Study On Foreign Students' Use Of "Bu" And "Mei"

"Bu" and "mei" are negative adverbs which used frequently in Chinese. They are the marks of Chinese negative system. In the process of teaching Chinese as a second language, "bu" and "me" are often confused or misused by the students. Therefore, they are difficulties for both the teachers and students.In order to make a comprehensive research on foreign students' use of "bu" and "mei", we collected Chinese interlanguage corpus, searching for the sentences which contain "bu" and "mei", and analysed them. According to the three levels of grammar, semantics and the use of language, we divided the use of negative adverbs into seventeen categories. Based on the rate of use and the rate of error, we made some forms, and put them into two parts:the part of good use and the part of crux.Finally we reached the following conclusions:In macro presentation, we get a comprehensive understanding of the distribution of "bu" and "mei" in three levels.In micro presentation, students know well about these parts:"Bu" and "mei"' occurrence with most auxiliary verbs; occurrence with most adverbs; rhetorical questions containing "bu" and "mei", comparative sentences containing "bu" and "mei", negative form of "ba" structure, and negative form of "bei" structure. We also get 12 kinds of cruxes: 8 in the level of grammar. In the level of pragmatic and semantic, the confusion about "bu" and "mei" and the avoidance of unmarked negation also deserve our attention. These cruxes are difficult points and selective analysis which indicate how much students know.We believe that because of the inadequate research of Chinese grammar, the arrangement of the text books for students, as well as the migration of mother language, students made cruxes. That's why they still get confused with "bu" and "mei" even they are in an intermediate or advanced stage.