A Study Of Middle School Students' Acquisition Of Third Person Singular Verbs Under Syntax/Morphology Interface

The acquisition of the third person singular verbs has been a difficult problem for L2 learners.And it is also a great concern in linguistics.In the process of English learning,middle school students need to learn and grasp the third person singular verbs.Therefore,this thesis attempts to investigate native Chinese Middle School students' acquisition of the third person singular verbs,and puts forward some teaching suggestions.Based on the theory of Syntax/Morphology Interface,120 students from Zhangzhou Li Ren School were asked to take part in the tests.And they are divided into two groups,one of which includes 60 junior middle school students,and the other 60 senior high students,who have finished the tests of the third person singular verbs in picture writing,using the appropriate form of the given words and grammaticality task.There are fifteen questions in each task.And there are three test points(third person singular verbs with-s,-es and-ies forms)in each task.The score of each test point was figured out and then put the data into SPSS21.0,with the relevant analyses being made with the aid of Double Factor Variance Analysis,MONOVA and One-Way ANOVA.Through the data analyses,the following conclusions are as follows:(1)Different grades can not easily acquire syntax/morphology interface when they meet the third person singular verbs;(2)Different grades have differences in acquisition of the different forms of the third person singular verbs;(3)Different grades can better acquire the third person singular verbs with-s form.In a word,middle school students can not acquire the third person singular verbs well.Although middle school students have learned the grammar of the third person singular verbs,they still can not use the right morphology of the third person singular verbs.Because they can't understand it well and they don't have enough practice.What's more,they can not acquire syntax/morphology interfaceThis study has some enlightenment on the third person singular verb teaching.From the results of the study,we can see that the two grades can not master the third person singular of English verbs well,especially in the third person singular verbs with-es and-ies forms.Therefore,in the process of teaching,English teachers should explain the different forms and usage of the third person singular verb,compare the different usage of English and Chinese verbs,and provide students with exercises and intensive training in time.It will enable students to overcome the problem of syntax/morphology interface.And students will better acquire the third person singular verbs.