A Study Of The Disordering Of Chinese Adverbs Of Time Made By English-speaking Students At The Intermediate Stage Of Chinese Learning

Adverbs of time are a relatively complicated word category in Chinese language.Chinese adverbs of time are generally not only abstract in meaning but also flexible in usage,therefore making them difficult for second language learners to master.The Chinese Learners from Different levels are always making various kinds of errors in the usage of the adverbs of time.Disordering is one of them.Based on the previous categories of Chinese adverbs of time,the predecessors have systematically analyzed the errors of the adverbs of time,but it lacks an overall study of the disordering of the adverbs of time.Based on the previous studies and the "Glossary for HSK",this thesis aims at analyzing different types of disordering of Chinese adverbs of time with the help of the questionnaires and HSK dynamic composition Corpus of Beijing Language and Culture University.Under the guideline of the Error Analysis Theory and The Interlanguage Theory,this thesis will move forward to analyze the causes of these disordering.In this thesis,we selected 80 intermediate Chinese learners from Great Britain or the United States as subjects;all of them are the Students from Nanjing University.They are tested in the form of a questionnaire so as to understand how well they have mastered the right position orders of the adverbs of time.In addition,the accuracy of right ordering of the adverbs will be taken into consideration according to the HSK dynamic composition Corpus of Beijing Language and Culture University.By analyzing the survey results and the corpus,we found that:1)From the perspective of the classification of the temporal adverbs' disordering,the temporal adverbs' disordering can be divided into four kinds,disordering with the subject,disordering with the predicate,disordering with the other adverbs,disordering with the prepositional phrases.Among the four kinds of disordering,the error rate of the disordering of the subject and the predicate are not high.However,the error rate of the other two are comparatively high;2)Generally speaking,the English-speaking Intermediate Chinese learners have a certain degree of the usage of the temporal adverbs,and most of the errors are under prediction;3)Tested subjects generally considered the first two kinds of disordering are relatively simple and easy,which means they have learnt the relevant knowledge.However,the error rate of those tested items which the subjects considered easy is not low,which indicates that having learnt some knowledge does not mean that you have mastered them well;4)There are three reasons for generating the temporal adverbs' disordering:Negative transfer of mother language,negative transfer of target language,learning strategies factors.Among these four factors,negative transfer of mother language is the main cause of the temporal adverbs' disordering.On the basis of the common points between English temporal adverbs and Chinese temporal adverbs,the Chinese learners would like to use temporal adverbs in according to the grammar orders of their mother language,without considering the characteristics of the Chinese temporal adverbs.Based on the analysis of the causes of the temporal adverbs' disordering,some suggestions have been made for the rationalization of teaching:1)Deepen the temporal adverbs ordering theory study;2)Improving teaching methods,helping the Chinese learners avoid making errors in placing the temporal adverbs.