Acomparative Study Of Markedness Of English Nouns And Chinese Nouns And Its Application In Vocational College English Vocabulary Teaching

Markedness transfer study, the focus of this thesis, aims to predicate the difficulties in thesecond language acquisition to be encountered by a second language learner on the basis of asystematic comparison between the first language and the second language from the perspectiveof markedness.Based on the theory of markedness transfer, this thesis proposes a comparative approach tothe analysis of English and Chinese nouns and applies the results of study in the vocationalcollege English vocabulary teaching. By analyzing the markedness of nouns based on theclassification of number, gender, case, extremes and meaning, the study claims that a Chineselearner of English has difficulties in mastering English nouns. Consequently, the author makes ahypothesis: Chinese learners of ESL have more difficulties when they learn gender, number andcase of English nouns; they have fewer difficulties when they learn antonymy and polysemy ofEnglish nouns.In order to testify the hypothesis made by the author, she carried out an empirical study atZibo Vocational Institute, where the author works. First, in order to know the starting point ofstudents as for their learning of English nouns, the author conducted a pre-test for students ofGrade 08 in Zibo Vocational Institute. Then the author chose two classes in Zibo VocationalInstitute, P08 Electric Automation Class One being the experimental class and the other, P08Electric Automation Class Two being the control class. The author applied the theory in theteaching, and then she explained markedness and conducted relative training in the experimentalclass and did not do so in the control class. The empirical study had lasted four months fromMarch to June of 2009. At the end of the experiment, the author carried out the post-test to checkwhether it is effective to explain and train the markedness of nouns to students. Results of tests,questionnaire and interviews proved that the teaching and training of markedness of nouns dohave a positive influence on the English learning of the subjects, because EC and CC havegreater distance for their scores of post test. However, the author's hypothesis of the hierarchy ofthe markedness must be revised as: At the beginning of their learning English, Chineselearners of ESL have more difficulties when they learn gender, case and number of Englishnouns; they have fewer difficulties when they learn polysemy and antonymy of English nouns. We can conclude that negative transfer of the markedness of Chinese nouns indeed obstructstudents learning of English, but situation changes with the development of their learning. At thebeginning, students feel confused at the different phenomena of markedness of English nouns;but once they have mastered the patterns of markedness of English nouns, they have some othertroubles in learning antonymy and polysemy.It suggests that positive transfer of antonymy and polysemy help students understand themeaning and usage but can not substitute the acquisition of English vocabulary. And with thedevelopment of learning, students are not persecute by the negative transfer of number, genderany longer.Therefore, the markedness is not the only important factor to be focused when teachersexplain the relative knowledge and give students some exercises.Despite limitations, the author hopes this study could be of some value to the futureresearch on markedness of English and Chinese and of some practical value in improvingvocational college English vocabulary teaching.