An Empirical Study On Null Subject In Chinese Middle School Students’ Acquisition

A good understanding of subject will greatly promote better use of English. New English Curriculum Standards for Chinese Primary Schools and Junior Middle Schools published by the Ministry of National Education have emphasized the importance of the learning and teaching of subject, because subject is the required learning items in the grammar item table. So this paper is carried out to investigate the acquisition of null subject in middle school.As a [+null subject] language, Chinese permits the subject position to be empty, and to a certain degree, the subject position must be empty. Whereas English is a [-null subject] language, English sentences never permit subjects to be omitted. Owing to the different settings of null subject parameter between English and Chinese, Chinese-speaking learners leave out subjects in English sentences unconsciously in their English learning. The purpose of this research is to survey the null subject phenomenon in native Chinese middle school students’ acquisition of English, trying to figure out the different performances between the junior high school students and senior high school students.This research emphasizes the acquisition of null subject in English according to the Principle and Parameter Theory. The purpose of the research is to provide more evidences for null subject parameter and to observe the role of UG in the SLA. Null subject is an important linguistic phenomenon in the research of SLA(Zyzik,2008). The phenomenon of null subject occurs in Chinese but not in English. A questionnaire was adopted to investigate the above phenomenon. The subject contains 20 junior high school students and 20 senior high school students. The test was conducted with the method of grammaticality judgment task. The methods of analyzing the data were Independent Samples Test and One-Way ANOVA with the help of SPSS17.0. The results show that L1 transfer does affect L2 learners’ acquisition of non-subjects in English. The performance of L2 learners improves as their English proficiency grows.The study suggests that UG is still functioning in SLA. In addition, there is an asymmetry between the null matrix and embedded subjects in their L2 English learning. The findings also suggest that learners had more trouble in identifying the null referential pronoun than null expletives.In conclusion, through investigating the acquisition of English null subject parameter by Chinese learners, this study shows that students can learn English well. Besides, the results are thought to be instructive for English learning and teaching. It can make students realize the difference of subject’s usage between Chinese and English. Therefore, the paper suggests that teachers should compare the subject’ usage of Chinese with English. To some degree, it will offer some help to students and teachers. In addition, students’ confidence and enthusiasm for English learning will also be improved well. They can master language knowledge and skills better. After all, the overall goal is to develop students’ ability of comprehensive language usage.