Acquisition Of French Object Pronouns By L1 Chinese L2 English Students

The purpose of this study is to investigate how and to what extent L1 (Chinese) and one L2 (English) could influence the acquisition of the positioning of object pronouns of the other L2 (French). Do L1 Chinese learners with different L2 English levels use their Chinese and English knowledge to help them acquire the positioning of L2 French object pronouns? What variables beyond their English levels will also play a role in the acquisition of this special grammatical property? Through the tests taken by L1 Chinese English postgraduate students, second-year French majors and third-year French majors at the University of International Business and Economics, the author hopes to find the answers to the questions above. We have four hypotheses: 1) The positioning of French object pronouns is difficult for L1 Chinese L2 English learners to acquire; 2) For L1 Chinese students, L2 English level is irrelevant of their L2 French object pronouns acquisition; 3) L2 French object pronoun acquisition is correlated with the learning time; 4) linguistic complexity is important when students are trying to identify and correct the errors.A written test was designed to test the acquisition of French object pronouns of L1 Chinese, L2 English and French students. The test was made of two different parts - error identification and correction and Chinese-French translation. The error identification part was objective and passive, i.e. there was little room for creation on the part of the subjects. Yet for the translation part, the subjects could be creative. They could avoid the structures they were not familiar with simply by finding an equivalent, which could be easier for them.Nineteen French sentences with 15 sentences containing the use of object pronouns were presented to the students to identify the errors and if there was indeed an error, the students should correct it. The other four sentences containing other errors were also presented to distract the students. Those sentences could be categorized into declaratives, imperatives, and interrogatives. The linguistic complexity of each sentence was not the same. In order to avoid the adverse influence from the vocabulary, the author construed some difficult French words in Chinese.The subjects were also asked to translate five short L1 (Chinese) sentences into L2(French) in as many ways as possible. There were imperative, interrogative, integrative sentences.The subjects recruited for the test included seventeen English postgraduate students, fifteen second-year French majors and twelve third-year French majors at the University of International Business and Economics.The results of the study validated these hypotheses: 1) The positioning of French object pronouns is difficult for L1 Chinese L2 English learners to acquire; 2) For L1 Chinese students, L2 English level is irrelevant of their L2 French preverbal pronouns acquisition; 3) L2 French preverbal pronoun acquisition is correlated with the learning time.The results of the present study failed to validate the fourth hypothesis: 4) Linguistic complexity is important when students are trying to identify and correct the errors. The linguistic complexity was only randomly related to the performance of the students.It came as a surprise and joy to find that third-year French majors made more mistakes of putting pronouns in front of the verbs in positive imperatives where the pronouns actually follow the verbs, while they performed better in error identification and correction. This might be the effect of over-training.