Research Project

Research Project： Specialized Language Analysis作者：唐弢来源：《校园英语·上旬》2018年第07期This research project is a case study of the learner language. I am interested in the inappropriate use of the auxiliary word 的‘de’ in Chinese L2 learners， for it is an obvious problem among non-native （English） Chinese learners. English is a language without the auxiliary word 的‘de’，whereas Chinese has obligatory using. My research is based on Obligatory Occasion Analysis （OOA） and target-like use analysis， which try to identify the usage of Chinese 的‘de’ and some wrong uses of this Chinese auxiliary word by the informant in terms. Then my research is analyzed with some relevant references from some literatures to explain the reason why the learner commits the errors. A test is given to collect the data.According to Gao （2005）， it is hard for foreigners to learn function words in Chinese，among which the auxiliary word 的‘de’ is the most problematic. As a function word，的‘de’ is used to connect the attribute and the nouns and it is the symbol of attribute. But it is not always the case that all the attributes are followed by 的‘de’ （Liu， 1983）. And based on Gao’s research （2005）， omission of this kind of auxiliary word is a main common problems in L2 Chinese learning. English learners of Chinese always have tendency to omit 的‘de’ where a native speaker would use. From her research， Gao has pointed out that omission of the auxiliary word by English learners is systematic and that one of the principles， which can help to explain the omission of 的‘de’ by Chinese learners is because there is no such a word in English， and there are many exceptions to the rules guiding the use of the auxiliary word.Tang and Zhu （2005） declare in their research that as a function word， omission is not the only main error the non-native Chinese speakers have when they use 的‘de’. Overuse is also a problem. The reason is that the Chinese language learners don’t fully control and understand the rules of using 的‘de’ and think too much about the usage， thus result in the phenomenon of overuse.1.Learner’s BackgroundFor doing this research project， Matthew Chow， a 19-year-old male Australian， was chosen to be the informant for this research. He has learnt Chinese for about a year and is now studying it in the University of New South Wales. His mother tongue is English and Chinese level is elementary （Also see appendix1）2.Task & data elicitationMatthew was asked to do a translation in Chinese based on an English paragraph. He was asked to put the auxiliary word at the right place of the sentences， but not all of the sentences need such a word. This test （see Appendix 2）was given to examine the informant’s use of the Chinese function word ‘de’ and he spen t 20 minutes to finish it.3.Analytical frameworkI chose Obligatory Occasion Analysis （OOA） and target-like use analysis to do the project according to the data collected. The analytical framework that the present research employed is the obligatory occasion analysis （OOA）. The framework is based on Brown （1973） that OOA examines how accurate learner use specific linguistic features and also it compares between thesamples of learner language with the target language norms. OOA also takes into account the overuse of the morpheme as well as the underuse. I’ve conducted an OOA as follows：（a） investigating obligatory occasions for the use of 的‘de’ from the test；（b）calculating the percentage of accurate use and ‘target-like us e analysis’ （Pica， 1994）with two formulas.4.Results & AnalysisBased on Ellis and Barkhuizen’s description， the level of accurate use a learner must achieve in order to claim that a morpheme has been acquired is always set at 90%. If a le arner’s accuracy score is 90% or higher， the morpheme is acquired， otherwise， if the score is lower than 89%， it is considered “not acquired” by the learner （2005： 85）. Following are the results of Matthew’s work：（1） morphemes to be studied：auxiliary word：的 de（2） Identify obligatory occasions for the usage of the morpheme and count the numbers of obligatory occasion.（3） Establish whether the correct morpheme is supplied in the obligatory context.Through the analysis，Matthew’s accuracy of the use of the auxiliary word 的‘de’ is only43.75%. It is far less than the standard level. According to OOA， this morpheme can not be considered ‘acquired’ and it can be considered that Matthew didn’t fully understand the use o f this word.IV. DiscussionThe reason why I decided to use this translation is that it specializes in the use of ‘de’ in Chinese and is a frequent method to examine the learners’ control of the language.It is clear to find that the results above are quite relevant to the previous literatures. The errors Matthew made when he was using 的‘de’ include both omission and overuse and this quite follows Gao （2005）and Tang and Zhu’s （2003） research work. Following are the examples：Omission of 的‘de’e.g.它被领进正面看台的下面一个不寻常，特殊马栏。