L1 Influence On Simple Past Use In English Spoken And Written Narratives

Tense and aspect are two important grammatical categories,thus the acquisition of tense and aspect is one of the heated topics in the second language acquisition(SLA).During the past several decades,the scholars at home and abroad have investigated the acquisition of tense-aspect morphology from various perspectives.They have explored the influence of linguistic factors on the simple past use,including intralingual factors and interlingual factors.However,their research subjects were limited to English learners whose native languages were Indo-European languages,only a few were Chinese learners.As Chinese and English have different tense and aspect systems,the acquisition of English tense and aspect will be unconsciously affected by Chinese temporality.In addition,most previous studies have analyzed the acquisition of tense and aspect on the basis of a single type of data(oral or written narratives),and few researches have focused on both spoken and written English.Hence,this present study aims to investigate the influence of L1 on Chinese undergraduates’ simple past use in their spoken and written English narratives.This thesis addressed three research questions:(1)What effects does the Chinese perfective aspect marker le exert on the simple past use in Chinese EFL learners’ spoken and written narratives?(2)What effects do the Chinese temporal adverbials exert on the simple past use in Chinese EFL learners’ spoken and written narratives?(3)How does the Chinese perfective aspect marker le interact with the Chinese temporal adverbials?This study is a part of longitudinal study on L1 transfer in Chinese learners’ English production(11CYY021).The research subjects were composed of 40 freshmen of English majors from North China University of Water Resources.20 of them participated in five oral tests while other 20 students were involved in five written tests,which were administered at the beginning of the first semester,and at the beginning and end of the second and fourth semesters.The instrument of data collection was picture composition.The data collected in this study were composed of 200 spoken English narratives and 200 written English narratives together with their Chinese versions.All kinds of tense and aspect forms in the obligatory contexts of simple past were coded so that the proportions of the appropriate and inappropriate simple past use were calculated.At last,the instances of L1 transfer were identified according to the evidence Jarvis(2010)proposed.The present study has obtained the following main findings:(1)The Chinese perfective aspect marker le has significantly effects on the simple past use(p <.05).But the differences of the effects between spoken and written narratives still exist.The positive transfer of Chinese aspect marker le in written narratives is greater than that in spoken narratives,however the negative transfer of Chinese le in spoken English narratives is greater than that in written English narratives.Moreover,as the learners’ English proficiency improves,the positive and negative transfer of the aspect marker le do not increase or decrease linearly but continually fluctuate.(2)The presence of Chinese temporal adverbials significantly facilitates the appropriate simple past use in both spoken and written English narratives(p <.05).The proportions of the appropriate simple past use with the presence of Chinese temporal adverbials are higher than those without the adverbials,which indicates that Chinese temporal adverbials serve as a tense reminder.Besides,the positive transfer in learners’ use of simple past is significant in written English narratives but the negative transfer is significant in spoken English narratives.Meanwhile,as the Chinese-speaking learners’ English proficiency improves,they would overcome the negative transfer little by little and the influence of Chinese temporal adverbials would decline accordingly.(3)The Chinese perfective aspect marker le significantly interacts with Chinese temporal adverbials.The interaction between them promotes the acquisition of English simple past tense.Additionally,the Chinese perfective aspect marker le shows significant positive influence on the appropriate simple past use when there is no accompanying Chinese temporal adverbials(p<.05).However,this interaction between the aspect marker le and Chinese temporal adverbials only exists in written English narratives.This current research will not only enrich the studies on the acquisition of the simple past tense but also help to improve English teaching and learning efficiency.Besides,it will shed some light on the future research.