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Article published In: Chinese as a Second Language (漢語教學研究—美國中文教師學會學報)
Vol. 52:3 (2017) ► pp.232–254

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Effects of providing explicit negative evidence on students’ perception of ungrammatical sentences using –le

 | University of Kansas
 | Mount Holyoke College
Published online: 14 December 2017
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/csl.52.3.02li
Abstract
This study investigates the effects of the use of explicit negative evidence in teaching on students’ perception of two types of ungrammatical Chinese sentences in which –le should not be used. Two groups of advanced learners of Chinese were pre-tested immediately before receiving instruction that included explicit negative evidence about the use of -le, and post-tested twice: once directly after the completion of the instruction, and again four weeks later, using a grammaticality judgment test. The results of the grammaticality judgment test indicated that including explicit negative evidence in teaching helps advanced English-speaking learners of Chinese identify sentences in which –le is used incorrectly. The implication is that including negative evidence in teaching can reduce errors caused by negative transfer from a student’s native language.
摘要
本文研究了在教学中给予学生明确的反面证据对中文学生感知两类不应该使用“了”的句型的影响。两组母语是英语的高级汉语学习者在接受明确的教学指导前参加了前测，在接受了不同的教学指导后参加了两次后测：立即后测和教学指导结束四个星期后的延迟后测。测试采用句法判断形式。测试结果表明，在教学中包括明确的反面证据能够帮助母语是英文的高级汉语学生摒弃那些错误地使用了“了”的句子。因此在教学中适当包括反面证据可以帮助学生减少因为母语负迁移影响产生的一些语法错误。
Article outline
  • 0.Introduction
  • 1.Research on the influence of negative evidence in teaching
  • 2.Studies on the acquisition of –le and the two forms under investigation
    • 2.1 Summary of research on the acquisition of –le
    • 2.2 The forms under investigation
  • 3.The empirical study
    • 3.1 Research questions
    • 3.2 Hypothesis and predictions
    • 3.3 Experimental design
      • 3.3.1Grammaticality judgment task
      • 3.3.2Teaching intervention
    • 3.4 Subjects
    • 3.5 Results
      • 3.5.1Native baseline data
      • 3.5.2Performance of the experimental group and the control group on the pre-test
      • 3.5.3Performance of the experimental group and control group on the immediate post-test
      • 3.5.4Performance of the experimental group and the control group on the delayed post-test
  • 4.Discussion
  • 5.Pedagogical implications
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
References (49)
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