The Analysis On American Students' Acquisition Sequence Of Chinese Modal Verbs

In the process of teaching Chinese as a foreign language, modal verb serves as one of the common grammar points which foreign students should master. Besides, it becomes one of the difficulties in teaching Chinese. On the basis of previous researches and setting the United States as a native language background, the thesis studies the American students'acquisition sequence of the modal verbs by using the combined methods including natural corpus, tests and questionnaires.The thesis contains four chapters.The first chapter put forwards the reason why I choose the topic and the theoretical basis, presents the previous researches on modal verbs and the acquisition sequence and points out the characteristics and innovation of the thesis.The first chapter also describes the overall research design, including the scope of the selected modal verbs and the division reason, the meaning analysis of modal verbs, research methods, specific research steps as well as the expected assumption.The second chapter introduces the research on Chinese modal verb acquisition sequence of the American students on the basis of the natural corpus. Through collecting80million words of written materials of the American students from Overseas Education College of Nanjing University, I extracted607items of effective corpus through collecting the writing corpus of students as the research samples and divided them into three stages:beginner, intermediate, advanced. Then I analyzed the statistics of the acquisition sequence in each stage. The three acquisition sequences passed the data validation of SPSS software to ensure the data validity and the feasibility of the experiment. I combined the acquisition sequences of the three stages to conclude the Acquisition Sequence I of modal verbs in the corpus part.The third chapter presents the researches on the Chinese modal verb acquisition sequence of the American students on the basis of tests and questionnaires. I did the investigation of modal verbs by testing128American students. I divided128students into three stages according to their Chinese level:primary, intermediate, advanced. Through ranking the accuracy rate, I obtained the American students' acquisition sequence of modal verbs in three stages. By the chi-square tests and Spearman rank correlation analysis, I reached a conclusion that the acquisition sequence of modal verbs in three stages is effective and relevant. Combining the acquisition order in three stages, I conclude the Acquisition Sequence II of the test part.I surveyed128American students for the difficulty of each modal verb and the frequency of use in their daily lives. Furthermore, I used "Digital Difficulty Evaluation" to evaluate the degree of difficulty and put the modal verbs in order according to the data so as to record the Subjective Difficulty Sequence III. Besides, by applying the counting method of frequency, I acquired the data of the operating frequency of modal verbs in the daily life of students. According to the data, I ranked the operating frequency order of the subjective modal verbs and recorded the Subjective Operating Frequency Sequence IV. I applied Spearman rank correlation coefficient and Kendall W coefficient to analyze the connections and differences among the Acquisition Sequence I, the Acquisition Sequence II, the Subjective Difficulty Sequence III and the Subjective Operating Frequency Sequence IV.The fourth chapter describes the research results, analyzes the factors affecting the acquisition sequence, and gives suggestions on how to edit modal verb in the textbooks. According to the statistics and test results and considering the Acquisition Sequence I, the Acquisition Sequence II, the Subjective Difficulty Sequence III and the Subjective Operating Frequency Sequence IV, I obtained the relatively objective modal verbs acquisition sequence of American students as well as the acquisition sequence of some modal verbs'specific meanings. In addition, referring to the "Natural Acquisition Sequence Variant Hypothesis "of Shi Jiawei, I put forward the acquisition ranks sequence of modal verbs:easy, general and difficult. In the same acquisition rank, the acquisition sequence of modal verbs may be affected by external factors. However, the sequence grades very strictly. The modal verbs existing in the low grade must be acquired earlier than those modal verbs in the high grade. Based on this, I analyzed the factors that affect the acquisition sequence on the four aspects including the native language background, level of difficulty, the operating frequency of language, as well as teaching and learning activities. The thesis argues that the ease of modal verbs is the dominant factor affecting the acquisition sequence.Last but not least, I selected four typical kinds of Chinese teaching materials and did the statistics and analysis on their arrangement of modal verbs. Considering the acquisition sequence of modal verbs in the thesis, I reach the conclusion:the difficulty of modal verbs should match with the students'language ability; the modal verb arrangement should be more comprehensive and specific; the translation of modal verbs should be proper; and the teaching order should accord with the acquisition sequence of modal verbs, so as to encourage students to acquire modal verbs faster and better.