【作者】 于香；

【导师】 俞洪亮；

【作者基本信息】 扬州大学 ， 英语语言文学， 2008， 硕士

【摘要】 本研究描述了中国英语专业二年级学生在口头叙事语篇中一般过去时使用的总体特征,主要回答三个问题:1)在故事复述任务中,中国二语学习者使用一般过去时有什么总体特征?2)不同口语水平的学习者使用一般过去时有什么差异?3)使用一般过去时与学习者口语成绩有何关系?本研究使用的语料来源于中国学习者语料库(SWECCL),从中抽取复述故事任务所产生的语料计60个样本,按照测试者在全国英语专业四级口语测试中的成绩分为高水平组和低水平组。通过数据统计分析,有以下主要发现:首先,在故事复述中,一般过去时是使用频次最高的时态形式,占所有动词时态形式的56.65%,这与口语测试任务效应有关,因为测试任务要求测试者复述的是有关叙述个人过去经历的故事。其次,在样本中,一般过去时的使用情况可分为四种类型:表述习惯性过去动作、习惯性过去状态、具体过去动作和具体过去状态。个案研究表明,在使用频次上,过去动作动词大于过去状态动词,这一结果并不奇怪,故事原文本身讲述的是过去的事,其中所描述的行为动作多于状态,同时也说明测试者在认知上具有使用过去时来叙述过去经历的意识。这一点也可以从具体的四种类型的使用情况中得到验证:在所有过去动作动词中,描述具体过去动作动词的使用频率大于习惯性过去状态动词(分别是58.32%和5.32 %);同样,具体过去状态动词使用的频率大于习惯性过去状态动词。第三,独立样本T-检验显示,高水平组和低水平组在一般过去时总体使用情况在频率上具有显著差异,且一般过去时各类型的使用频率也均具有显著差异,其中原因可能是高分组由于语言水平较高,在完成复述任务时,注意力资源可以合理分配到过去时的使用,也可以兼顾到故事原文的内容,而低水平组往往只能将大部分注意力放在故事内容上,无法顾及语言形式。微观分析表明,与高水平组相比,低水平组更倾向于使用习惯性过去动作和习惯性过去状态,在某种程度上影响了他们的口语水平。另外,低水平组的口头产出在篇幅上相对较短,最终影响了过去时使用的总频次。最后,相关性分析表明,一般过去时使用的总频次以及一般过去时各类型的使用频次均与测试者的成绩呈显著正相关,说明过去时的使用可以作为一个有效指标来衡量二语学习者的口语水平。本研究的结果对教学有几点启示。从教师的角度看,在评价学习者口头叙事语篇时,过去时的使用情况可作为主要的有效评分指标之一。从学习者角度看,在口语训练中,特别是训练叙述技能,学习者需要加强使用过去时描述具体过去动作或具体过去状态的意识。更多还原

【Abstract】 This study was undertaken to investigate the use of simple past tense by Chinese EFL learners in their oral narrative discourse in a testing context. It seeks to describe the general characteristics of test-takers’use of simple past tense in their oral production driven by the task of story-retelling, and explore the differences in the use of simple past tense across learners of different levels. The ultimate purpose of the study is to examine the relationship between the use of simple past tense and the learners’oral performances.The materials employed in the study were 60 cases taken from SWECCL, a Chinese learner corpus. On the basis of the test-takers’oral performances on the TEM-Band 4 Oral Test, the sampled cases were divided into high- and low-level groups. The data analysis yielded the following major findings:Firstly, of all the occurrences of different tenses, simple past tense enjoys the highest frequency of use in the learners’narrative discourse. Of all the verbs identified in the sampled cases, simple tense accounts for 56.41%. Such a tendency is related to the effect of the task that requires the test-takers to reproduce the story in which the past tense is overwhelmingly used to tell the personal past experiences.Secondly, the use of past tense by the test-takers in the task of story retelling can be categorized into two broad types: simple past tense intended to describe past actions and past states, and they could be further divided into 4 sub-types: habitual past actions, specific past actions, and habitual past states and specific past states.Case analysis indicates that verbs of past actions were used more than those of past states, suggesting that the use of past tense was influenced by the original story to be reproduced, on the one hand, and that the learners were cognitively aware of how the personal past experiences were represented in the use of past tense, on the other. Such a finding could be supported by the occurrences of subtypes of the past actions and past states: Of all the identified instances of past actions, specific past actions were used much more frequently than habitual ones (58.32% and 5.32% respectively). Similarly, specific past states enjoy a higher frequency of use than habitual past states.Thirdly, the independent sample T-test reveals that there is significant difference between higher and lower achievers in the frequency of use of simple past tense and the frequency distribution of each type (except verbs describing habitual past states). The possible explanation for this is that higher achievers were linguistically proficient enough to allocate their attentional resources to both the use of past tense and the content of the original story, whereas low achievers were likely to allocate much of their attention to the story content. The micro-analysis conducted in some of lower-level cases indicates that the lower achievers tended to use more verbs of habitual past actions and states than the higher achievers. In addition, their production was in general smaller in length in comparison with higher achievers’, naturally leading to the lower frequency of use of past tense.Finally, the correlation analysis indicates that the use of simple past tense is positively correlated with the test-takers’oral performances, suggesting that the use of past tense may become an effective indicator of EFL learners’oral performances.Pedagogically, from the teacher’s perspective, the use of simple past tense can be used as one of the effective means in oral assessment. From the learners’perspective, learning effort should be directed to their awareness of the use of more specific past actions or states in the narrative discourse.更多还原