An Investigation On English Syntactic Acquisition Order Of High School Students

The present domestic study on syntactic acquisition order is mainly focused on the exploration for the syntactic structures proposed in foreign countries, including the study on negative sentences, interrogative sentences and relative clause. There exist limitations in research scope which is mainly related to relative clause study, and in research methods in which only quantitative study is involved.This thesis, based on the relative theories of syntactic acquisition order for second language acquisition, conducts an investigation on the ability of syntactic knowledge, the characteristics and the sequence of acquisition on the part of the students, who have been taught with the high school textbooks by People's Education Press in our country. Based on the similarities and differences between English and Chinese, this thesis has classified English syntactic structures into four units: Quasi-Similar Structure, Semi-Quasi-Similar Structure, Differential Structure, and English Exclusive Structure. As for the investigation, 30 high school students in different levels are tested with the method of sentence translation from Chinese into English.This thesis tries to search for answers to two questions below: First, what is the acquisition order of the four major syntactic structures classified in this work? Second, is there any relevance between the syntactic acquisition of high school students and their English levels? The primary objectives of the investigation, therefore, are to analyze the acquisition order of the four syntactic structures mentioned above and to investigate the relevance between the syntactic acquisition of high school students and their English levels. The major concern of this research is to explore the syntactic acquisition order for high school English learners, which has an important and guiding significance on English teaching.In terms of research methods, quantitative study is mainly adopted in this thesis. The author randomly selected 30 high school students in the same class in Grade Three from a high school in Jinan, Shandong Province. These 30 students were divided into three groups in according to their English levels. The reason why Grade Three is selected is that the students, after three years' study in high school, are all capable enough to deal with translation test with proper ability of English expression and reasonable syntactic skills. It is also acceptable to select 30 students as research subjects in order to not only meet the demands of corpus collection but also avoid such conditions as data clutter or too many uncertainties. In addition, the innovation of this thesis in research methods lies in the special classification of syntactic structures: Quasi-Similar Structure, Semi-Quasi-Similar Structure, Differential Structure, and English Exclusive Structure. This way, the common difficulties caused by syntactic structural complexity can be relatively avoided. From another perspective, the fact that the syntactic structures are divided in terms of sequence difference between Chinese and English is simply in accordance with the truth that mother tongue has been playing a unique role in second language acquisition.There are mainly three steps in the research process. To begin with, the author makes an exhaustive illustration to the classification of the four major syntactic structures, each of which is based on high school textbooks. The example sentences must meet the standards of high school English, neither too difficult nor too easy. What's more, the research scope of syntax is also limited to high school level in order for higher accuracy. Next, the author makes a test paper composed of 40 translation questions in according to the four categories of syntactic structures. 30 students are expected to have an exam in limited time under the invigilation of their teachers, with no helping tools in hand. Thus the authenticity of the test results can be ensured. At last, after the test papers are returned, the author makes a quantitative and detailed analysis of the data collected from different angles and draws relevant conclusions with reference to the purposes of this study.In the data analysis, this article adopts a method of setting different variables rather than any statistical or analytical tools, so as to investigate the significance of the test results both horizontally and vertically. The analytical method of this research lies in two points. One is the division of subjects into junior, intermediate and advanced groups, in order to study the relevance between the syntactic acquisition and their English levels more accurately. The other is the classification of the test answers made by students. This thesis makes six levels of the students' answers, each of which is ranked in terms of the sentence accuracy and grammatical or vocabulary mistakes. The theme of this study is thereby well reflected.After a good amount of analysis and discussion, key findings of the study include: First, the acquisition order of the four major syntactic structures in junior group is Semi-Quasi-Similar Structure, Quasi-Similar Structure, Differential Structure, and English Exclusive Structure; the acquisition order of the four major syntactic structures in intermediate group is Quasi-Similar Structure, Semi-Quasi-Similar Structure, Differential Structure, and English Exclusive Structure; the acquisition order of the four major syntactic structures in advanced group is also Quasi-Similar Structure, Semi-Quasi-Similar Structure, Differential Structure, and English Exclusive Structure. Second, with the improvement of English levels, there tend to be no differences for students as to the acquisition for the four major syntactic structures. Third, in terms of the syntactic output, the acquisition of the students is in proportion to their English levels. Fourth, the syntactic output of the students is also affected by morpheme acquisition.This thesis is organized as follows: Chapter I is a brief literature review of the theories and achievements on the syntactic acquisition order research home and abroad; Chapter II illustrates some theories including acquisition study and research of syntax; Chapter III is the main body of this thesis, focusing on the investigation of syntactic acquisition order of high school students, and illustrating the research object, research method, as well as the analysis and discussion for the research data; Chapter IV is the conclusion of the investigation, summarizing the main findings of this research. Through the investigation of English syntactic acquisition order of high school students, it is found that there exist differences among high school students with different levels in terms of English syntactic acquisition order, and that they have a different acquisition sequence as for certain syntactic structures. At last, it is pointed out that there still lie some limitations of this study and the investigation is in need of further exploration.