time alone, more scholars carry out their research of pre-task planning in a comprehensive way. Foster chose EFL learners as participants to study the effects of pre-task planning on oral production. By designing different cognitive levels of tasks, the study found that the performance of prepared students was better than those without preparation in oral fluency, oral accuracy, sentence structure diversity and complexity. Furthermore, the more difficult the task was, the more obvious the distinction was. To investigate the effects of planning time on Chinas EFL learners oral accuracy, the study (Zhang, 2003) found that the length of planning time is related to interpreters subjective and objective factors. More interpreters are willing to make preparations for terminology. Many SLA learners especially learners who are at low levels, they are unable to obtain immediate plans in most cases and have to recreate the plan. In addition, the process of recreating the plan is under control of high-intensity consciousness. In order to relieve the sense of tension, pre-task planning is recommended as an effective solution to improve oral output and reduce communication pressure (Crooks, 1989: 11; Foster Skehan, 1996: 18). It is witnessed that pre-task planning has an optimistic effect on SLA learners lectures. 2.2.3 Studies on the effects of language proficiency and planning on oral production An quantitative and qualitative research was conducted on fluency(Zhang，2000; Wu，2001). They analyzed the records of 12 students picture compositions twice and the interval period was 28 weeks. It was found that the development of accuracy was a U-shaped development. Students ignored accuracy in order to obtain the expression of fluency, syntactic complexity and content coherence. Previous studies paid more attention to the effect of language proficiency on oral accuracy and the effect of planning time on oral accuracy respectively. There were few researches on the interaction effects of language proficiency and planning time on oral accuracy. That is the reason why I want to do research on the topic. 2.2.4 Limitations of previous studies For the past few years, an increasing number of researchers and scholars have come into notice the necessities of studying the potential relations between planning time and language proficiency on EFL speakers oral performances, especially oral accuracy. However, there still exist some shortages in related researches. Firstly, despite the fact that several researches have been conducted to study the relations between planning time oral competence and language proficiency oral competence, the number of relevant researches is far from enough. In addition, so far these researches mainly have been done abroad. Secondly, researches of previous studies on the relationship between language proficiency and oral accuracy are not fertile enough and fewer findings are yielded, compared with the relationship between planning time and oral accuracy. Thirdly, it remains unclear whether certain circumstances like planning time or language proficiency have positive effects on oral accuracy or not due to the fact that the results of studies are rather inconsistent.. In a word, there are still many gaps in the previous studies that need to be filled, which call for the implement of the current study.

2. 研究的基本内容、问题解决措施及方案

Methodology 3.1 Research questions The present study basically is intended to investigate the effects of planning time, language proficiency on Chinas EFL learners oral accuracy. This study will answer the following questions: 1. Is there any effect of planning time on Chinese EFL learners oral accuracy? 2. Is there any effect of language proficiency on Chinese EFL learnersoral accuracy? 3. Does the effect of planning time on oral accuracy vary accordingly to the differences of language proficiency? 3.2 Participants The research will be conducted in two intact classes in Nanjing Tech University. The participants are 51 sophomores of English major in Nanjing Tech University. And all of these subjects are native Chinese speakers and come from the same grade. They will be divided into four groups (i.e.with planning time group and without planning time group) based on their CET-4 scores. They are low-proficiency with planning time group, low-proficiency without planning time group, high-proficiency with planning time group and high-proficiency without planning time group. 3.3 Data collection 3.3.1 Proficiency Level In this study, participants will be divided into two groups-one is low proficiency group, the other is high proficiency group. 3.3.2 Picture-narrative task The instruments used in this study will include one questionaire and a picture-narrative task. The questionnaire about planning time aims to investigate the behavior and thoughts of the subjects while planning the task. Those students will be asked to tell a story based on the pictures given with different planning time in the language lab. And it will be an oral test conducted in the normal class time. The title of the English-story is chosen from a standard oral examination. The task is as hard as that in CET-4. And students will be expected to talk as much as possible. All the participants will be given six successive pictures and then asked to describe what is going on according to the pictures. The story is mainly about the three little boys who are expecting a bus to come but fail to get on the bus due to another three boys who come later but manage to catch the bus by jumping the queue and what happens after they find the bus they miss breaks down and cant go any further. 51 English majors will participate in the research and each of them will complete the test in the given time. Meanwhile, the oral presentations of the participants will be recorded as audio digital files and then transcribed. Then the oral transcripts will be cross-checked carefully by the transcribers and the researcher against the original digital files. The final version of the text will be word-for-word record of what is exactly uttered by the subjects. Therefore, the test will be fair and creditable. 3.3.3 Proficiency test The proficiency test which we adopt is called college English Test (CET-4) and is the national English level test in China. CET-4 is capable of evaluating the English level of college students objectively and accurately and to improve the instruction to some degree. In order to improve the reliability and validity of CET-4, a series of perform measures have been conducted. Therefore CET-4 is authoritative enough to be accepted in this study. 3.4 Procedure The procedure will be made of three stages: Firstly, 51 sophomores will be grouped into two groups based on their CET-4 grades (i.e. low-level group and high-level group). The first group will stand for the low-level group, whose score range from 462 to 539, and the second group-25 subjects will represent the high-level group, whose score range from 545 to 631. Secondly, 51 participants will be chosen to form two groups (i.e. Long-planning time group and short-planning group). 28 students will be divided into two groups with one of them given five minutes to prepare while the left 23 subjects no time before the test starts. Thirdly, the research will be administered to measure the subjects oral accuracy in terms of the two indices- the percentage of the clauses that are not erroneous and the percentage of all verbs that are used correctly according to aspect, tense, subject-verb agreement, and modality.