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In:Integrating Chinese Linguistic Research and Language Teaching and Learning
Edited by Hongyin Tao
[Studies in Chinese Language and Discourse 7] 2016
► pp. 13–32

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A corpus linguistics approach to the research and teaching of Chinese as a second language

The case of the ba-construction

 | Middlebury College
Published online: 3 October 2016
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/scld.7.02du
This paper reports on the results of preliminary analyses of two corpora of learner Chinese that students produced during study abroad in China: A written corpus and a spoken corpus of longitudinal data. Several native language corpora were used as references. Results not only revealed that learners still underused the ba-construction, they also quantified the extent of the underuse. Additionally, findings from the longitudinal spoken corpus reveal that spending an entire year studying abroad in China can help students make progress in their production of the ba-construction. Pedagogically, it is suggested that teachers should consult native as well as learner corpora in developing teaching materials, and students should be encouraged to take learning into their own hands by consulting native corpora themselves, to engage in Data Driven Learning (DDL). This paper argues for the usefulness of corpus linguistics in the research and teaching of Chinese as a second language.
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Online corpora used or cited
北京语言大学语言研究所北京口语语料 [URL]
台灣國立政治大學漢語口語語料庫 (NCCU) [URL]
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Du, Hang
2022. Grammatical and lexical development during study abroad: Research on a corpus of spoken L2 Chinese. Foreign Language Annals 55:4 ► pp. 985 ff. DOI logo
Du, Hang
2022. Building a corpus of spoken Chinese interlanguage and some results of preliminary analyses. Chinese as a Second Language (漢語教學研究—美國中文教師學會學報). The journal of the Chinese Language Teachers Association, USA 57:3 ► pp. 238 ff. DOI logo
HOU, XIAOMING
2021. Learning two syntactic constructions simultaneously: a case of overshadowing. Language and Cognition 13:3 ► pp. 467 ff. DOI logo
Hou, Xiaoming
2023. Syntactic blocking on L2 acquisition of Mandarin Ba-construction. Applied Psycholinguistics 44:2 ► pp. 157 ff. DOI logo

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