The Omission Of Verb Be In Chinese Junior Middle School Students’ Interlanguage

Due to its variable forms and complicated functions, verb be has puzzled almost all English learners, even for the native English learners, at their early stage of English learning. Naturally, the acquisition of verb be poses a great trouble for Chinese EFL beginners, among which be omission is one of the most frequent phenomena. Hence, a study of this phenomenon, especially for English beginners, can provide us with a better understanding of the acquisition of be and thus facilitate the learning of verb be. However, so far, there are quite few related researches. Moreover, the previous studies rarely choose Chinese Junior Middle School students as subjects to investigate the issue of be omission. Most of the previous studies mainly focus on the learners with higher English level, and the explanation for the phenomenon mainly bases on the effect of L1 negative transfer. Therefore, based on the previous research methods and the possible effect factors, the present study plans to explore the interlanguage rules of be omission among Chinese Junior Middle School students with a more comprehensive perspective. Finally, the present study will provide implications to Junior Middle School English teaching and learning. And the discussion on the possible factors will mainly concentrate on L1 transfer, the grammatical function of be, semantic type of predicates and finiteness of be.The exact data of the present study focuses on the be omission committed by students from Shajing Middle School in Shenzhen.686 compositions were collected, which were written by students of Grade Seven, Eight and Nine respectively. The present study parallels Zhang’(2010) study and her exact interpretation to each influencing factor to investigate Junior Middle School students’be omission. Two research questions are put forward as the followings:1. What are the main characteristics of the omission of verb be by Chinese Junior Middle school students?2. What factors are responsible for the occurrence of be omission in Chinese Junior Middle School learners’ English production among the four factors?With the help of statistical analyses, such as, Chi-square test, Z test, the major findings will be illustrated as follows:On the one hand, the omission of be frequently occurs in learners’ English production. Compared with that of the other two Grades, the ratio of copula be omission occurs in the Grade Seven learners’ production is the highest one (19.4%), while there is little possibility for Grade Nine students to omit copula be (5.6%). What’s more, the present study finds out some apparent interlanguage rules of be omission committed by Chinese Junior Middle School students.In terms of the types of predicates, the percentage of the occurrence of be omission can be ranked as follows:_PP>_AP (SL) >_AP(IL)>_NP. These interlanguage rules are consistent with what Zhang Zhangyan has been proposed in 2010.On the other hand, when it comes to interpretation of the factors that affect be omission, the result indicates that L1 transfer, grammatical function, finiteness and semantic distinction of predicates are all the influencing factors toward be omission among three Grades. However, only the grammatical functions of be is the significant factor toward be omission among the Grade Seven students. And the number of occurrence of omission of be as copula is minimum in Grade Nine. Consequently, the present study may first interpret the reason why Chinese Junior Middle School learners omit be is that the influence of L1 negative transfer. Due to the difference of language structure between English and Chinese, learners are inclined to omit be when it can be omit in Chinese language but it is necessary in English language. Meanwhile, when it comes to the semantic types of predicates, be of SL is more likely to be omitted than be of IL for the reason that Chinese learners are inclined to mark aspect to satisfy TAR (Temporal Anchoring Requirement). Furthermore, as for the finiteness of be, it seems that non-finite be is more likely be omitted than finite be by Chinese Junior Middle School learners. Because finite be used to mark tense, number and person in the sentence, while the nonfinite be does not have such functions.All in all, the findings of the present study are expected to provide implications for both English teachers and learners for the purpose of facilitating acquisition of verb be.