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A Research On Acquisition Of Ditransitive Construction By High School Students

Posted on:2016-02-27Degree:MasterType:Thesis
Country:ChinaCandidate:Y HouFull Text:PDF
GTID:2297330470976969Subject:Education
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Ditransitive construction, that is, NP1+V+NP2+NP3, in traditional grammar, as one of the most frequently used sentence patterns in various languages, has claimed a special place in the linguistic studies and attracted much attention from scholars and linguists with different theoretical backgrounds. There are also some researchers in universities who show great interest in the comprehension of the construction and the verb types associated with the construction. However, seldom are the senior school students able to focus on the students’ use of this construction. So the present research takes in the previous theoretical findings, focuses on ditransitive construction in Chinese senior school students’ English writing and tries to find out the features of how Chinese senior school students use this construction in their writing.In Goldberg’s construction grammar, the traditional structure NP1+V+NP2+NP3 is the conceptualization of daily events of transferring things and conveys the meaning that agent (NP1) acts to cause recipient (NP2) to receive patient (NP3). In terms of Goldberg’s approach, the present study mainly analyses the ditransitive construction in Chinese senior school students’ English writing from the perspectives of construction senses, transfer styles and its influence on students’ writing. This research is aimed at answering the following questions among senior school students:(1) Are the students fully aware of ditransitive construction in English writing in senior middle school? (2) What causes Chinese senior school learners to make mistakes in writing while using English ditransitive construction "X causes Y to receive Z"? (3)What is the teacher’s counter as to helping students enhance their ditransitive construction in English writing?To answer the questions, the following parts of research methodology are covered:interview, questionnaire, observation and teacher’s feedback. Based on the findings from the pilot study-pre-test, we design Questionnaire One and Two. By means of questionnaire One and Two, grammatically judgment task was used to test the subject’s acquisition of ditransitive constructions and explore whether there is a tendency for the Chinese senior students to use ditransitive construction instead of the dative construction to express different types. During the process of implementing the study, observations are also executed to collect more information about students’ performance and attitudes in classes. To interview and analyze meaningful and valuable teaching practice at the intervals of each grammar teaching lesson, the researcher has taken a note about teacher feedbacks according to ditransitive construction teaching, which is beneficial to the researcher’s adjustment to the experiment. Throughout about 3-4 months’ research, the experimental class was instructed with Ditransitive Construction in English grammar teaching; while the control class was instructed with traditional teaching method-Phrases Memory Pattern. Analysis and discussions of the statistical results of SPSS 16.0 were made based on post-test.According to the work done above, the author concludes:(1) We find that there is a tendency for Chinese senior students to use the dative construction more often than ditransitive construction to express’" giving" meaning, owing to the influence of the Chinese language, most learners would like to use preposition "for" or "to" to express "giving", what is more, the learners lack the knowledge of the ditransitive construction, in particular, the knowledge about the semantics of ditransitive construction. So they adopt the strategy of "avoidance" so as to avoid a great many errors.(2) The Chinese senior students have awareness to use ditransitive construction in their writing. However, there is a significant interaction between the number of the ditransitive verbs they have mastered and the students’ language learning experience in Chinese. Accordingly, the main causes which may trigger mistakes of ditransitive construction in English writing are the influence of their mother language; teachers’ comprehension of ditransitive construction and the senior students’ language learning habit. We can see from this formula analysis that tendency for Chinese expression, insufficient vocabulary, less confidence in application, and inadequate good knowledge of DC all present high correlation with less knowledge of semantic properties of arguments.(3)Teachers make students read and write by means of materials from Entrance examination in different provinces, the semantics of the ditransitive construction "X CAUSES Y TO RECEIVE Z" related to the Ditransitive Construction should be presented. Also the teacher offers guide and assistant to students to ensure consistency of verb meaning and the ditransitive construction and to improve proof-writing efficiency. Equally important, the teacher should also participate in this stage to watch students’ group work so as to help students remove obstacles in their following classes, lasting 4 months. Accordingly, mastering ditransitive construction doesn’t mean short time work but fostering a good habit of applying and reflecting upon the use of ditransitive construction.The research is just a tentative study on the use of ditransitive construction by Chinese senior school students and it is hoped that the findings will be of some significance in my teaching and students’ learning of ditransitive construction.
Keywords/Search Tags:construction grammar, acquisition, ditransitive construction
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