Intermediate And Advanced L2 Learners' Usage Of Chinese Conjunctions Analysis & Corresponding Teaching Strategies Study

This dissertation focuses on studying the use of conjunctions among advanced-stage Chinese learners. The study and statistics of material are not selected according to the students' nationalities, but comprehensively, as reflects recent domestic Chinese teaching methods and textbooks at advanced stages. We hope to find the common characteristics and problems of advanced Chinese learners from different countries.Conjunctions in the Chinese language are of a limited number, but have complex functions and are used frequently. Teaching conjunctions has always been difficult for teachers of Chinese as a L2, and presently the study of the conjunctions is still insufficient. This dissertation seeks to analyze the use of the conjunctions among advanced students comprehensively and offer some practical teaching strategies, hoping to provide guidance and reference for teaching Chinese conjunctions.The research foundation of this dissertation is compositions written by advanced students of Chinese; the basic method being searching for cases, carrying out statistical analysis, and analyzing wrong cases. The compositions provided around 500,000 characters to analyze. The statistics on error-rate and word frequency were carried out for 94 conjunctions. We found that the frequently used conjunctions among senior Chinese learners are mostly those of grade A and B provided by "HSK Leveled Outline of Vocabulary ", while conjunctions of grade C and D have a low use rate. The error-rates show a certain degree of differentiation. Taking both the error-rate and word frequency into consideration, we selected 15 conjunctions/conjunctive adverbs as the focus of the analysis. The features in the use of the conjunction among advanced students of Chinese can be summarized as the following: lots of mistakes of single conjunctive adverbs, especially hidden ones; the omission of parts of conjugations is common when they should exist in pairs; and conjunctions with similar meanings or forms are often selected incorrectly.Overall, the errors of Chinese conjunctions among oversea students at advanced stage can be categorized into the following types: misuse, simplification, overuse and omission.To analyze the causes of these errors, we have looked into the conjunction-related content in the textbooks for teaching Chinese at all stages and discovered many problems, such as: insufficient explanations for conjunctions at advanced stages, a lack of contrast between conjunctions with similar meanings, and a lack of systematic explanation for some conjunctions with complex meaning and usage. The exercises are not comprehensive enough.At the same time, learners at advanced-stage show a variety of avoidance behavior in the use of conjunctions such as replacement, vacancy and circuitous.To solve these problems, the dissertation gives some opinions and suggestions in preparing teaching materials and teaching methods, especially by emphasizing systematic explanation and practice of conjunctions at advanced stage and taking characteristics of conjunctions involving discourse into account.