A Study On Pragmatic Transfer In Clauses

Since 1960s, the second language acquisition (SLA) has appeared as an independent subject, and has achieved a lot. Many linguists did studies both theoretically and practically and made great achievements.This thesis is an example of explaining concrete problems in SLA field. We did an experimental study about Chinese foreign language learners' acquisition of clauses from the perspective of pragmatic transfer.Clauses, as a difficult grammatical point, are always a hot issue for scholars of both domestic and abroad. Relative clause, as a typical type, has been studied as early as 1970s. For several decades, there are various results about the second language acquisition of relative clause. Some conclusions also mentioned the importance of the native language influence in learning a foreign language.The influence of native language was called interference or cross-language influence by many scholars in 1950s. With the development of the research, scholars' studies about transfer vary a lot. Based on the present researches on transfer, this thesis did an experiment with the hope that we can help learners better master clauses.This paper consists of six parts.Part one is the basic introduction of transfer and clauses. Besides the introduction of the background of this study, this part also presents the purpose of the study.Part two is the literature review of studies on transfer. The studies about transfer problems had different objects in different period. So we separate them into four parts according to the time, they are 1940s when CA popularized, 1960s when EA appeared, the period when IL theory taking dominant position and the situation at present..Part three talks about the theoretical frame of this paper. They are Selinker's Interlanguage theory and Krashen's theories about SLA.Part four introduces us the subject of the study on clauses. Besides the relative clause, this part also has a brief short introduction about other clauses, such as adverbial clause and nominal clause.Part five is the crucial one of this paper. This part describes the experiment in detail. From the selection of the subjects to the design of the questionnaire, we collected and analyzed the first-hand data, and got the conclusion that learners with different levels showed differences in the acquisition of clauses.Part six expounds the pedagogical implications and teaching strategies. This part is based on the data we got in the previous part. Because foreign language learners with different levels can not master clauses in the same way, teachers also should use different methodology. A new teaching strategy is proposed in this paper tentatively.The last part is the conclusion. Many scholars have done studies about clauses for severaldecades, with many languages as its subjects, including Chinese. However, to do research from the perspective of pragmatic transfer is a new attempt with great significance. On one hand, this study on clauses is from a new perspective;on the other hand, the new teaching method proposed in this paper will be very helpful in the acquisition of clauses.