The early stages of Chinese interlanguage: A longitudinal study of the acquisition of Chinese as a second language by three native English speakers

This dissertation is a one-year longitudinal study of the acquisition of Chinese (Mandarin) as a second language (L2) by three English speakers in Beijing who were zero proficiency level Chinese-as-a-second-language students. Face-to-face conversations between the researcher and each subject were conducted in a relaxing and spontaneous manner and audio-recorded on a bi-weekly basis. A contextualized Target-Like Use (TLU) analysis is used to measure the subjects' L2 performances. The acquisition point of a given grammatical form is defined as “the last data sample of three consecutive bi-weekly samples in which the TLU of the form is at least 80%.” The study concentrates on the acquisition of (1) the negation system, (2) the interrogative system, and (3) the temporal system of Chinese IL. The empirical developmental sequences in each of these areas are described in relation to the systematicity and the uniformity of the developmental sequences of ILs in general. The study proposes an independent measurement for the early stages of Chinese IL; it starts with ‘bu V’ negation from the very early stage and ends with ‘yes-no’ questions acquired towards the end of the one-year period. Similar to the use of the negation system in English IL, the empirical sequences will help to determine the learners' L2 level for SLA research purposes. The study also points out one unique learning strategy that differs from strategies reported in English IL research. Chinese L2 learners tend to use the less marked forms as universal forms for their grammatical categories and overgeneralize these forms in their IL. Through their use of IL discourse, the learners gradually reduce the overuse of each form until the TLU of the form reaches the acquisition point. The discourse level analysis applied in this dissertation, which works efficiently with an isolating language like Chinese, will shed new light on research methodology useful for further study of Chinese language and IL. From a pedagogical perspective, the study suggests that a discourse approach, which is beyond the traditional sentence level teaching, can be used to raise awareness of overgeneralizations, the key component of learners' non-TLUs in IL.