An Empirical Study Of Chinese Senior High School Students On The Acquisition Of English Ergative Verbs

Among the English verbs that Chines middle school students have learnt,English intransitive verb is a particular part of the English verbs according to curriculum.The Ergative Hypothesis distinguishes two classes of intransitive verbs---unergative verbs and ergative verbs.Ergative verbs consist of two subtypes---unpaired ergative verbs and paired ergative verbs.This paper compares and contrasts ergative verbs and unergative verbs in English and Chinese from the perspective of different thematic structures.The unergative verbs' thematic structure of English and Chinese are the same,however,compared with the thematic structures that lie between English unpaired ergative verbs and Chinese counterpart,there are more differences between English paired ergative verbs and Chinese counterpart.In the light of the literature on the acquisition of ergative verbs,the research found that most studies are based on “Split Intransitivity Hierarchy”,less research discusses the acquisition of ergative verbs from the point of view of “Unaccusative Hypothesis”;most studies choose the college students,adults or learners of all ages as the research subjects at home and abroad,few researchers specifically focus on high school students.In order to probe it deeply,the experiments were conducted on 135 Chinese high school students of three different levels(i.e.low,intermediate and advanced levels)in Zhangzhou Li Ren Middle School,who have finished the tests of unergative verbs,unpaired ergative verbs and paired ergative verbs.To put the data into SPSS,the research used Double Factor Variance Analysis,MONOVA and One-Way ANOVA to obtain the results of data.The results of the present research shows that all of the proficient levels' participants master English unergative verbs best,while acquire paired ergative verbs worst.Further,the research also proves that the knowledge of the thematic structure increases with the development of learners' proficiency level.Therefore,the advanced learners can acquire English ergative verbs best with less interruption by Chinese.These findings shed light on foreign language teaching and learning.The findings about this study are listed as following: Firstly,teachers should have reasonable arrangements of vocabulary and grammar teaching;Secondly,classroom practitioners should provide sufficient materials of English ergative verbs as training tasks according to practical teaching;Thirdly,educators ought to renew the education concepts and improve communication strategies,then encourage learners to remember verbs in the context;Finally,the teachersshould pay attention to internal relations of Chinese teaching and English teaching,and then tackle with the migration of mother tongue correctly.