A Study On Chinese English-majors’ Acquisition Of Suffix –ize

–ize is an active and highly productive verbal suffix. Its derivative verbs are most frequently used in daily life, academic, science and technology. A large number of errors are noticed in students’ usage of-ize verbs, which to some extent influences the improvement of students’ English skills. The present study tries to explore Chinese English-majors’ errors and difficulties in the acquisition of suffix –ize and the potential causes.To achieve this goal, an analysis towards the semantic concepts of suffix –ize is conducted first. Though suffix –ize can denote a series of such semantic concepts as locative, similartive, performative, inchoative, causative and resultative, etc. The analysis result shows that suffix-ize is a causative morpheme. Its derivative verbs mainly express the semantic meaning of causation. The sentence structures of –ize verbs are compact(S+V+O), however, an astonishing semantic complexity is covered under this simplicity. Being lexical causatives,-ize verbs conflate the process and result of an action, which shows a high degree of lexicalization.Then, in empirical part, two methods are employed in this research. Method One tests the acquisition of suffix –ize by Chinese English-majors among different language proficiency levels. A translation test and a vocabulary knowledge scale test are used to assess their mastery of part of speech, written form, meaning and sentence structures of –ize verbs. Method Two is employed based on CLEC, which is a supplement for Method One with the same purpose.The results show that students’ mastery of suffix –ize and its derivations is greatly improved with the improvement of their language proficiency. Students tend to overuse analytical structure(make+O+Complement) to substitute the usage of –ize verbs. Meanwhile, several kinds of errors are committed in students’ usage of –ize verbs. These errors are roughly classified into 3 types: confusion of suffix, wrong word formation and misuse of part of speech.The main causes of students’ overuse of analytical structures include language transfer, ignorance of rule restrictions and different degrees of lexicalization between Chinese and English causative constructions. And the main causes for errors are overgeneralization, incomplete knowledge of word formation and different lexical representations between second language learners and native speakers. Moreover, different learners’ learning strategies, semantic complexities of –ize verbs and lack of teachers’ proper instructions are the sources that might cause students’ difficulties in using –ize verbs.Some pedagogical suggestions for the acquisition of suffix –ize are presentedvvv. Firstly, it is advisable that suffix –ize and –(i)fy can be taught together to show their similarities and differences. Secondly, teachers should raise students’ awareness of causative meaning for suffix –ize by showing the differences between Chinese and English causative constructions. Moreover, the semantic complexities covered under –ize verbs should be revealed. Thirdly, it is suggested that attentions should be paid to both receptive and productive use of suffix –ize. Fourthly, it is highly recommended to adopt corpora as a tool to learn –ize verbs effectively.