The Application Of Markedness Theory In Error Evaluation: An Experimental Study Conducted In Lanzhou University Of Technology

In recent years, researchers in second language acquisition have begun to consider the application of linguistic Markedness Theory to aspects of second language learning. However, most of them mainly focus on the application of Markedness Theory in phonology, grammar, semantics, pragmatics, and so on. They seldom apply Markedness Theory into error evaluation. Therefore, it is of theoretical and realistic significance to make a study from that point of view. The present study seeks to extend Markedness Theory to the area of error evaluation, more specifically the number of errors in the unmarked-to-marked direction and the marked-to-unmarked direction and the reactions of the English teachers to the students' errors in different directions.In this paper, it is hypothesized that there is a directionality of error gravity involving marked and unmarked pairs of forms and structures such as: (1) errors reflecting the unmarked-to-marked direction will be made much fewer than errors reflecting the marked-to-unmarked direction, and (2) errors reflecting the unmarked-to-marked direction will cause greater irritation than errors reflecting the marked-to-unmarked direction.The present study adopts oral test, requiring the subjects to construct a story according to a comic strips (extracted from Fathers and Sons). The author transcribes the tapes and employs a total six morphological and syntactic structures as unmarked and marked error types in the subjects' oral transcription. The six structures are: (1) 1^st person/3^rd person singular, (2) singular/plural NP, (3) indefinite article a/an, (4) simple present/past tense, (5) infinitive/gerund, and (6) active/passive voice. Firstly, the author figures out the total number of the errors in the unmarked-to-marked direction and the marked-to-unmarked direction, and examines if there is a significant difference between the two different kinds of errors by using Paired Samples T-test. Then the author investigates 30 English teachers' reactions to those errors to see if there is a significant difference between the rankings of the different kinds of errors. The experimental results reveal a significant difference between the errors in the unmarked-to-marked direction and the marked-to-unmarked direction, and prove the experimental hypotheses. The author explains hypothesis (1) according to Markedness Theory, the Markedness Model, the Markedness Differential Hypothesis, Universal Grammar, and Cognitive linguistics and Psycholinguistics; and adopts the psychological implications of Markedness Theory to explain Hypothesis (2).