Study On The Interlanguage Variation Of Chinese English Learners

When the second language learners attempt to convey meanings in the targetlanguage, their performances usually make systematic change. This kind ofphenomenon is called interlanguage variation. It is clear that interlanguage variesin different situations, which attracts the attention of more and more scholars.But their research mostly focused on the single aspect, which can not give thecomprehensive illustration of the causes of interlanguage variation. Therefore, inthis paper, the author will employ the multi-factor approach to investigate thecauses of interlanguage variation, including the intra-linguistic factors andextra-linguistic factors.The acquisition of English absolute structure is a difficult task for Chinesestudents. In recent years more and more scholars pay attention to study on theacquisition of absolute structure. However, currently few studies have everconcentrated on the variable performances of absolute structure by Chinesestudents. Therefore, the present author decides to choose English absolutestructure as the target language structure to investigate the phenomenon ofinterlanguage variation of Chinese students.This paper aims to investigate the effects of the various factors on interlanguagevariation of Chinese students in the framework of the multi-factor approach. Itmainly includes the intra-linguistic factors and the extra-linguistic factors.However, no matter the intra-linguistic factors or the extra-linguistic factors, theirscope is too extensive to be investigated. Therefore, the author limits theintra-linguistic factors into the clause type and syntactic function of absolutestructure in the sentence and the extra-linguistic factors are restricted to timepressure. The author chooses100university students as subjects in the experiment. Theyneed to complete four tasks, which respectively investigate the effect of theclause type, syntactic function and time pressure on the performances of learnerswhen learning absolute structure, and lastly did the interview with respect to timepressure in task3. The experiment results indicate that the clause type has aremarkable influence on the performance of learners. While the syntactic functionof absolute structure makes little difference on the performance of the subjects inthe experiment. But it cannot mean it’s the same as in other grammar structuresand will be discussed constantly in the later research. The experiment resultsabout time pressure further indicate that the psychological processing factor, thatis, the extra-linguistic factors have the remarkable difference on the performancesof the learners. Therefore, this research well illustrates that the phenomenon ofinterlanguage variation is complicated. Interlanguage variation should beinvestigated in the multi-factor approach rather than the single factor. Throughanalyzing the factors of interlanguage variation of Chinese English learners, itcan draw out the inspiration for improving English teaching and learning inChina.