（外国语言学及应用语言学专业论文）大学英语课堂元语言的实证研究.pdf

descriptive chinese abstract i 摘 要 “元语言” 这一概念 20 世纪 30 年代由波兰逻辑学家 alfred tarski提出时, 指谈论 语言自身的语言，从而与谈论客观事物的“对象语言”进行区分。长期以来，元语言研 究局限于哲学领域，语言学界，尤其是应用语言学界和外语教学界, 未对此引起足够重 视。直到李葆嘉(2002)提出哲学的元语言和语言学的元语言两大分野，这一区分推动了 语言学的元语言(linguistic metalanguage)的研究。 本研究关注作为元语言使用最普遍的场 所 语言课堂，运用语言及语言教学的相关理论，以大学英语课堂教学语言作为研究 对象，归纳其作为元语言一种的形式和特点，揭示其描写模式和解释模式，以此验证课 堂语言研究作为考察语言课堂教学的一种途径。 本文在国内外元语言、元语言学及课堂语言研究成果的基础上，从元语言的一般概 念出发，讨论了大学英语课堂元语言的定义和研究范围，将其规定为描述和解释语言的 语言，自然语言形式的人工语言和兼顾知识和能力的语言三种概念。在此定位下，讨论 了课堂语言相关因素，并结合 krashen的输入- 输出理论，建构了检验大学英语课堂元语 言的标准。以标准为尺度，分析了教学诸因素与课堂教学语言的关系，并探讨了语言输 入和输出的元语言特征，强调教师的语言输入和学生的语言输出应具互动性。本文作者 针对研究的实践性，进行了大学英语课堂元语言使用情况的实证调查，采用课堂观察、 问卷调查和访谈的方式采集了相关数据，分析了其元语言的现实状况，并运用实证研究 的成果，讨论了教学问题及对策。 本研究得出的结论有两个：一是分析了大学英语课堂教学语言的元语言性质，归纳 了其元语言的形式及内容（表达方式、组织形式、句型特征、问句特点和互动模式等） ， 从中观察和分析了现阶段英语课堂教学的问题（如教师教学观的片面性导致元语言的固 化从而影响学生的学习积极性等） ；二是指出了对元语言研究及英语教学实践的启示作 用：研究者和教育工作者应把握元语言研究领域、研究对象、研究方法及其发展趋势； 应理解元语言理论对教学实践的指导作用及教学实践对元语言理论的参考价值；应强调 教师的作用和以教学目的为导向的教学观的建立，发展综合化教学模式和多样化教学技 巧，培养学生及教师自身的元语言能力等。本文作者认为，课堂元语言不仅是元语言研 究的重要课题，也是考察课堂教学的有效途径，在这一领域的深入研究将有助于我国元 语言理论建构及外语教学理论与实践的发展。 关键词：大学英语课堂；元语言概念；元语言；课堂教学语言 english abstract ii abstract in the 1930s, polish logician alfred tarski originally presented the notion “metalanguage” , which refers to the language used to talk about the language itself and is distinguished from “ object language” used to talk about the objective world. for a long period, it has been restrained in the field of philosophy and has not received much attention from the field of linguistics, especially applied linguistics and foreign language teaching. the distinction of philosophical metalanguage and linguistic metalanguage initiated by li baojia (2002) accelerates the research on linguistic metalanguage. in light of the related theories of linguistics and language teaching, this study focuses language classroom in which metalanguage is used widely, takes language in college english classroom as the research object to elaborate the form and content of it as one kind of metalanguage so as to generalize its specific model to interpret and describe language. in this way, the paper attempts to prove that classroom language research is an access to evaluate language classroom teaching. based on the related achievements of the researches on metalanguage, metalinguistics and classroom language abroad and at home, this paper discusses the definition and scope of metalanguage in college english classroom in terms of the concept of metalanguage in general, and elaborates its nature as descriptive and interpretive language, artificial language in the form of natural language and language including metalinguistic knowledge and metalinguistic competence. under this orientation, the criterion to evaluate metalanguage in college english classroom is established，combined with the discussion about related factors and input- output hypothesis. several aspects concerned about language teaching are analyzed, the metalinguistic nature of language input and output is discussed and the interaction between teachers input and students output is emphasized. the paper centers on the empirical study of metalanguage in college english classroom. it collects the data from classroom observation and survey by questionnaire and interview, analyzes actual status of metalanguage and discusses the problems and solutions. major findings of the research can be generalized into two parts. one part is about the metalinguistic nature of teaching language in college english classrooms, form and content of metlanguage (main expressive forms, organizational models, patterns of sentence and questions, interaction modes and strategies and so on), and the problems of it (e.g. unilateral teaching views lead to static metalanguage which affect students enthusiasm). the other part is about the implications for metalinguistic research and teaching practice. it is suggested that researchers and educators should notice the trend of research fields, objects and methods of english abstract iii metalinguistic research and understand that metalinguistic theory guides teaching practice while teaching practice provides reference for metalinguistic theory. besides, teachers role and their views guided by teaching aims should be emphasized, comprehensive teaching models and various techniques should be developed and metalinguistic competence and awareness of teachers and students should be cultivated in teaching. in the author s opinion, classroom metalanguage is not only an important subject in the research of metalanguage, but also a valid access to evaluate classroom teaching. deep research in this field will promote the development of the theory and practice of metalanguage and foreign language teaching in china. key words: college english classroom; the concept of metalanguage; metalanguage; classroom teaching language 湘潭大学 学位论文原创性声明 本人郑重声明：所呈交的论文是本人在导师的指导下独立进行研究所取得的 研究成果。除了文中特别加以标注引用的内容外，本论文不包含任何其他个人或 集体已经发表或撰写的成果作品。对本文的研究做出重要贡献的个人和集体，均 已在文中以明确方式标明。本人完全意识到本声明的法律后果由本人承担。 作者签名： 日期： 年 月 日 学位论文版权使用授权书 本学位论文作者完全了解学校有关保留、使用学位论文的规定，同意学校保 留并向国家有关部门或机构送交论文的复印件和电子版，允许论文被查阅和借 阅。本人授权湘潭大学可以将本学位论文的全部或部分内容编入有关数据库进行 检索，可以采用影印、缩印或扫描等复制手段保存和汇编本学位论文。 涉密论文按学校规定处理。 作者签名： 日期： 年 月 日 导师签名： 日期： 年 月 日 introduction 0.1 1 introduction 0.1 motivation of the study with the development of international communication, english as a most widely used language has been paid more and more concern. our society is in great demand for college students with high english proficiency, so college english is an obligatory course in most colleges and universities in china. however, there still exist some problems in college english teaching. since most college english classrooms in china are english as foreign language (efl) classrooms, the language which teachers and students used to establish an environment of english language should be explored to find the problems and solutions of college english teaching. as tarsky stated, language can be divided into two levels: the first- level language is “ object language” used to talk about the world around, while the second- level language is “ metalanguage” used to talk about object language (qtd. in jokobson 356). it can be inferred that in language classrooms, metalanguage is the language used to talk about the target language. so in college english classrooms, metalanguage is considered as an important aspect of teaching. metalanguage plays an important role in the classrooms of college english teaching. above all, metalanguage is a teaching instrument. teachers use metalanguage to describe english in teaching process. in this sense, metalanguage is the instrument language. next, metalanguage is also the teaching content in college english classrooms. english language is the main language used in college english classrooms and also the target language students aim to master. teachers not only teach english, but also teach about the language. students should know how to use english and how to describe english with english. in addition, metalanguage is “ knowledge” as well as “ competence” (feng zongxin 26). metalanguage holds the rules of interpreting and describing language as well as the competence to describe and interpret language by these rules. because of the importance of metalanguage in teaching, this paper attempts to conduct a study on metalanguage in college english classrooms to find the problems and give introduction 0.2 2 suggestions for college english teaching so as to prove that metalanguage is an access to evaluate language classroom teaching. 0.2 research on previous studies in 1933, in order to solve the problem of “ paradox” in philosophy, a polish logician alfred tarski originally presented the notion “ metalanguage” as the language used to talk about language itself, distinguished from object language used to talk about the objective world. over a long period, the concept as one of the major objects has been restrained in the field of logic and philosophy. later, it gradually comes into the domain of linguistics. metalanguage is used as the crucial means to describe and interpret language in linguistic field, but it is concerned only by a few modern linguists abroad. jakobson (1960) suggests that the metalingual function in everyday life should be emphasized. hjelmslev (1961) puts forward that metalanguage plays an important role in the research of linguistics. the research about it is insufficient in modern linguistic field all along. besides several linguistic courses (dinneen, 1967; lyons, 1981), the concept is not mentioned even in a lot of introductory works on linguistics (akmajian et al., 1995; napoli, 1996; poole, 1999). but recently, some scholars start to engage in the related study on metalanguage, such as taylor (1997; 2003). taylor (2003) presents that the vocabulary and concepts involving language itself are indispensable in everyday communication. if there are no expressive forms of “ meta- discursive” , such as “ what do you mean by that?” , “ sorry, could you say that again” etc., people can not ensure whether the information and concept express and convey accurately in the normal communication (taylor 96). in china, some scholars show their interest in metalanguage now. li baojia (2002) takes the initiative in distinguishing the logical and the linguistic metalanguage, and classifies the linguistic metalanguage into three categories, which are vocabulary metalanguage for daily communication, defining metalanguage for dictionary compilation, and semantic metalanguage for lexical analysis (140- 47). based on the three categories, li and his followers are devoting themselves to the research on establishing a system of chinese metalanguage. feng zongxin (2005) notes that metalanguage is an important aspect in foreign language teaching (flt ) (24- 27). introduction 0.2 3 compared with the study of metalanguage, the researches related to language in language classrooms develop more rapidly. since the early 1960s, many researchers abroad have contributed a lot to the studies on language classroom. flanders interaction analysis categories (fiac) divides the classroom language into three parts: teacher talk (tt), learner talk (lt) and silence (fiac page). the berminham five- rank model (lesson- transaction- exchange- move- act) proposed by sinclair and coulthard (1975) from the perspective of discourse analysis is representative in the early researches. other r esearchers accomplish some basic descriptions on language classrooms, such as the quantity or function of classroom language, adjustment of pronunciation, vocabulary and so on. in the 1980s, krashen proposed comprehensible input hypothesis (1+i), which aroused the interest of researchers about language input in the following two decades. many scholars (allwright and balley, 1991; brock, 1986; chaudron, 1988; hakansson, 1986; long, 1983; nunan, 1992; swain, 1985, 1993, etc.) concern about the features of language in classroom, such as amount of teacher talk, types of questions, teachers wait- time for learners performance, teacher speech repairing and modifications and so on. hakansson (1986) points out that the quantity and quality of teacher talk has great effect on students learning and is even a decisive factor of classroom teaching. chaudron (1988) identifies four traditional methods in the research of foreign language classroom: psychometric studies, interaction analysis, discourse analysis, and ethnographic analysis. anton (1999) observes that another role of teacher talk is more and more noticeable: it can be used to organize and initiate learners to take part in various communicative activities. according to allwright and bailey (1991), teacher talk is not only a primary way of transmitting information to learners but also an important means to control learners behavior. when the researches on the language inside classroom have attracted the interest of scholars abroad for decades, the related researches in china, especially in authentic classrooms, are still in the primary stage. but recently the language used in a foreign language classroom, especially tt, has been stressed for it is believed a key variable in foreign language development. except for the introduction of second language acquisition (sla) theories abroad, some researchers start to pay more attention to classroom language from different aspects. yang qin (2004) conducts the experimental study in classroom to testify the introduction 0.3 4 relationship between language input and teaching outcomes; luo meina (2004) analyzes the language of learners or teachers based on traditional classroom or interactive classroom in order to find a better approach for english teaching; zhou xing and zhou yun (2005) conducts the research to compare the proportion and amount of teacher talk and student talk in the reform- oriented college english classrooms etc. to sum up, the foreign and domestic researches mentioned above all emphasize the importance of language in foreign language classroom from different perspectives, but their limitations leave large space for further researches. first of all, authentic classroom should be paid more concern to. for example, nunan (1992) finds that among 50 articles usually quoted in the world about classroom language, only 15 studies are based on the authentic classroom. next, most of previous researches are independent from each other because of their difference of research objectives and instruments. so it is hard to draw the integral conclusion about classroom language. in addition, previous studies have laid too much emphasis on the quantity of classroom language, but good language teaching lies especially in the quality of classroom language. among recent researches, metalanguage is mentioned as an important linguistic concept and should be stressed in foreign language teaching (flt) by some scholars. however, few scholars systematically study metalanguage in efl classroom in china, so the perspective of metalanguage deserves more concern in the research of applied linguistics, especially in flt. 0.3 significance of the study the study of metalanguage in college english classrooms is significant in the following three aspects. firstly, this study serves as the supplementary for the study on metalanguage theory. the above discussion shows that the study of metalanguage as the second- level language has aroused the interest of some scholars abroad and at home, but it is still deficient in the field of linguistics. some scholars point out that most linguists still do not realize the importance of metalanguage in applied linguistics and in flt. though it is limited in specific field college english classrooms, the current study attempts to explore the unique descriptive mode of this kind of metalanguage, which can supplement the theories of linguistic metalanguage, even for semantic theory. introduction 0.4 5 secondly, this study is helpful to establish a scientific pedagogical theory to guide classroom college english teaching, even english as a foreign language teaching (eflt) in china. combined with the features of college english classrooms, one can infer that metalanguage is used frequently by foreign language teachers to establish an environment of target language and guide the learning of the students. therefore, the teaching views and ideas from the perspective of metalanguage can provide the answer for the debating between a functional aspect and structural aspect about teaching contents and methods. thirdly, the result of the empirical study can be taken as a reference for the practice of english teaching. on one hand, college english teachers can realize the importance of the metalanguage and metalinguistic awareness and competence in classroom teaching. on the other hand, as metalanguage is involved in teaching process, comprehending the form and content of metalanguage in the college english classroom is critical to understand the whole teaching process, and even gives insights into the overall level of college english teaching. in author s opinion, classroom metalanguage can be a reflection of the actual condition of the teaching by college english teachers. moreover, the study can provide scientific and systematic reference of authentic classroom teaching to guarantee the effectiveness of college english classroom teaching in china. 0.4 objective of the study the present study takes metalanguage in college english classrooms as the object of the research and attempts to explore the features and discuss the problems of the language in college english classroom teaching by analyzing the form and content of it, so as to prove that classroom metalanguage is not only the theme of metalinguistic research but also the valid means to evaluate college english classroom teaching. to put the research objective in a specific way, four questions the current study tries to answer are presented as follows: (1) what is metalanguage in college english classroom? (2) what is the criterion to evaluate this kind of metalanguage? (3) how about the current status of metalanguage in college english classrooms? (its forms and contents as well as problems and solutions) introduction 0.5 6 (4) what implications can be obtained from the study? 0.5 overall structure of the paper this paper mainly consists of three parts including the introduction，the main part and the conclusion. the introduction is mainly about the motivation of the study, research on p