A Study Of Chinese University Students' Acquisition Of If-Counterfactual Conditionals

Counterfactual conditional is a classical subject involving many aspects such as syntax,semantics and pragmatics.Domestic and foreign scholars put forward their own definitions and analysis of the syntactic structure,concept,and cognition of counterfactual conditionals from different perspectives.So far,linguists have achieved fruitful results.However,more research issues need to be further explored.In terms of research contents,the studies can be further explored from the acquisition perspective.From the research methods,few scholars use the tests of compositions to conduct research in this area.All in all,the study of counterfactual conditionals still needs going on.Based on previous studies,we use six compositions to test the acquisition of counterfactual conditionals by Chinese university students who have different English levels and indicate the students'acquisition problem of English counterfactual conditionals.One-way ANOVA,Pearson Correlation and Independent Samples Test in statistical software SPSS 17.0 are used to analyze the experimental data.The result shows that students with higher English proficiency tend to use more counterfactual conditionals in writing.The lower of the English levels they were,the fewer of the scores they got.In addition,comparing the differences of Chinese and English counterfactual conditionals,we find that the subjects are not good at English if-counterfactual conditionals due to the complex tense of English.Besides,five error types of English if-counterfactual conditionals are found in the tests.These error types consist of lack of backshifting of verbs,inappropriate choice of tenses,incorrect choose of modal auxiliaries,lack of modal auxiliaries and improper placement of modal auxiliaries.As a result,the current study provides some references for Chinese teachers and learners in teaching and learning English if-counterfactual conditionals.