The Acquisition Of English Middle Construction By Chinese Learners

Since Keyser and Roeper(1984),English middle construction(EMC),as a special construction,has aroused the interest of linguists because of its complex syntactic and semantic features.The focus of EMC studies is mainly on its formation mechanism and restrictions on middle verbs.The complexity of EMC makes it difficult for L2 learners' acquisition,but there are relatively few studies of EMC acquisition.Most of previous studies of EMC acquisition are empirical studies,but there are few corpus-based studies;as for research contents,most of them are the identification of EMC and its wrong usage.In addition,previous methods for analyzing the causes of errors are introspective.This thesis attempts to reveal the process of Chinese EFL learners' acquisition of EMC,to analyze the acquisition of EMC by Chinese EFL learners at different learning stages,to explore the problems that learners might encounter at different learning stages,and to analyze reasons.Three research questions are addressed to achieve the research objective: 1.Is there a correlation between the frequency of EMC used by Chinese EFL learners and their English proficiency level? 2.Is there a correlation between the error rate of EMC used by Chinese EFL learners and their English proficiency level? 3.What are the main errors made by Chinese EFL learners of different proficiency in using EMC,and what are the causes of the errors? The data in the thesis is mainly from three sub-corpora of the Chinese Learner English Corpus – ST2,ST3 and ST4.With the help of softwares AntConc3.2.3 and SPSS 19.0 collecting and processing data,this thesis compares the EMC use frequency and error rate of Chinese EFL learners at different learning stages,summarizes the main errors made by learners at different learning stages respectively,and analyzes the causes of these errors with the help of a questionnaire.It is found that the frequency of Chinese EFL learners using EMC is independent of their English proficiency levels;the performance of Chinese EFL learners in EMC acquisition is negatively correlated with their English proficiency;the errors made by Chinese EFL learners at different learning stages are all mainly focus on the violation of EMC features and the misuse of middle verbs,while elementary and intermediate Chinese EFL learners are more likely to make other English grammatical errors;the main reasons for the errors are the complexity of EMC,the negative L1 transfer,cognitive reason and the lack of explicit instruction(i.e.,the lack of the instruction of EMC and the instruction of the similarities and differences between EMC and Chinese middle construction.)Explicit instruction is very important for Chinese EFL learners to acquire EMC.This study has several pedagogical implications.First of all,teachers should explain the concept of EMC to help students understand clearly what EMC is;secondly,it is necessary for teachers to explain the features of EMC systematically in order to help students make fewer errors in EMC features;thirdly,teachers should explain the particularity of English middle verbs to help students identify which verbs can be used in EMC;finally,teachers are supposed to pay attention to observe,discover and collect the problems encountered by students in the process of EMC acquisition,especially the problems caused by L1 negative transfer,and help students reduce errors through the explanation of the difficult points.