| Teaching of vocabulary holds a very important position in second language teaching. In an attempt to promote the teaching of Chinese, the present study compared Chinese and Shona vocabulary and further analysed errors that occur when Zimbabwean students whose mother tongue is Shona learn Chinese. The first part of the present study compares and contrasts the morphological structure of Chinese and Shona words based on past researchers’ findings. The study also analyzes the semantic similarities and differences observed by the researcher during the compilation of the “SHONA- CHINESE, CHINESE- SHONA DICTIONARY with English glosses”. The comparative analysis helped to predict some possible challenges that are likely to occur when native speakers of Shona acquire Chinese vocabulary.This study attempts to answer the following 3 questions What are the similarities and differences between Chinese and Shona vocabulary? What are the challenges faced by Zimbabwean students when acquiring Chinese vocabulary? What are the types of errors that are likely to occur during acquisition of Chinese vocabulary by Zimbabwean students The research is divided into 6 Chapters as followsChapter 1 introduces the research object, area of investigation, aims of the research, significance of the research, justification of the research, theoretical framework as well as the research methods used.In order to understand the present situation with regard to Chinese and Shona lexical researches, Chapter 2 gives the background of lexical researches already done for these two languages. The chapter also reviewed the contrastive analysis theory, morpheme-based morphology theory as well as the semantic equivalence theory. The review showed that comparative researches between Shona and other languages are less than those between Chinese and other languages.Chapter 3 introduces the morphological structures of Chinese and Shona words in order to show the similarities and differences found in the vocabulary of these two languages. This comparison was useful in predicting the possible challenges that the native speakers of Shona are likely to have during acquisition of Chinese language. The morphological comparison which was done based on the various grammatical words found in these two languages showed that the Shona onomatopoeic words are partly similar to the morphological structure of Chinese words. Shona verbs and nouns differ from their counterparts in Chinese mainly because Shona words are made up of fixed morphological structures. For instance, Shona verbs are made up of at least 3 morphemes, whilst Shona nouns are made up of at least 2 morphemes. On the other hand, Chinese nouns and verbs do not have such fixed morphological structures. Therefore, the researcher suggested that teachers of Chinese language should teach the morphological structures of Chinese words when teaching Chinese to Zimbabwean students, in order to help them have better understanding of the meanings of Chinese words.In Chapter 4 Nida’s theory of equivalence was used as the basis of analyzing the semantic equivalence between Chinese and Shona words in the “SHONA- CHINESE, CHINESE- SHONA DICTIONARY with English glosses”. This analysis of Chinese and Shona semantic equivalence showed that the vocabulary of these two languages do not have one to one semantic equivalence. Based on the evidence of non-equivalence between meanings of Chinese and Shona words shown in this chapter, we predicted that the probability of occurrence of errors due to mother tongue transfer is high during acquisition of Chinese vocabulary by native speakers of Shona language.In Chapter 5, field research methods were employed in order to find out the various errors that occur when Zimbabwean students acquire Chinese vocabulary. The results of the research showed that, the majority of Zimbabwean students confuse meanings of Chinese words. This is probably due to the fact that, Chinese and Shona vocabulary do not have one on one semantic equivalence. Therefore, this suggests that in order to limit the occurrence of errors due to mother tongue transfer, teachers of Chinese as a second language in Zimbabwe should help students understand the nature of Chinese vocabulary rather than giving definitions of terms only.Chapter 6 gives the summary and conclusions of the research as well as the main contributions of this research to the main body of teaching Chinese as a second language and applied linguistics in general. However, the researcher also pointed out some of the weaknesses of the present research and gives suggestions for future researches. The main contribution of the present research is that in the midst of promoting teaching of Chinese across the world, comparisons of Chinese and African languages seem to be overlooked, thus the present research attempts to fill in this research niche. In an attempt to give impetus to the development of teaching Chinese in Zimbabwe, the present study is expected to provide reference in teaching of Chinese vocabulary to Zimbabweans, compilation of indigenous Chinese textbooks as well as in translation of Chinese to Shona and vice versa.Though this research is expected to benefit various stakeholders, the main weakness of the research is that the investigations done were limited to Chinese language beginners to early intermediate levels. Apart from that, a large quantity of data analysed was collected through the internet, this data cannot reflect errors that occur during face to face conversations. It is our hope that future researchers will use more interactive research methods to collect data from advanced Chinese language learners in order to analyse the challenges they face during acquisition of Chinese vocabulary. Also, considering the previous phonological and lexical comparative researches done between Shona and Chinese, it is our hope that future researchers will further compare and contrast the grammar of Chinese and Shona in order to help Zimbabwean students understand the nature of Chinese grammar. |
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