Investigation And Error Analysis Of Chinese Existential Sentence For Native Arabic-speaking Students

The ’existential sentence’ is considered so far one of the hotspots of the modernChinese grammar research, and one of the difficult subjects when it comes to teachingChinese as a foreign language. Since the start of Ma Shi Wen Tong, researchers havebeen continuously investigating the Chinese ’existential sentence’. On the contrary,there is no ’existential sentences’ in theArabic language but there are sentences thatindicate the meaning of "existence". Due to the language and cultural differences,Arabic and Chinese native speakers are different in expressing "existence." Inaddition, because there are significant differences in the way to express "existence",Arab learners often make mistakes when they start learning Chinese ’existencesentences’.The author first studied the features of the ’existential sentences’ in both theArabic and the Chinese languages, comparing between both, identifying theirsimilarities and differences, summarizing the types of mistakes Arab students oftenmake when using ’existential sentences’, and finally offering teaching suggestions.Based on previous studies, this paper used a comparative method, the errorsanalysis theory, a questionnaire method, investigating the common mistakes theArablearners make when using "是","有", and "在", identifying the types of such mistakes,analyzing the reasons for such mistakes, and so offering teaching suggestions.The mistakes that Arab students often make when using the Chinese ’existentialsentences ("是","有", and "在") are classified into five type categories:overrepresentation, omissions, redundancy, over specification, and disordering. Thecauses of such mistakes include the mother tongue negative migration, the defects ofteaching and of teaching materials, the influence of the learning environment, thenegative target language migration, and etc. Moreover, in order to understand moreabout the reasons for the mistakesArab learners often make when using Chinese’existential sentences’("是","有", and "在"), an in-depth analysis has been made, andin-depth interviews have been conducted.