A Research On Language Variation Of Thai Middle School Students' Chinese Using

In recent years, with the development of China's economy and its status in the world, the Chinese government has attached much importance to the promotion of Chinese. With the development of the trade between China and Thailand, the mutual investment has been increasing year by year, and the number of Chinese people going to Thailand for travel has been increasing, too. The Ministry of Education of Thailand has set up Chinese as a special field of study in many colleges. There happened an upsurge of learning Chinese in Thailand in recent years, and more and more Chinese volunteers are sent to Thailand to teach Chinese. Therefore, much attention should be given to the language variations appeared in the process of Chinese learning of the middle school students in Thailand.Language variation refers to the changes and differences in the use of language which is correlated with phonological, lexical syntactic variations and such social variables as gender, age and social status. Based on the theories and research approaches of sociolinguistics, this study explores the language variations appeared in the process of Chinese using of the middle school students in Thailand, collecting data by using an audiotape to record the language variations in naturalistic language and a questionnaire survey as a supplement to get language attitudes. The 45 research subjects are from two middle schools in Thailand, which are called Songkhla Wittayakom and Sriyapai Chumphon. And finally we analyze the data obtained quantitatively with SPSS (13.0).This research has found that there appeared some language variations in phonology, vocabulary and syntax in the process of Chinese learning of Thai middle school students under the negative effects of their mother tongue. Thai middle school students always tend to replace Chinese consonants [zh], [ch], [sh], [z], [c] and [s] with some similar sounds in Thai language; Vocabulary variation is mainly reflected in the order of Chinese noun-numeral-measure words and adverbial modifiers. They are accustomed to putting adverbials after modifiers. And Thai students are usually confused with Chinese negative adverbial"bu""mei(you)""bie"and Chinese construction of Bi. These language variations are correlated with language learners'language attitudes. This kind of difference would have a certain influence on language variation. The students with better language attitude would have less language variations which are more close to the target language. English occupies a very large advantage in the practical value and status value dimensions while Chinese is considered more pleasant and has an advantage in emotional evaluation; age, location, the length of Chinese learning and Chinese teacher's attitude have had impact on language attitudes; these social variables have caused language attitude differences on emotional evaluation, status evaluation and practical evaluation.The result of this research will contribute to a better understanding of problems existed during Chinese using of Thai students. And it will provide some useful pedagogical imprecations for improving the qualities of Chinese teaching and learning.Due to the limitations of the present study, the findings and conclusion of this thesis are rather preliminary, which requires further research at a more general level.