Study On The Acquisition Of English If-conditionals By Chinese Learners With Different English Proficiencies

The thesis is on the acquisition of English If-conditionals by Chinese English learners with different English-proficiencies. English If-conditionals, which are characterized by variety and complex, have many differences with the counterpart Chinese Conditionals. Many Chinese English Learners feel puzzled during the learning of English If-conditionals. The aim of the present thesis is to study the acquisition order of English If-conditionals within the framework of Optimality Theory and the Developmental Law.The thesis is divided into five chapters. Firstly, what is If-conditionals has been explained; Then, according to Brown's Cumulative Complexity Principle, English If-conditionals have been classified into four types, that is, present factual If-conditionals, predictive If-conditionals, hypothetical If-conditionals and counterfactual If-conditionals. The author also reviewed some literatures related to the present study.Three research questions are listed as follows:1. What are the characteristics of Chinese learners' use of the English If-conditionals?2. Does the actual acquisition of the English If-conditionals follow the Cumulative Complexity Principle and hypothesized Developmental Law? Is there any difference between the English If-conditionals used by high-proficiency learners and those used by low-proficiency learners?3. Is there any correlation between the score of the translating tasks and the corresponded score of the composition task?Participants in the present study are divided into three groups, that is, high school students of grade one, college students majoring international business, and university students of various majors. More than 200 students took part in the test and 150 participants were randomly selected as samples. All those students are representative, because they come from different areas with different English proficiencies. The instruments for the present study are a self-designed questionnaire and a composition test. The questionnaire was designed in December, 2007 and composed of two parts: the first part is about the background information of the participants; the second part is the sentence translation. After data analysis by SPSS and Microsoft Excel, the thesis came up with the following findings:1. Chinese English learners do not have a good command of English If-conditionals, no matter what level they belong to, which can be reflected by the descriptive data. Means of the score in translating task are: 6.18 (high level) ,6.04(intermediate level) and 5.00 (low level) .2. Basically, the acquisition order of English If-conditionals abide by the Developmental Law, that is present factual If-conditionals, predictive If-conditionals, hypothetical If-conditionals and counterfactual If-conditionals. The acquisition order was mainly influenced by the learners' knowledge on Chinese conditionals.3. As to the correlation between the correctness of translating Chinese conditionals into English counterparts and the scores of compositions, they are positively correlated each other and the correlation between them is perfectly significant.At the end of the thesis, the author points out the limitations of the present study and put forward suggestions for future research.