A Study On The Errors In The Acquisition Of Chinese "de" By Zimbabwean Students

The importance of learning Chinese language and Culture to ensure sound communication has become one of Zimbabwe’s goal to achieve.Word are an important component in any language.This is because functional words do not really have a meaning like its counterpart(notional words)which are made up of verb and nouns.Auxiliary verbs are one among the functional words.This paper will focus on the Chinese Auxiliary /particle “de”whose frequency of use is very high yet it is broad in terms of its usage.Zimbabwe students frequently make errors when they use the particle “de”.This paper will examine the use of particle “de” by Zimbabwe students,with the intention of reducing the occurrence of errors and also to make learner be alert of and avoid wrong use of the particle.I hope the research will provide an important reference material even for the Chinese language instructors,and will contribute immensely to the field of TCSL as a whole.From the study it was found that Zimbabwe students make the following types of errors when attempting to use “de”,word/phrase disorder,word redundancy/excessive,word omission and word mixture.The study found that the major cause of the errors were,negative transfer of targeted language,local language influence,Insufficient attachment to the teaching of “de” and teaching material flaw.This research is divided into four Chapters.The First Chapter focuses on research’s Significance.The Second Chapter is focused on the study of the types of the use of(的/de)either as;auxiliary,possessive particle or adjectival suffix and many other types.This Chapter gives an introduction of Chapter Three contents.Chapter Three is therefore an Analysis of the reasons for the use of(的 /de)through linking Chapter Two contents together and providing references for teaching strategy of the Fourth Chapter.The last is Chapter four which gives previous research results,Study of Errors,Teaching Methods employed in order to give remedy to Errors made when using(的/de)。...