The Chinese Marked Complex Sentences Acquisition Of Foreign Students From European And American Countries

Marked complex sentences in Chinese grammar system have wide applying range and high using frequency,which makes them a grammar focus in teaching Chinese as a foreign language.However,due to the complexity of syntax and semantics,the diversity of sentence patterns and the multiplicity of internal members,the Chinese marked complex sentences become an error occurred difficulty for foreign students and a weak research field for researchers.The complex sentences are differ greatly in Chinese and English,even the cohesive devices and connectives in these two languages are dissimilar.All these differences bring a lot of obstacles and difficulties for foreign students from European and American countries in their Chinese learning.Based on the previous researches on Chinese marked complex sentences,English cohesive devices and connectives,this dissertation investigates and analyses the Chinese marked complex sentences acquisition of foreign students from European and American countries by applying the empirical research.This dissertation aims to find out the acquisition characteristics and improve the teaching and learning efficiency of Chinese marked complex sentences,the research is carried out from the aspects of the acquisition order,analysis of both written and oral language,error causes analysis and exploration to syllabus and teaching method.Based on nearly 600,000 words of interlanguage materials,the acquisition order of Chinese marked complex sentences of foreign students from European and American countries is explored by adopting the research method of relative frequency and implication scale.The result shows that the acquisition order of 12 types of Chinese marked complex sentences is:causal complex sentence,adversative complex sentence,hypothetical complex sentence,conditional complex sentence,progressive complex sentence,coordinate complex sentence,purposive complex sentence,inferential complex sentence,concessive complex sentence,alternative complex sentence,negative-adversative complex sentence and chronological complex sentence.The acquisition order of 52 Chinese complex sentences is:Y1>Z1>Y2>Z2>T3>M1>X1>JZ2>D1>B4>T5>Z3>Z4>Z6>B2>J2>T2>TD2>T1>Y4>Y3>TD1>B1>M4>B3>R2>R1>JZ1>J1>L5>L1>M2>Z5>M3>X4>X2>T4>T6>L2>J5>X3>J3>J4>R3>D4>L3>X6>L4>D2>M5>D3>X5.The result reveals that:l)there is no necessary relation between the acquisition of complex sentence types and specific complex sentences;2)the acquisition of complex sentences is a gradual and dynamic process and there is no distinct boundary among specific sentences,which were learned by foreign students synchronously and alternatively;3)the learners' understanding and mastery of the complex sentences improves with their progress of language proficiency and level;4)foreign students from different countries have different acquisition characteristics to the same grammar point.This study inspects the usage and errors of cohesive marks in written materials.The first step of error analysis to written interlanguage is a comparative study to connective use of foreign students from European and American countries and Chinese middle school students.The research materials are foreign students' compositions of 433,847 words and Chinese middle school students'compositions of 433,467 words.According to the survey of 97 common-used connectives in two corpuses,the frequency of connective using of foreign students from European and American students are 9163,while that of Chinese middle school students are 4847,the former being 1.89 times as much as the latter.It concludes that foreign students from European and American countries tend to use more marked complex sentences in order to be understood than Chinese middle school students do.This result,differs greatly from the front-line teachers' prediction,has great realistic significance for it can bring enlightenment for teaching Chinese as a foreign language.The error causes analysis is carried out based on the 430,000-word written interlanguage corpus of foreign students from European and American countries by using quantitative method.1868 complex sentences with errors were selected and divided into 7 types,namely incorrect mating of connectives,incorrect using of connectives,connective missing,redundant using of connectives,incorrect using of sentence items,misplacement of connectives and incorrect using of punctuation.The errors of high-frequency connectives were analyzed in details.The usage of marked complex sentences in oral interlanguage is investigated based on the Chinese and English interviews to ten foreign students from European and American countries and the Chinese interviews to five native Chinese speakers.13 marked complex sentences and 17 connectives were selected from the discourse.The first five common-used connectives are danshi(but),suoyi(so),yinwei(because)and ruguo(if).The conjunctions,biru(for example)zaishu(furthermore),haiyou(in addition),youqi(especially),are frequently used by foreign students from European and American countries orally,but are not included in Chinese teaching syllabus.The reasons for that are the influence of real language surroundings and their own language functions are the contributing factors.In contrast to the findings of acquisition order,the frequently used connectives Y1 and Y2 are in No.1 and No.2 in the acquisition order,D1 is in No.9,J2 and B1 are in No.16 and No.23,while L1,X2 and X3 are in No.31,No.36 and No.41 respectively.It proves that the usage of marked complex sentences in oral language and written one are different.Compared with native Chinese speakers,the foreign students from European and American countries have obvious differences when using the connectives suoyi(so),huozhe(or),erqie(and),suiran(though)and name(then).The analysis to these differences reveals that language transfer,learning history and individual language using habit are main influencing factors.The error causes are explored from three aspects:Chinese grammar structure,native language transfer and learners' own conditions.We count up the usage frequency of all common used connectives and compared it with the five teaching syllabuses,to find out some of the high-frequency connectives are not selected into the syllabuses where some of them are not in the same order with our research result.Consequently we put forward some suggestions to syllabus compilation based on this.According to the findings of research of acquisition order,errors analysis in written interlanguage,using condition of marked complex sentences in oral language and exploration of error causes,we also propose some suggestions to the teachers of Chinese as a foreign language,including strengthen their knowledge of Chinese grammar,arrange the teaching order of marked complex sentences scientifically,use the suitable teaching methods reasonably and increase the amount of exercises inside and outside the classroom.We attempt to apply the production-oriented approach(POA)to teach Chinese marked complex sentences based on the overall study on Chinese marked complex sentences acquisition of foreign students from European and American countries and error causes analysis.The experiment teaching,which involved 22 foreign students in 8 classes for two weeks.The teaching tasks are completed strictly in accordance with three phrases of POA:motivating,enabling and assessing.The students'scores collected from the pre-test,instant post-test and delay post-test and the complexity and accuracy of marked complex sentences used by both experimental group and matched group are analyzed.The statistics show that POA has no obvious advantages over traditional teaching method in marked complex sentence teaching while is very effective in improving the foreign students' using complexity and accuracy of marked complex sentences.