A Correlation Study Between The Acquisition Sequence Of English Syntactic Structures And College Students' English Achievements

Acquisition sequence has been continued to be the hot topic in the area of language acquisition.The present study on domestic syntactic acquisition order mainly focuses on the exploration for the foreign syntactic structures,including the study on sequence order of negative sentences,interrogative sentences and relative clauses and basically,the research scope is related to the study on relative clauses.The grammatical structures which have been investigated are much limited and the research methods are simple.Based on the relative theories of second language acquisition order,this thesis aims to finding out the basic rules of the syntactic acquisition sequence for non-English major students and exploring the correlation between the acquisition sequence and their English achievements.It not only provides more empirical evidence for various language acquisition theories and the second language acquisition researches,but a theoretical basis for later English grammar teaching.This thesis,based on the similarities and differences between Chinese and English,has classified English syntactic structures into four categories: Quasi-Similar Structure,Semi-Quasi-Similar Structure,Differential Structure,and English Exclusive Structure.According to the four types of word order,the thesis has conducted a survey on 30 non-English major freshmen with different English levels(the junior group,the intermediate group,the advanced group)by adopting the method of translation test,trying to search answers to the following two questions: Firstly,what is the acquisition sequence order of the four major syntactic structures for the non-English major college students? Secondly,is there any correlation between the four syntactic structures acquisition of non-English major college students and their achievements? The purpose of this thesis is to explore the basic rules of syntactic structures acquisition order for the non-English majors and the correlation between the acquisition sequence and their achievements,which has a guiding significance on English teaching.The research process is mainly divided into three steps: Firstly,the author has made an elaborate illustration on the four syntactic structures,each of which is coincidence with college students' cognitive standard and all comes from authoritative textbooks and grammar books,making the study more accurate and persuasive.Next,the author makes a test paper made up of 30 translation questions,which are all from authoritative books,according to the four major syntactic structures.In the completely real exam situation,30 non-English major freshmen are expected to take the exam in limited time under the author's investigation,with no helping tools in hands.Therefore,the authority of the test papers can be ensured.Finally,the test papers are returned and the author makes a quantitative analysis on the test results.And the results of the test papers are analyzed from different angles to make the relative conclusions.The innovation of this thesis can be summarized into two parts below: On the one hand,instead of taking the CET-4 and CET-6 achievements as the classification division,the author chooses the English score in college entrance examination as the criterion to distinguish the English level,making the research conclusion more objective and authoritative.On the other hand,on data analysis,the method of setting different variables is adopted.The author makes detailed analysis on the data results respectively from the perspective of horizontal and vertical.The analytical method of this research lies in two points.One is the classification of test answers,in order to explore the acquisition situation of the four major syntactic structures for the junior,intermediate and advanced group.The other is the division of subjects into junior,intermediate and advanced groups,so as to explore the relevance between the syntactic acquisition and their English levels.It ensures that the test results can be analyzed from different dimensions to make the research conclusion more accurate and comprehensive.After a great deal of detailed analysis,the author has reached the conclusions,mainly composed of three parts: Firstly,there tend to be no difference for the three groups as to the acquisition sequence for the four types of syntactic structures.The acquisition order of the four major syntactic structures for the three groups is allSemi-Quasi-Similar Structure,Quasi-Similar Structure,English Exclusive Structure and Differential Structure.Secondly,on the output of syntactic structures,the acquisition order of the four syntactic structures for college students is in proportion to their English comprehensive abilities.That is to say,the higher college students' English achievements are,the better their acquisition of syntactic structures is.Lastly,the syntactic output of the college students is also affected by morpheme acquisition.The quality of the syntactic structures for the advanced group can be also affected by the lack of vocabulary and grammar knowledge.Thus,in later English teaching,the English basic knowledge and grammar points should be paid much attention to.The framework of this thesis is as follows: Chapter One is the introduction,mainly introducing the research background,the purpose of the study and the research significance;Chapter Two is a brief literature review on the syntactic acquisition sequence at home and abroad,including morpheme,negative sentences,interrogative sentences and relative clause ect.,from 1970 s to the present;Chapter Three overviews some theories related to second language acquisition sequence and syntactic theory,especially illustrating the division of the syntactic structures between Chinese and English,which includes Quasi-Similar Structure,Semi-Quasi-Similar Structure,Differential Structure and English Exclusive Structure;Chapter Four is empirical research on syntactic acquisition order,the main part of the thesis,mainly illustrating the research object,questions and methods;Chapter Five is the analysis and discussion of the test results,mainly analyzing the results in detail;Chapter Six includes the conclusion and implications,which summarizes the main findings of this research and points the significance of the thesis.The limitations are also pointed with some suggestions to the later English teaching.