IS THE LANGUAGE
TEACHABLE?
---------Report and Analysis on the Difficulties of Chinese Students
in College English Learning
1.Introduction:
The students of mine are first-year English majors who are expected to
complete a four –year course study. Most of them are trained to be English
teachers in secondary schools after graduation. In the college, they are
required to cover 7 obligatory modules each semester. Before they were
enrolled, they had been tested on language proficiency by a written college
entrance exam on English and a supplementary oral test designed for English
majors. They have learnt basic grammar and acquired an average vocabulary of
3000-4500. They can express in simple English and communicate with each other
on some familiar topics. Their writing performance is much better than spoken
one, which implies that formal instruction in their previous classroom learning
focused on written form. And they usually do not make communicative use of
English outside classroom. Majority of the students are at their average age of
18.
In their courses, the students
are required to attain intermediate-level in such language skills as listening,
speaking, reading, and writing in the first year. Listening and speaking
abilities are exceptionally emphasized. My teaching course is Basic English,
which is claimed to include in content all the fundamental knowledge in grammar
and vocabulary and is expected to advocate a provision of basic language skills
for the learners. I usually have 6periods of contact with the students each
week and each period is 50 minutes. There are 35 students in my class. I
generally apply a communicative way to instruct the learners and make it
possible for them to develop in language acquisition in natural setting.
The initial purpose of this paper
is to make a brief analysis on the difficulties of my students in their
learning of some linguistic items in English. Secondly, I intend to discuss on
the possibilities for the learners to overcome these problems and how the
interlanguage can be developed in the light of SLA theories we have learnt so
far. The final part of the paper will be a reflection of L1 effect on L2
learners’ acquisition of English content words and idiomatic expressions.
2.Difficulties of Chinese Students in English
Learning
In
my teaching practice, I find many of the students encounter all kinds of
difficulties in the acquisition of English. Many factors and constraints may be
contributed to theses difficulties, which can be explained from different
perspectives sociolinguistically, neuro-psycholinguistically,
psycholinguistically or by whatever theory in the field of second language
acquisition. Furthermore, these difficulties may themselves be divided into different
kinds. In this section, I will mainly discuss the most striking difficulties
encountered by my students and apply theoretical concept of markedness and L1
effect on L2 into analysis. These difficulties are categorized into two forms,
one lexical the other syntactical, namely English articles and passive
structures.
2.1.Articles
Chomsky
created the concept of “markedness” in his influential theory of Universal
Grammar. “Linguistic notions of ‘markedness’are usually defined in terms of complexity,
relative infrequency of use or departure from something that is more basic,
typical or canonical in a language.”(Larsen-Freeman, D and Long, M.H.1990)
Markedness can also be ascertained typologically when cross-linguistic
comparison of languages show that the presence of some linguistic feature
implies the presence of another feature. Then, when some linguistic feature
presented by one language as unmarked cannot be presented by another language
as unmarked, we may say this feature is marked to second language. Theorists
researching on this (e.g. Eckman 1977, Kellerman1977, Gundel and Tarone1983,
Zobl1983b, 1984.etc.) generally claim that linguistically unmarked features of
the L1 will tend to transfer, but that linguistically marked L1 features will
not. Eckman further proposed Markedness Differential Hypothesis (MDH)
(Eckman1977, 1985), which comprises the following three predictions:
(a)
Those areas of the L2 which differ from the L2, and
are more marked than the L1 will be difficult.
(b)
The
relative degree of difficulty in the areas of the L2 which is more marked than
the L1 will correspond to the relative degree of markedness.
(c) Those areas of the L2 which
are different from L1, but are not more marked than the L1, will not be difficult.
As
we know, English article is divided by grammarians into definite and indefinite
forms. Indefinite article in English usually functions to refer to (a) a
singular form (b) a generic nominal concept. And it requires a certain
agreement in number between the article and the noun, that is, a singular noun
must follow an indefinite article. But Chinese language doesn’t have such a
lexical category to determine a noun. In another word, this can be considered
as marked linguistic feature, which doesn’t exist in the L1. According to MDH,
the more marked use of indefinite article in English will be difficult for
Chinese learners. My students who would try to find some similar forms in the
L1 as a strategy to learn this marked linguistic feature in the L2 frequently
prove this. They find such content words in Chinese as “一本” “一个”“一车”“一筐”
etc. to compare with English indefinite article in order to establish a bridge
leading to target use. As Chinese content words mentioned above do not keep in
agreement with a singular form of noun followed, the students usually go
through a long way before they govern the rule that an indefinite article in
English must be followed by a singular noun form. And I find frequent errors
made by my students, which show that they are confused in the differences
between the two languages.
English
uses the definite article in two ways. First, it’s used to introduce an anaphoric
referent to a particular noun in the recent shared experience of the speaker
and the listener. Second, it’s used to refer to a generic nominal concept. But
Chinese doesn’t have definite articles in both cases. This will also bring
difficulties to the students and may be more difficult. For the first use,
students usually use the demonstrative adjectives such as “this” “that” “these”
“those” etc. to fulfil the function of definite article. So it is an old story
that the students would rather not use definite articles and turn for help from
demonstrative adjectives as substitute. For the second use, there is no
linguistic device which can be applied by the students to communicate the
second notion of “generic the”. These phenomena can be explained by Zero
Contrast theory. Zero Contrast refers to that the L2 possess linguistic category
that is absent in the learner’s L1. Definite article doesn’t exist in Chinese
(L1). Zero Contrast may affect IL development in subtle ways. One effect
involves the addition of a preliminary step to an acquisition sequence. Thus,
when my students were in the process of the acquisition of English definite
articles, they initially employed deictic determiners, usually demonstrative
adjectives, as an approximation to definite articles in English.
But,
if we compare the degree of difficulty in the acquisition of these two lexical categories,
it is obvious that the learning of definite article is higher in difficulty
degree than that of indefinite. This may also prove the prediction (b) of MDH
because definite article is more marked in linguistic feature than indefinite
article for Chinese students, thus more difficult.
2.2.Passive
My students
no only represent difficulties in lexical learning but also show more
difficulties in syntactic learning of English. Among the many syntactic structures,
which they find difficult, is the passive structure.
The
term passive in Mandarin is generally applied to sentences containing the
coverb “Bei”. The Bei construction contains a logical object that occurs in the
initial position. As in English, there is evidence that the logical object is
preposed to subject position in the Bei construction. Thus, just as the English
passive, the logical object NP of the Chinese Bei construction moves to subject
position.
E.g.
(1) 他 被 我 骗 了。
he by
me cheat ASP
He was cheated by me.
(2) 他 被 自己的 朋友 害 了。
he by self’s friend hurt ASP
He was hurt by self’s (his own)
friend.
The
second similarity between English and Chinese passive structures is that the
subject position of a passive sentence cannot be null. An NP must move into
this position:
(3) a. e被 人 骗 了 他。
by
man cheat ASP him
b.
e was cheated Mary by him.
The Bei construction in Chinese is thus very much
like its English counterpart. Both involve obligatory movement of an object NP
to subject position.
As
many theorists have argued in L2 acquisition, the role of L1 on the L2 acquisition
may be a complex one. According to Zobl (1982): when the L1 and the L2 have the
same way to represent a linguistic feature, target-like control of the L2
learner is achieved more quickly than in cases of zero contrast (i.g. the L2
possess a category that is absent in the learner L1). When English and Chinese
share similarity in passive structure, the learner is more likely to grasp the
English passive structure quicker at the initial stages of learning. That my students
usually have a very clear understanding of how English passive is structured
may be attributed to the positive effect of L1.
But
things are not always satisfactory. When they learn some more complicated
passive structures, the students complained about more difficulties and
confusion. According to Zobl (1982), zero contrast may affect interlanguage
development in two ways. One effect is to delay passage through developmental
sequence. And the second one involves the addition of a preliminary step to an
acquisition sequence. When we observe the two languages more closely, we may
find that the Bei construction differs from the English passive structure in
certain ways. Morphologically, the verb form in the Bei construction undergoes
no changes, as can be seen in sentences (1) to (2), to verb in English. Even if
“Bei” can be regarded as the passive morpheme, when it immediately precedes the
verb, it would still differ from “–en” in English in that it does not absorb
the case-assigning feature of the verb. This can be indicated by the fact that
the logical object of a verb can still occur in post verbal position as in (4)
(4)
a. 他的 父亲 被 土匪 杀 了。
his father by bandit kill ASP.
His father was killed by the bandit.
b.
他 被 土匪 杀 了 父亲。
he by bandit
kill ASP father.
He was killed
father by the bandit.
Another difference is that in English a passive verb cannot assign case
and hence NP-movement is forced. In Chinese, however, the verb in the bei
construction retains its case-assigning.
(5)
他 被 我 骗 了 三次。
he by
me cheat ASP three times
He was cheated for three times by me.
In
this comparison, we may see that there exists some linguistic feature in English
which Chinese doesn’t keep congruent. The fact that Chinese doesn’t allow any
inflectional changes to the verb preceded by Bei is a proof of zero contrast,
which would cause the students to persist with their L1 linguistic feature for
a long time before they finally attain the target-like use of the verb in
English. So the students are delayed in their passage through the acquisition
of English passive structure. The errors are frequently found among the
students. They usually didn’t use the proper inflected forms of verb to refer
to a passive meaning.
Furthermore, Chinese can even express a
passive meaning without the Bei structure.
(6)
a. 这本 杂志 出版
了。
b.
this magazine publish ASP.
c.
This magazine was published.
I usually find students make such sentences like (b) in their initial stage of study on passive structure. This is also a proof to show that students persist with their L1 form in the development of interlanguage longer that expected. Thus, more difficulties are confronted with them.
We
can clearly see from the discussion above that the effect of L1 on the
acquisition of L2 may be a complex one, negative or positive. And the degree of
difficulty for L2 learners in the acquisition of target language is attributed
to complicated factors.
3. Solution to the Problems
From the study of Zisa project, Pienemann (1984) made analysis on the
distinction between developmental and variational sequences, which lay a solid
basis for the Multi-dimensional Model (Pienemann & Johnston, 1987) in SLA
theories. A major feature of the theory is known as the Teachability
Hypothesis. In this section, I’ll try to discuss on the possibilities for my
students to successfully attain acquisition of the two linguistic items covered
in the previous section. The whole discussion will be constructed on the basis
of Teachability Hypothesis theory.
Zisa
group’s Multi-dimensional Model considered SLA as a cognitive process, which is
subject to developmental sequences and constrained by variational strategies.
The developmental sequences were observed from a study on the GSL (German as
Second Language) word-order data, but they were claimed by Pienemann to be
generalized to other developmental sequences and to other languages. In
English, the developmental sequences can be illustrated as in the following
Stage X: SVO?
not X
SVO
Stage X +1: ADV-FRONTING
DO-FRONTING
WH-FRONTING
Stage X+2: YES/NO INVERSION
COMPLEMENTIZER INVERSION
PARTICLE SEPARATION
Stage
X+3 AUX. SECOND, with agreement
“DO” SECOND, with agreement
REFLECTIVE PRONOUN
DATIVE “to”
3 RD SINGULAR “-s”
Stage
X+4 CAUSATIVE
ADVERB VP
QUESTION TAG, with agreement.
(Pienemaan & Johnston, 1987)
And
in the processing, three strategies are usually applied by the learners: (1)
Canonical Order strategy (2) Initialisation/Finalization strategy (3) Subordinate
Clause strategy. According to Pienemann, the Teachability Hypothesis (Pienemann,
1984) predicts that
“
The teachability of an item, and indeed the effects of any external factors,
such as natural exposure to a target structure, will always be constrained by
its learnability in this way. In other words, since the underlying
speech-processing prerequisites constitute an implicational hierarchy, the
devices at one stage being part of what is required for operations at the next
stage, none of the abstract stages of processing complexity can be bypassed.
Items will only be successfully taught when learners are psycholinguistic ally
ready ‘ to learn them’.”
(Larsen-Freeman
& Michael H.Long, 1991).
In
this way, the processing prerequisites required for certain linguistic items
concern the reordering of underlying linguistic units. Structures from stage X+2
cannot be processed by the learners of stage X without prior learning of X+1,
since a necessary prerequisite would be missing in the learner’s interlanguage
specific-processing mechanism. So, an L2 structure can be learnt from
instruction only if the learner’s interlanguage is close to the point when this
structure is acquired in the natural setting (so that sufficient processing
prerequisites are developed). So far as the developmental sequence is
concerned, learners have to be “ready” for the new rule, that is to say, at a
stage when all the necessary preceding rules are already in place.
3.1. Articles
In
our discussion, articles are hard to learn. Rules for their use often depend on
a variety of linguistic and extra-linguistic factors pertaining to their
associated noun referent. Such factors include the referent’s first or second
mention in the discourse and its degree of representativeness, visibility, or
familiarity to speaker and listener. Although specific study and detailed data
are needed to decide on the stages of development for my students, the
difficulties they have frequently reported and errors they usually made clearly
show that they have skipped a developmental stage while they are still not
ready in linguistic prerequisites. In other words, English article as a
linguistic item is not learnable for them at the present stage, thus unreachable
accordingly.
Furthermore,
for highly complex items such as article, instruction appears to have little
impact as learners follow naturalistic processes and sequences which appear to
be unrelated to the ways in which articles are taught in classrooms or
presented in the textbooks. In spite of the fact that classroom learners like
my students are given rules for processing and producing articles, they appear
to follow natural processes identified in untutored second language
acquisition. In terms of syllabus design, this suggests that the forms and
functions of complex morphology may be excluded from specific rule presentation
to the learners. It’s a fact that articles have been identified as a frequently
occurring feature of both naturalistic input and teacher speech to students of
English as a L2.This suggests that they may be omitted from explicit
presentation in the teaching syllabus and left to their inevitable inclusion in
the teachers’ communication to the learners. When the students develop into a
stage on which they are ready for all the necessary preceding rules in place,
learnability will be no problem and we can expect the students to attain target
use of English articles successfully and effortlessly.
3.2. Passive
According to the developmental stages in ESL presented by Pienemann, my
students can be ranked into Stage X+1 as they have just established the grammatical
rules over the formation of V-ed. English passive structure involves the
linguistic knowledge on how to form auxiliary (be /have) +-ed, which belongs to
Stage X+2. As the processing prerequisites for structures of StageX+2 are also
the prerequisites for Stage X+1, the students are expected to be in the
position to process the structures of StageX+2, the passive structure here in
our discussion. So the students should be expected to automatically develop to
StageX+2 and successfully attain target-like use of passive structure.
According to Teachability Hypothesis, the students are psycholinguistically “ready”
to learn the item. The item is learnable because learners didn’t skip the
developmental sequence. Accordingly, the students will successfully acquire the
passive structure.
However, even when they follow the proper developmental sequence, I still
find many difficulties on the part of students in their learning. Actually, all
instances of language acquisition are subject to the same processing
constraints, i.g. developmental sequences. Second language acquisition is also
constrained by variational features, which were claimed by Pienemann as another
dimension in the Multi-dimensional Model. The relative degree of difficulty may
be attributed to the different strategies applied by the students in their acquisition
behaviour.
In
the previous section, we have discussed about the similarities between the two
languages. But similarities do not appear to facilitate acquisition of complex
structures. Learners seemed to be dealing directly with the L2 without
mediation of the L1 (Cooper et al. 1979). So the general difficulties posed by
English passive structure is compounded in the case of Chinese learners by the
existence of superficially similar but structurally distinct L1 construction.
Actually, the complexity of interlanguage syntax exists in the second language
acquisition. And the interaction of L1 and L2 constructions and universal
factors lead to the over-generalization in the interlanguage grammar. The
over-generalization poses a serious learnable problem, which is proved by the
longer persistence of the learners on passive structure than expected.
The
Teachability Hypothesis predicts that instruction can only promote language
acquisition if the interlanguage is close to the point when the structure to be
taught is acquired in the natural setting. Teaching may affect the variation
features or may speed up the learners’ progress through developmental stages
but not change them. Or instruction has an accelerating effect on acquisition
for learners who are ready for it. In this case, my students are just in the
proper order to prove that English passive structure is learnable for them. The
frustrating effect of difficulty upon them would be diminishing so long as they
develop along the continuum of sequence. Meanwhile, the processing strategies
applied by them will also be improved through formal instruction.
To
sum up, I think teaching or formal instruction can effectively help the
learners to prepare all the necessary linguistic prerequisites before they develop
to a higher stage on which they can more successfully grasp target language.
Developmental sequence is a linguistic reality for all second language
learners, which can never be skipped.
4. English Content Words and Idiomatic Expressions
In
the final part of this paper, I will focus on the learning of English content
words and idiomatic expressions by comparing linguistic differences between
English and Chinese. Discussion will also be given to whether linguistic
knowledge of Chinese may or not benefit the students in their learning of these
two lexical items.
Generally, the lexical categories have been divided into content words
and function words in English. And Chinese morphemes are divided into “full words”
having semantic content and “empty words”, which are grammatical markers
without substantive meaning. Chinese full and empty words, according to
grammarians, do not map into English content words and function words.
Otherwise, some striking differences have been found on content words between
the two languages: (1) Chinese words generally have no grammatical inflections
to indicate case, gender, tense or degree, while English words are usually
inflected to bear certain grammatical functions; (2) English content words have
more meaning per unit than Chinese, actually the amount of meaning generally
associated with a single English content word is often spread over several
Chinese words;(3) English words generally have a fairly well-defined meaning
associated with a particular orthographic representation. But Chinese character
is highly variable and content-dependent. Chinese content words have multiple
meanings, many serving as noun, verb, adjective or adverb;(4) English content
words are sometimes more abstract and occur less frequently, while Chinese
lacks the word for an abstraction, which is usually realized with the help of
combination of characters.
In
their discussion on the impact of language differences on language processing,
Aaronson and Ferres claimed that the differences between the two languages might
lead the bilingual learners to process English words differently. In the light
of this claim, I will discuss in detail about how learning of English content
words for my students will be affected by their L1: Chinese.
4.1. Content Words
4.1.1 Nouns
Both
English and Chinese nouns refer to a substantive entity or an abstract concept.
In most cases, learners can find a noun in Chinese to its English equivalent.
In this respect, learners are usually found to benefit from their native
language. But some linguistic differences can also bring difficulty to the
learners and even interfere their acquisition if they borrow the concept from
their native language. One striking linguistic feature of English nouns is that
they are inflected to indicate number. Thus, English has singular and plural
forms while Chinese nouns themselves cannot represent number without the help
of other linguistic ways.
(7) 猪 pig/pigs
屋 house/houses
Furthermore, the certain forms of nouns must be in agreement with a verb
when it’s used as a subject in a sentence, but Chinese doesn’t require such
agreement.
(8) 狗在叫。 A dog is barking.
Dogs
are barking.
So, problems emerge when Chinese learners borrow
from native language grammar to second language acquisition.
Another feature, which Chinese doesn’t have, is that Chinese nouns don’t
have the functions to nominalize a verbal action because Chinese doesn’t have
very clear classification of lexical categories. Thus, students usually have
much difficulty in comprehension of English nominalization. It’s very difficult
for Chinese learners to understand and impossible to produce such sentence as:
“The approval of that measure by congress.”. They would rather say: “That measure will be approved by congress.”
4.1.2 Verbs
English verbs are different from Chinese in more ways related to its
inflectional changes and grammatical functions, which can indicate number,
voice, mood etc.
Chinese verbs usually don’t have the inflectional
changes to the characters. When Chinese learners study English verbs, they are
unable to recognize the inflected endings of English verbs, thus resulting in erroneous
sentence as
(9)
He love me.
Secondly, Chinese verbs usually don’t have internal properties to refer
to the tense while English verbs are defined and restricted to certain forms,
indicating various state of actions being conducted. Chinese may only refer to
the tense by putting adverbs into a sentence. Compare the following
(10)
天在下雨. It is raining.
昨天下雨了. It rained yesterday.
Differences
can also be found on passive forms of English verb. As has been discussed in
the previous pages, Chinese passive structure is typically represented by a
fixed construction with verbs preceded by “被” “为” “让” “叫”etc.
These markers function very much the same way as “by” phrases which introduce
the doer of an action. At this stage, Chinese can benefit the students in the
acquisition of English passive structures as they can lend the concept of
Chinese passive into the typical English equivalents.
However, Chinese has another way to express passive meaning without the
markers mentioned above. This feature will not benefit the learners .On the
contrary, it may inhibit the learners from correct understanding and lead them
to errors.
(11)
票买了. The ticket has been bought.
盘子 洗过了. The plates have been washed.
Another
feature of English is that it contains a large number of verbal phrases, which
allow the separation of the verb and it’s adverbial modifiers. But Chinese
doesn’t have equivalents. In fact, verbal phrases are very hard to handle for
Chinese learners, as they usually don’t know how to properly allocate the
prepositions and adverbs within the string.
4.1.3
Adjectives and Adverbs
I
would like to put adjectives and adverbs under one discussion because I think
they share some identical features in contrast to Chinese. English adverbs and
adjectives involve degrees of comparison. When making comparison, English
adjectives and adverbs must be designated into proper forms with inflectional
changes to the endings. In Chinese, typical constructions like “比” are applied for comparison regardless of
any changes in the adjectives or adverbs themselves. This is also a linguistic
item in English, which requires more complex processing strategies for Chinese
learners to attain target use, thus more difficult.
4.2.Idiomatic Expressions
One
of the most difficult items in the acquisition of English lexis is idiomatic
expression. Idiomatic expression is a fixed form, which has been developed over
a long time and established to connote specific meaning within certain
contexts. Both English and Chinese language contain many idiomatic expressions,
some of which are analogous both in meaning and use while some of which are
markedly different. Accordingly, similarity may bring benefits to the Chinese students,
but dissimilarity may cause great problems to them as well. These features of
English idiomatic expressions will be discussed in the following pages.
4.2.1. Paired
Idiomatic Expressions
There are, in English, some idiomatic expressions, which completely
match the Chinese equivalents both in semantic meaning and linguistic forms.
This will greatly help the students to grasp the meaning and use of English
idiomatic expressions as they can go directly for help from their L1. In this
case, L1 benefits L2 learners.
(12)
To fish in troubled waters. 浑水摸鱼
To be on the ice. 如 薄冰
Walls have ears. 隔墙有耳
4.2.2.Partially
Paired Idiomatic Expressions
Some
English idiomatic expressions are quite similar in form and meaning to their
Chinese equivalents with limited changes in some images. Some images in English
version turn out to be represented by other images in the Chinese version,
which resemble to the English. But the Chinese version of images usually
doesn’t change the meaning of the idioms as a whole. In these cases, Chinese
equivalents can do great help to enable the learners attain target use of
English idioms. When they benefit from L1, L2 learners’ passage through
cognitive process will be shortened to result in quicker learning.
(13)
To laugh off one’s head. 笑掉大牙
To shed crocodile’s tears. 猫哭老鼠
To spend money like water. 挥金如土
4.2.3.Marked Differentiated
Idiomatic Expressions
Great number of English idiomatic expressions is specified to their
native contextual surroundings and cannot find equivalents in Chinese. These
idioms are context dependent, thus need more sophisticated psychological and
sociolinguistic competence on the learners of L2. Or they will be
incomprehensible. For example, the
learners can only properly understand “To carry coals to Newcastle.” when they
know where “Newcastle” is and that it is rich in coals. So, in Chinese, it
means “多此一举”.
More examples are in the following
(12)
Cat’s paws
上当
A wet blanket 令人扫兴之人
Like a fish out of water 不自在
Be born with a silver spoon in mouth 生在富贵之家
To
finish the discussion, we may find that learning of English content words and
idiomatic expressions will be a complex and difficult task for Chinese
learners. In this respect, L1 may positively speed up acquisition, but may also
frustratingly interfere the acquisition.
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in Hong Kong” Hong Kong: The Linguistic Society of Hong Kong.