The Dynamic Influence Of Aspect Marker Le And Temporal Adverbials On Chinese EFL Learners’ Simple Past Use In English Narratives

It is widely acknowledged that the appropriate tense/aspect use is an important part of language competence, as it can affect the accuracy and fluency of the expression. The research of tense/aspect acquisition has been a heated issue in the field of second language acquisition. Most studies found that the acquisition of tense/aspect is problematic for EFL learners, even at an advanced English proficiency stage. The first languages in most studies are Indo-European languages, only a few studies focused on Chinese. A small number of studies focused on the influence of Chinese temporal adverbials. This study attempts to answer the following questions:(1) How does Chinese aspect marker le influence EFL learners’ simple past use in their narratives dynamically?(2) How does Chinese temporal adverbials influence EFL learners’ simple past use in their narratives dynamically?(3) How does Chinese aspect marker le and English temporal adverbials influence EFL learners’ simple past use interactively?As a part of a National Social Sciences Project(No. 11CYY021), the data in this study were collected collaboratively by the project members. 30 Chinese English learners came from Qufu Normal University and North China University of Water Resources took part in the present study. The data analyzed in the study comprise 150 English narratives with their Chinese versions corresponding according to five pictures. Then the data were coded. The present study adopted Cai’s(2013) evidences for L1 transfer on the identification of L1 influence.The main findings are summarized as follows:(1)The Chinese aspect marker le has conspicuous influence on the simple past use.The Chinese aspect marker le has significant positive transfer on most verbs except several special verbs. At the same time, Chinese aspect marker le has unconspicuous negative transfer but the negative transfer is obvious on several special verbs. The positive transfer and negative transfer change in a curve as the learners’ English proficiency improves.(2)The Chinese temporal adverbials have conspicuous influence on the simple past use. The Chinese temporal adverbials have significant positive influence on most verbs except several special verbs. At the same time, Chinese temporal adverbials have little negative influence but the negative influence is obvious on several special verbs. The positive influence and negative influence change in a curve as the learners’ English proficiency improves.(3)The Chinese aspect marker le and English temporal adverbials can influence the simple past use interactively. The positive influence and negative influence can exist simultaneously. The interaction of positive influence and negative influence are divided into three types: the intralingual influence, the interlingual influence, the intralingual and interlingual influence. The positive intralingual influence is more remarkable than the positive interlingual influence. The negative interlingual influence is more remarkable than the negative intralingual influence.