An Interlanguage Study On Chinese Learners' Acquisition Of There-be Construction

Interlanguage (IL) study is a main field in second language acquisition (SLA). A great number of studies concerning negation, interrogation, relative clauses and morphemes have been carried out since the 1960s. The present research is an IL study of the Chinese learners' acquisition of English there-be construction.By examining Chinese learner's IL, the study aims to answer the following questions: first, are there any systematic changes in the use of there-existential construction by students in different levels? Second, what are the major error types in the production of there-be sentences and what are the causes of these errors? Third, what role does first language transfer play in the acquisition of there-be construction?The study involved 137 students from three key middle schools of Beijing. They are of three different grades, namely junior one, junior three and senior three, representing three levels of language proficiency. They are given a language test on the use of there-be construction, and then the test results are presented and analyzed.Several conclusions can be drawn based on the results: First, students in junior three exhibit the highest frequency in the use of this structure while students in junior one use it the least frequently and senior three students lie in the middle. Second, senior three students shows an increase in the complex use of there-be structure not only in number but also in variety. Third, the major error types detected in students' production are: disagreement, there + have / there be + have and existentialpseudo-relatives. The errors made by the students in the three levels decline not only in number but in type as well. Lastly, first language transfer, generally speaking, plays a negative role in the acquisition of there-existential construction.The findings, to a certain extent, extend our understanding of how this structure is learnt. Limitations exist in this research and further investigations on this structure should be carried out in subsequent studies.