The Acquisition Order Of English Grammatical Morphemes By Chinese EFL Learners

Morpheme acquisition order is a frequent subject in the Second LanguageAcquisition research literature (Bailey et al., 1974; Krashen, 1981; VanPatten, 1984,1995). Starting with the morpheme order studies of the early 1970s, the field nowknown as "natural order" studies has played an important role in furthering theunderstanding of the nature of language acquisition in terms of the sequence oflanguage development. The 1970s and 1980s witnessed the prosperity in empiricalmorpheme order studies, among which an approximately consistent order ofacquisition tends to be found. Reviewing over a dozen ESL morpheme studiesavailable at the time, Krashen (1977) put forward "Natural Order Hypothesis" whichassumes that rules of language are acquired in a predictable order that is common toall language learners. However, it remains a controversial theory which requiresfurther testification. Besides, no single cause has been shown for this phenomenon,and the whole process of morpheme acquisition still can not be satisfactorilyaccounted for.In view of this situation, a cross-sectional designed experiment investigating theEnglish grammatical morpheme acquisition order by Chinese EFL learners is carriedout in the hope of compensating for the inadequacy of empirical research in the fieldof natural order studies, especially in China. It is not only meaningful in testifying theuniversality of language acquisition device and deepening our understanding oflanguage development mechanism, but also helpful to the reconsideration of the roleof classroom instruction with a more scientific view and the rearrangement of thecontents in foreign language teaching syllabus in a more practical way.The subjects of this research are 111 junior middle school students selected fromthree natural classes in two schools. Both written and oral instruments are employedto elicit the data, and all the data obtained are processed on SPSS 13.0. But theanalysis and discussion are based mainly on the written data.The research results indicate that (1) Chinese EFL learners exhibit a common acquisition and developmental sequence in their acquisition of English grammaticalmorphemes; (2) This sequence is similar to those found in other morpheme orderstudies, but cannot completely fit into the "natural order" proposed in NOH byKrashen; (3) This sequence is primarily determined by Universal Grammar whichpostulates innate and specifically linguistic constraints on possible grammars in thecourse of acquisition, and interfered in by other factors such as native languagetransfer and classroom instruction.This thesis consists of five chapters. Chapter One introduces the background,purpose and significance of the present research as well as the distribution of contentsin each chapter. Chapter Two reviews the studies on the natural order of morphemeacquisition, gathers both positive and negative opinions on these studies, andintroduces the Natural Order Hypothesis. Chapter Three gives account of researchmethodology, including research hypotheses, experiment design and preliminary dataprocessing. Chapter Four concerns results and discussion, providing a detaileddiscussion on the experimental results and inspection of the original hypotheses.Chapter Five summarizes the major findings of the study, explores its theoretical andpedagogical implications, points out limitations and offers recommendations forfuture research.