Acquisition Of Recipient Semantic Asymmetry In The English Voice By Chinese EFL Learners From The Cognitive Perspective

As a grammatical phenomenon prevalent in the English voice, semantic asymmetry is defined as the asymmetrical alteration between an active voice and its corresponding passive voice. Through a review of the related literature, it is shown that few studies have focused on a categorization of its sub-types and the syntactical features, and almost no such research is available in the field of second language acquisition.From the perspective of a grammatical recipient(the participant that is affected by the action of a verb, hereinafter briefly as “recipient”) in a sentence, the present study has categorized semantic asymmetry in the English voice into three types, namely Semantic Extension, Semantic Narrowing and Semantic Shift. Furthermore, within the framework of Construal Operation Theory, the three types of Recipient-Semantic-Asymmetry(RSA) are analyzed and a cognitive approach in the teaching of RSA is designed. Based on that, this essay investigates the effects of the cognitive approach towards L2 acquisition of the RSA in the English voice by Chinese EFL learners in the Chinese classroom setting.The participants in the study were selected from two classes of English majors at Shaoguan University. Each class was composed of 60 students. One of the two classes was randomly selected as the Experiment Group and the other as the Control Group. In the Experiment Group, a cognitive approach within the framework of Construal Operation Theory was used when teaching to the students the RSA in the English voice while a traditional approach, adapted from the Grammar-Translation Method, was applied in the Control Group. Acquisition of the RSA in the English voice by the participants was successively tested by a pretest, an immediate posttest and a delayed posttest. The whole experiment lasted for 5 weeks.The data gained from the experiment was analyzed by an independent-sample t-test and a one-way ANOVA. In comparison with the traditional approach, the results denoted that the cognitive approach exerted greater effects in helping learners to acquire the RSA in the English voice in both the short run and the long run. The study has confirmed the positive effects of the cognitive approach in promoting grammar teaching, providing practical guidance for the English teaching and learning.