Journal articles: 'Chinese language Second language acquisition'

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Leung, Yan-kit Ingrid. "Verb morphology in second language versus third language acquisition." EUROSLA Yearbook 6 (July 20, 2006): 27–56. http://dx.doi.org/10.1075/eurosla.6.05leu.

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This paper reports an experimental study on L2 vs. L3 Spanish morphological representation. A total of 19 Spanish learners (10 Chinese native speakers who are upper intermediate to advanced L2 English users as well as 9 English native speakers who do not speak a prior language without overt morphology) participated in the study. A written production task using Spanish nonce verbs was used to elicit regular and irregular forms of Spanish past participles. The study revealed differences between native and non-native Spanish speakers but ones that are still compatible with an approach which posits a dual mechanism for morphological processing. In addition, no principal difference between the L2 and the L3 Spanish learners was identified. A follow-up experiment on L2 English was therefore carried out testing 26 native speakers of Chinese and 17 native speakers of English using a written production task eliciting English regular and irregular past tense forms for both real verbs and nonce verbs. The findings suggested that native and non-native English speakers’ performances pattern similarly. It seems that L2 English plays a crucial role in Chinese speakers’ L3 Spanish morphological representation and in their similar performance to the L1 English-L2 Spanish speakers.

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Zhang, Hang. "Dissimilation in the second language acquisition of Mandarin Chinese tones." Second Language Research 32, no. 3 (June 23, 2016): 427–51. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0267658316644293.

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This article extends Optimality Theoretic studies to the research on second language tone phonology. Specifically, this work analyses the acquisition of identical tone sequences in Mandarin Chinese by adult speakers of three non-tonal languages: English, Japanese and Korean. This study finds that the learners prefer not to use identical lexical tones on adjacent syllables, especially the contour tone sequences. It is argued that the Obligatory Contour Principle (OCP) was playing a role in shaping the second language Chinese tonal phonology even though it was not learned from these speakers’ native languages, nor found widely applied in the target language. The acquisition order of tone pairs suggests an interacting effect of the OCP and the Tonal Markedness Scale. This study presents a constraint-based analysis and proposes a four-stage path of OCP sub-constraint re-ranking to account for the error patterns found in the phonological experiment.

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Fung, Daniel. "Studies in second language acquisition of Chinese." System 60 (August 2016): 143–45. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.system.2016.05.007.

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Yuan, Boping. "The status of thematic verbs in the second language acquisition of Chinese: against inevitability of thematic-verb raising in second language acquisition." Second Language Research 17, no. 3 (July 2001): 248–72. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/026765830101700302.

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This article reports a study investigating the status of thematic verbs in second language acquisition (SLA) of Chinese by French-speaking, German-speaking, and English-speaking learners. Both French and German are languages which allow thematic verbs to raise. In contrast, thematic verbs in English and Chinese must remain in situ under V at PF. It has been widely reported in the second-language and nonnative language (L2) literature that (optional) thematic-verb raising occurs in SLA, and L2 researchers have accounted for this phenomenon on the basis of some hypotheses proposed for the initial state of SLA. Although these hypotheses differ from each other in explaining the presence of thematic-verb raising in SLA, they all predict that thematic-verb raising is inevitable in SLA by speakers of a verb-raising language. Some go so far as to predict thematic-verb raising in SLA by speakers of a non-verb-raising language. The study reported in this article provides robust evidence that the thematic verb does not raise in SLA of Chinese, which casts doubt on the reliability of these hypotheses in the L2 literature. Both judgement data and oral production data in the study clearly indicate that thematic verbs remain in situ in L2 Chinese. No optionality occurs at any proficiency level. These findings are accounted for in terms of the absence of verbal inflection in Chinese and the evidence in the L2 Chinese input data for the specification of the abstract features associated with the head of IP.

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Oshita, Hiroyuki. "THE UNACCUSATIVE TRAP IN SECOND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION." Studies in Second Language Acquisition 23, no. 2 (June 2001): 279–304. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0272263101002078.

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The distinction of two types of intransitive verbs—unergatives (with underlying subjects) and unaccusatives (with underlying objects)—may not exist at early stages of L2 acquisition, both being syntactically represented as unergatives. This idea, referred to here as the Unaccusative Trap Hypothesis, provides an elegant developmental account for a variety of seemingly unrelated syntactic phenomena in L2 English, Japanese, and Chinese. Target language input, structural constraints on natural language linking rules, and linguistic properties of a learner's L1s shape stages in the reorganization of the lexical and syntactic components of interlanguage grammars. Although nonnative grammars may initially override the structural constraints postulated as the Unaccusative Hypothesis (Burzio, 1986; Perlmutter, 1978) and the Uniformity of Theta Assignment Hypothesis (Baker, 1988), at later developmental stages some may still achieve conformity with the norms of natural languages.

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Yu, Baohua, and David A. Watkins. "Motivational and cultural correlates of second language acquisition." Australian Review of Applied Linguistics 31, no. 2 (January 1, 2008): 17.1–17.22. http://dx.doi.org/10.2104/aral0817.

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The present study investigates the relationships among motivational factors, cultural correlates and second language proficiency. The participants, from both Western and Asian backgrounds, were learning Chinese at university level in the People’s Republic of China. 115 students (35 Western students and 80 Asian students) ranging from beginning to advanced levels of proficiency were surveyed. The results of the study indicated that the degree of integrativeness into Chinese culture and motivation was significantly and positively related to Chinese language proficiency, while language anxiety was significantly and negatively correlated to such proficiency. However instrumental orientation was found to have no statistically significant relationship with such proficiency. Multiple regression analysis indicated that integrativeness and gender were major variables predicting Chinese language proficiency. Significant differences between Western and Asian student groups were found in terms of motivational variables and Chinese language proficiency. Compared with the Asian student group, the Western student group tended to perform better in spoken Chinese proficiency as evaluated by their teachers and seemed to have higher levels of motivation and integrativeness but lower levels of instrumental orientation and language anxiety. Recommendations are made to enhance motivation and second language acquisition.

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Yu, Baohua, and David A. Watkins. "Motivational and cultural correlates of second language acquisition." Australian Review of Applied Linguistics 31, no. 2 (2008): 17.1–17.22. http://dx.doi.org/10.1075/aral.31.2.04yu.

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The present study investigates the relationships among motivational factors, cultural correlates and second language proficiency. The participants, from both Western and Asian backgrounds, were learning Chinese at university level in the People’s Republic of China. 115 students (35 Western students and 80 Asian students) ranging from beginning to advanced levels of proficiency were surveyed.The results of the study indicated that the degree of integrativeness into Chinese culture and motivation was significantly and positively related to Chinese language proficiency, while language anxiety was significantly and negatively correlated to such proficiency. However instrumental orientation was found to have no statistically significant relationship with such proficiency. Multiple regression analysis indicated that integrativeness and gender were major variables predicting Chinese language proficiency. Significant differences between Western and Asian student groups were found in terms of motivational variables and Chinese language proficiency. Compared with the Asian student group, the Western student group tended to perform better in spoken Chinese proficiency as evaluated by their teachers and seemed to have higher levels of motivation and integrativeness but lower levels of instrumental orientation and language anxiety. Recommendations are made to enhance motivation and second language acquisition.

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8

Juffs, Alan. "Semantics-syntax correspondences in second language acquisition." Second Language Research 12, no. 2 (April 1996): 177–221. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/026765839601200203.

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This article investigates knowledge of semantics-syntax correspondences in SLA within the Principles and Parameters framework. A parameter of semantic structure is used to investigate knowledge of two distinct, but underlyingly related, verb classes: change of state locatives and 'psychologi cal' verbs. Chinese and English contrast in terms of the parameter setting. Experimental evidence indicates that adult Chinese learners of English L2 initially transfer parameter settings, but are able to reset the parameter. However, they only acquire L2 lexical properties and concomitant syntactic privileges with ease when L2 input adds a representation to their grammar. When positive L2 input should pre-empt overgeneralizations based on rep resentation transferred from the L1, for some learners L1 influence persists until quite advanced stages of acquisition. The implications of the results for the parameter-setting model of SLA are discussed.

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Wen, Xiaohong. "Second language acquisition of the Chinese particle le." International Journal of Applied Linguistics 5, no. 1 (June 1995): 45–62. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1473-4192.1995.tb00072.x.

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Schachter, Jacquelyn. "On the issue of completeness in second language acquisition." Interlanguage studies bulletin (Utrecht) 6, no. 2 (December 1990): 93–124. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/026765839000600201.

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The issue of completeness in adult second language acquisition is critical in the development of a theory of second language acquisition. Assuming the Chomskyan definition of core grammar as being those aspects of the language determined by the interaction of the innately specified Universal Grammar and the input to which the learner is exposed, we need to ask if it is possible for an adult learner of a second language to attain native-speaker competence in the core aspects of the grammar of the second language. This paper examines evidence for presence or absence of one principle of UG, Subjacency, in the grammars of groups of proficient nonnative speakers of English. There are three groups whose native languages - Korean, Chinese, Indonesian - differ from English with regard to Subjacency, Korean showing no evidence of it, Chinese and Indonesian showing partial evidence of it. There is one group whose native language, Dutch, shows the full range of Subjacency effects that English does. If all groups show the same Subjacency effects in English that native speakers do, then it must be the case UG is still available for adult second language learning and completeness in second language grammars is possible; if not, then completeness cannot be included as a possible characteristic of adult second language acquisition. Proficient nonnative university students with the above native languages were given grammaticality judgement tests on a set of sentences containing a variety of structures (islands) and Subjacency violations involving those structures. Analysis showed that though all groups were able to correctly judge grammatical sentences (containing islands) as grammatical, only the Dutch group was able to correctly judge ungrammatical sentences (containing Subjacency violations) as ungrammatical; the Korean subjects performed randomly on this task. This native language effect was shown not to be due to attribute variables, such as age of first exposure to English, number of months in an English-speaking country, number of years of English study, etc. The results support the conclusion that completeness is not a possible property of adult-acquired grammars since adults no longer have access to UG for the second language learning process.

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Wakabayashi, Shigenori. "Lexical learning in second language acquisition: optionality in the numeration." Second Language Research 25, no. 2 (April 2009): 335–41. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0267658308100293.

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Lardiere suggests that second language acquisition (SLA) researchers should pay more attention to the distribution of a given feature in source and target languages, using the distribution of [plural] in English, Chinese and Korean to illustrate. I argue that the distribution of [definite] in English shows a similar complexity, and that this has largely been ignored in existing second language studies. I propose that it is distributional complexity of this kind that underlies the gradual development and variability observed in second language (L2) performance. A four-stage model is outlined, attributing gradual development/variability (partly) to optionality in the numeration.

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Chen, Chen. "A Study on Positive Transfer of Native Language and Second Language Teaching Methods." Theory and Practice in Language Studies 10, no. 3 (March 1, 2020): 306. http://dx.doi.org/10.17507/tpls.1003.06.

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Native language is one of the important factors that affect second language acquisition (SLA). However, compared with the heated discussion about the negative transfer of native language, the positive transfer of native language lacks due attention. Taking Chinese and English as a case study, this paper first reveals the similarities between the two languages, then discusses the positive effects of native language on SLA, and finally explores English teaching methods so as to promote the positive transfer of native language and reduce the negative transfer.

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Gil, Kook-Hee, and Marsden Heather. "Existential quantifiers in second language acquisition." Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism 3, no. 2 (May 17, 2013): 117–49. http://dx.doi.org/10.1075/lab.3.2.01gil.

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Lardiere’s (2005, 2008, 2009) Feature Reassembly Hypothesis proposes that L2 acquisition involves reconfiguring the sets of lexical features that occur in the native language into feature bundles appropriate to the L2. This paper applies the Feature Reassembly Hypothesis to findings from recent research into the L2 acquisition of existential quantifiers. It firstly provides a feature-based, crosslinguistic account of polarity item any in English, and its equivalents — wh-existentials — in Chinese, Korean and Japanese. We then test predictions built on the Feature Reassembly Hypothesis, about how learners map target existential quantifiers in the L2 input onto feature sets from their L1, and how they then reassemble these feature sets to better match the target. The findings, which are largely compatible with the predictions, show that research that focuses on the specific processes of first mapping and then feature reassembly promises to lead to a more explanatory account of development in L2 acquisition.

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Ellis, Rod. "Grammatically Judgments and Second Language Acquisition." Studies in Second Language Acquisition 13, no. 2 (June 1991): 161–86. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0272263100009931.

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This article takes a critical look at grammaticality judgment tasks in second language acquisition research. It begins by examining the theoretical assumptions that underlie grammaticality judgment tasks, pointing out that previous studies have reported considerable differences between the results obtained from grammaticality judgment tasks and from other, production-oriented tasks. A description of the design features of grammaticality judgment tasks that have been used to date is then provided. There follows an account of a small-scale study designed to investigate the nature of learner judgments. Twenty-one adult advanced Chinese learners of English were asked to judge sentences designed to test their knowledge of dative alternation. The results indicated that the learners rarely used the “not sure” option in the test. Eight of these subjects were then administered a reduced version of the original test as a think-aloud task 1 week later. The results showed that these learners were inconsistent in 22.5% of their judgments. The think-aloud protocols showed that they resorted to a variety of strategies in making judgments. The article concludes by arguing that grammaticality judgment tasks elicit a particular kind of performance that needs to be understood much more thoroughly before it is used as a basis for investigating second language acquisition.

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Yang, Shuyi. "Chinese as Second Language Learners’ Beliefs about Vocabulary Acquisition." Journal of Modern Education Review 4, no. 10 (October 20, 2014): 789–801. http://dx.doi.org/10.15341/jmer(2155-7993)/10.04.2014/007.

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Guthrie, Kate Hardeman. "Gender and second language style." Asia-Pacific Language Variation 2, no. 2 (December 31, 2016): 157–87. http://dx.doi.org/10.1075/aplv.2.2.03har.

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Abstract Gender has been shown to be a salient factor in acquisition of second language variation (Adamson & Regan, 1991; Major, 2004; Meyerhoff & Schleef, 2012; Rehner, Mougeon, & Nadasdi, 2003; Schleef, Meyerhoff, & Clark, 2011). However, these studies have primarily focused on learner production of target language variation and style in the sense of attention paid to speech. There has been little focus on learner perceptions of the social meanings associated with L2 variants and styles. The present article addresses this gap in the research by examining L2 learner perceptions of a gendered style of speaking in Mandarin Chinese known as sajiao. Results from a perception experiment confirm the salience of gender in the acquisition of L2 variation and show that American L2 Mandarin learners have acquired some of the social meanings associated with sajiao but not others. An acoustic phonetic analysis of sajiao is also presented.

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Yan, Mengzhu. "Book notice: Second Language Acquisition of Mandarin Chinese Tones — Beyond First-Language Transfer." Phonetica 77, no. 3 (August 8, 2019): 238–41. http://dx.doi.org/10.1159/000501803.

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AU, TERRY KIT-FONG, WINNIE WAILAN CHAN, LIAO CHENG, LINDA S. SIEGEL, and RICKY VAN YIP TSO. "Can non-interactive language input benefit young second-language learners?" Journal of Child Language 42, no. 2 (April 7, 2014): 323–50. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0305000913000627.

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ABSTRACTTo fully acquire a language, especially its phonology, children need linguistic input from native speakers early on. When interaction with native speakers is not always possible – e.g. for children learning a second language that is not the societal language – audios are commonly used as an affordable substitute. But does such non-interactive input work? Two experiments evaluated the usefulness of audio storybooks in acquiring a more native-like second-language accent. Young children, first- and second-graders in Hong Kong whose native language was Cantonese Chinese, were given take-home listening assignments in a second language, either English or Putonghua Chinese. Accent ratings of the children's story reading revealed measurable benefits of non-interactive input from native speakers. The benefits were far more robust for Putonghua than English. Implications for second-language accent acquisition are discussed.

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Wen, Xiaohong. "The Acquisition of Chinese as a First and Second Language." Languages 5, no. 3 (September 3, 2020): 32. http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/languages5030032.

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Hu, Xiaoling, and Chuanping Liu. "Restrictive relative clauses in English and Korean learners' second language Chinese." Second Language Research 23, no. 3 (July 2007): 263–87. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0267658307077642.

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This study investigates the second language (L2) acquisition of restrictive relative clauses (RRCs) in Chinese by two groups of learners speaking typologically different first languages (L1s): English and Korean. English RRCs, unlike those of Chinese, are head-initial whereas Korean RRCs, like those of Chinese, are head-final. The difference could be predicted to hinder English learners' acquisition of L2 RRCs but facilitate it for Korean learners. This prediction was not confirmed in this study, in fact the reverse was observed, and our data show contrasting patterns of acquisition between the two groups of learners. The English learners distinguished between target-like RRCs and non-target-like RRCs earlier than the Korean learners. A corresponding difference was observed for acquisition of resumptive pronouns. It is argued that where the L1 and the L2 share salient properties (such as head direction) restructuring of less salient features encoded in functional categories takes longer and may be persistently problematic. We suggest that the fact that Korean is more similar to Chinese (perhaps superficially, same head direction) leads learners not to restructure quickly, while the surface dissimilarity of English and Chinese gives rise to rapid restructuring in L2 grammars of learners.

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Yang Zhao. "Review article: A tree in the wood: A review of research on L2 Chinese acquisition." Second Language Research 27, no. 4 (July 29, 2011): 559–72. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0267658311417836.

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There has been considerable research in Chinese as a second language (L2) in recent years, particularly in its morphological and syntactic aspects. This article reviews research in these aspects with reference to the broader discipline of second language acquisition (SLA) and suggests that L2 Chinese research has contributed to SLA through verification, modification or posing challenges to research findings in the L2 acquisition of other languages. On the basis of these studies, the author points out the limits of current L2 Chinese research and discusses the prospects for future development, arguing that L2 Chinese is to be investigated against hypotheses based on other L2s so that theoretical contributions can be made to the discipline of SLA.

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Spring, Ryan, and Kaoru Horie. "How cognitive typology affects second language acquisition: A study of Japanese and Chinese learners of English." Cognitive Linguistics 24, no. 4 (November 20, 2013): 689–710. http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/cog-2013-0024.

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AbstractThis study looks at the effect of one's first language type, as proposed by Talmy (2000) and Slobin (2004), on their second language acquisition. Talmy (2000) gives an account of languages as being either verb-framed or satellite-framed based on how path and manner of motion are encoded in motion events. Meanwhile, Slobin (2004) argues for a third language type, which he calls equipollently-framed. This study compares and contrasts the learning curves of equipollently-framed language (Mandarin Chinese) native speakers and verb-framed language (Japanese) native speakers as they learn a satellite-framed language (English). It examines not only the learner's pattern preferences, but also their manner of motion encoding preferences and deictic verb usage to show that there is a clear difference in how the two groups of learners acquire a second language of a different type from their own native language.

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Hao, Yen-Chen. "Second language acquisition of Mandarin Chinese tones by tonal and non-tonal language speakers." Journal of Phonetics 40, no. 2 (March 2012): 269–79. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.wocn.2011.11.001.

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Gabriele, Alison, and Junko Maekawa. "Interpreting tense in a second language." EUROSLA Yearbook 8 (August 7, 2008): 79–106. http://dx.doi.org/10.1075/eurosla.8.07gab.

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The question of whether adult native speakers of Chinese, a language that does not morphosyntactically represent tense, are able to acquire tense in English has been a topic of great interest in part because it allows us to examine whether there is a critical period for features that are not instantiated in the native language (Hawkins 2001; Hawkins & Liszka 2003; Lardiere 1998a, 2003).While most previous studies have focused on production data, the present study examines the semantics of tense, investigating whether or not learners’ interpretations are sensitive to temporal distinctions. Native speakers of Mandarin are compared with native speakers of Japanese and Korean, languages which both morphosyntactically encode tense. Results of an interpretation task targeting the present progressive and past progressive in English show that by advanced levels of proficiency the three groups of learners performsimilarly. The results provide evidence that tense is fully acquirable in L2 acquisition regardless of the properties of the native language.

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Lu, Yanmei. "Literature Review of Second Language Learners’ Acquisition of Chinese Resultative Construction." Theory and Practice in Language Studies 7, no. 10 (October 1, 2017): 907. http://dx.doi.org/10.17507/tpls.0710.12.

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Chinese resultative construction was the hotspot of grammar researches and also the difficult point of second language teaching and learning. From the aspects of syntax, semantics and pragmatics, this paper analyzed the ontology researches of Chinese resultative construction, reviewed the research results of second language learners’ acquisition of Chinese resultative construction and also provided some references and directions of related researches.

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Bialystok, Ellen, and Barry Miller. "The problem of age in second-language acquisition: Influences from language, structure, and task." Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 2, no. 2 (August 1999): 127–45. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s1366728999000231.

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Three groups of participants were given a grammaticality judgement test based on five structures of English grammar in both an oral and written form. The first group consisted of native speakers of Chinese, the second, native speakers of Spanish, and the third, native English speakers. The two learner groups were divided into those who had begun learning English at a younger (less than 15 years) or older (more than 15 years) age. Performance was measured for both accuracy of judgement and time taken to respond. The results showed that performance patterns were different for the two learner groups, that the linguistic structure tested in the item affected participants' ability to respond correctly, and that task modality produced reliable response differences for the two learner groups. Although there were proficiency differences in the grammaticality judgement task between the younger and older Spanish learners, there were no such differences for the Chinese group. Furthermore, age of learning influenced achieved proficiency through all ages tested rather than defining a point of critical period. The results are interpreted as failing to provide sufficient evidence to accept the hypothesis that there is a critical period for second language acquisition.

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Langman, Juliet, and Robert Bayley. "The acquisition of verbal morphology by Chinese learners of Hungarian." Language Variation and Change 14, no. 1 (March 2002): 55–77. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0954394502141032.

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This article is the first variationist analysis of speakers of an analytic language acquiring an agglutinative language: we investigate the acquisition of the rich Hungarian verbal morphological system by adult Chinese immigrants to Budapest. Multivariate analyses of data extracted from sociolinguistic interviews with nine untutored Chinese learners of Hungarian suggest that the acquisition of verbal morphology is systematic. Factors that have been identified as significant in studies of the acquisition of other languages, such as frequency, perceptual salience, morphophonological regularity, and semantic complexity, all play a significant role in the acquisition of Hungarian as a second language. The marking of definiteness or indefiniteness of the object on the verb, a rare aspect of verbal morphology, also has a significant effect. Chinese learners are more likely to mark definite than indefinite forms of the verb, despite the fact that these forms express largely redundant functions and that indefinites are more frequent. Hence, our data allow for an analysis of relative weights of factors affecting acquisition and address the issue of the relative weight of frequency over other factors.

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Lee, Kang, Catherine Ann Cameron, Murrary J. Linton, and Anne K. Hunt. "Referential place-holding in Chinese children's acquisition of English articles." Applied Psycholinguistics 15, no. 1 (January 1994): 29–43. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0142716400006962.

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ABSTRACTThis longitudinal study examines the acquisition of English articles by three 6-year-old, second language learning children whose native tongue is Chinese, a language without articles. Brown's coding scheme and an extended coding scheme were used in scoring the corpora of children's responses to a Syntax Elicitation Task. Results revealed that the Chinese children's acquisition of the definite article differed from- what had been previously found using Brown's coding scheme with English as first language learners and second language learning children of other native language origins. Chinese children's use of the definite article developed through an unmarked phase, a referential place-holding phase, a marked phase, and a referential substitution phase before the definite article was fully acquired. The acquisition of the indefinite article, on the other hand, was similar to the acquisition pattern already reported for children learning English as a first language or as a second language. It is suggested that referential place-holding, as well as referential substitution, might not be a Chinese-specific second language learning phenomenon; rather, they might be derived from a universal referential strategy for learning articles.

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Hudgens Henderson, Mary, Miho Nagai, and Weidong Zhang. "What languages do undergraduates study, and why?" Proceedings of the Linguistic Society of America 5, no. 1 (March 25, 2020): 722. http://dx.doi.org/10.3765/plsa.v5i1.4704.

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Language attitudes and motivations are among the most important factors in language acquisition that condition the language learning outcomes. College students enrolled in first-semester and second-semester courses of Chinese, Japanese, and Spanish at a Midwest American university completed a survey eliciting instrumental motivations, integrative motivations, and language attitudes. The purpose of this study was to examine the perceptions the learners of that language(s) held and how their language attitudes and motivations correlate with specific world languages. There was strong interest in using Chinese and Spanish for careers, while participants in Japanese were more interested in using the language for personal enjoyment. American-raised participants take Spanish and Asian-raised students take Chinese and Japanese for much the same reasons, in that they perceive the languages to be easy. Implications for world language programs recruitment are discussed, along with what world language educators can do to take advantage of these pre-existing attitudes and motivations to deliver high quality instruction beyond simply grammar.

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Ištvánová, Mária. "On the Use of Corpora in Second Language Acquisition – Chinese as an Example." Acta Linguistica Asiatica 11, no. 2 (July 30, 2021): 131–42. http://dx.doi.org/10.4312/ala.11.2.131-142.

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This paper aims to introduce the language corpora and the advantages of their use in the process of Chinese language acquisition. We provide practical examples of the corpora's direct and indirect use for teaching and learning Chinese as a second language. The exploratory approach towards Chinese by using various types of corpora is applicable for general language seminars as well as specialized translation seminars. The indirect use is mainly linked to the preparation of teaching materials and facilitates the curriculum design.

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Yin, Yuxia. "Review of Zhang (2018): Second Language Acquisition of Mandarin Chinese Tones: Beyond First Language Transfer." International Journal of Chinese Linguistics 8, no. 1 (June 1, 2021): 169–76. http://dx.doi.org/10.1075/ijchl.00013.yin.

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Setiawan, Budi. "The Optimal Age of the Second-First Language Acquisition: The Relationship of Language and Physical-Motor Development." Lingua Cultura 13, no. 1 (April 15, 2019): 75. http://dx.doi.org/10.21512/lc.v13i1.5324.

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This research highlighted the language and physical-motor relationship and aimed to find the optimal age for the beginning of the second-first language (2L1) acquisition. The respondents of this research were 50 millennial generations of Chinese families whose children were 0-5 years old. Some children could communicate in Chinese and Indonesian language. Chinese-Indonesian families were chosen by considering their bilingual. This research employed qualitative data which were collected from observations and questionnaires given to parents. The collected data were analyzed by classifying the data into some specific intervals of age based on the language milestones. This research finds that the highest frequency of the beginning in the simultaneous second-first language education is at 13-15 months. This research also proves that the age between 13-15 months is an optimal age to begin educating the second language regarded as the first language for bilingual families.

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Yuan, B. "The status of thematic verbs in the second language acquisition of Chinese: against inevitability of thematic-verb raising in second language acquisition." Second language Research 17, no. 3 (July 1, 2001): 248–72. http://dx.doi.org/10.1191/026765801680191505.

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JIANG, NAN. "Morphological insensitivity in second language processing." Applied Psycholinguistics 25, no. 4 (October 2004): 603–34. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0142716404001298.

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Two competing explanations exist regarding the nature of morphological difficulty in adult second language acquisition: competence deficit versus performance deficiency. This study tested these explanations by examining English as a second language (ESL) learners' morphological performance in reading comprehension tasks. Chinese ESL speakers were asked to read English sentences for comprehension in three self-paced word by word reading experiments. Their reading times were measured to determine if they were sensitive to idiosyncrasies/disagreement in sentences that do and do not involve the number morpheme. The results show that they are not sensitive to number disagreement, but sensitive to other idiosyncrasies tested. This insensitivity to the number morpheme suggests that their morphological knowledge is not an integrated part of their automatic second language competence.

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조용준 and 대려연. "Second Language Acquisition of Korean Concord Adverbs by Adult Chinese Speakers." Urimalgeul: The Korean Language and Literature 69, no. ll (June 2016): 121–53. http://dx.doi.org/10.18628/urimal.69..201606.121.

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Yin, Yuxia. "Review of Han (2014): Studies in Second Language Acquisition of Chinese." International Journal of Chinese Linguistics 3, no. 2 (November 28, 2016): 310–14. http://dx.doi.org/10.1075/ijchl.3.2.06yin.

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Lan, Yu-Ju, Shin-Yi Fang, Jennifer Legault, and Ping Li. "Second language acquisition of Mandarin Chinese vocabulary: context of learning effects." Educational Technology Research and Development 63, no. 5 (May 29, 2015): 671–90. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11423-015-9380-y.

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Chan, Stephanie W. Y., Wai Ming Cheung, Yanli Huang, Wai-Ip Lam, and Chin-Hsi Lin. "Development and validation of a Chinese character acquisition assessment for second-language kindergarteners." Language Testing 37, no. 2 (October 5, 2019): 215–34. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0265532219876527.

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Demand for second-language (L2) Chinese education for kindergarteners has grown rapidly, but little is known about these kindergarteners’ L2 skills, with existing studies focusing on school-age populations and alphabetic languages. Accordingly, we developed a six-subtest Chinese character acquisition assessment to measure L2 kindergarteners’ abilities to make associations among the forms, sounds, and meanings of 40 Chinese characters, and administered it to 173 five- and six-year-old L2 kindergarteners in Hong Kong. We found a high model-to-data fit using the two-parameter logistic item response theory model ( MSinfit = .87 to 1.07, ps > .41). Of the 40 items, 36 exhibited a range of difficulty and good discrimination. Internal consistency reliability and inter-rater reliability were also high. The children scored highest in the category of meaning-sound associations, followed by mapping from meaning to form. The results demonstrate that the instrument is adequately valid and reliable for assessing L2 kindergarteners’ character acquisition and imply that child L2 learners may develop abilities to map meanings and sounds prior to their development of form-related mapping. With minor modifications, the developed instrument can be used in various child Chinese L2 programs around the world.

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Fenton-Smith, Ben, and Ian Walkinshaw. "Research in the School of Languages and Linguistics at Griffith University." Language Teaching 47, no. 3 (June 3, 2014): 404–8. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s026144481400010x.

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Griffith University is set across five campuses in south-east Queensland, Australia, and has a student population of 43,000. The School of Languages and Linguistics (LAL) offers programs in linguistics, international English, Chinese, Italian, Japanese and Spanish, as well as English language enhancement courses. Research strands reflect the staff's varied scholarly interests, which include academic language and learning, sociolinguistics, second language learning/acquisition and teaching, computer assisted language learning (CALL) and language corpora. This report offers a summary of research recently published or currently underway within LAL.

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Lu, Yanmei. "A Diachronic Study on Chinese Resultative Construction of Second Language Learners." Theory and Practice in Language Studies 9, no. 7 (July 1, 2019): 816. http://dx.doi.org/10.17507/tpls.0907.10.

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Resultative construction is a very special phenomenon in Chinese grammar and also a difficult issue for second language learners. This paper summarizes diachronic research on resultative construction including its definition, formation times, forming and development, the characteristic. As a comparative study of language, this paper can benefit the teaching and acquisition of Chinese resultative construction.

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Flege, James Emil, and Serena Liu. "THE EFFECT OF EXPERIENCE ON ADULTS' ACQUISITION OF A SECOND LANGUAGE." Studies in Second Language Acquisition 23, no. 4 (December 2001): 527–52. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0272263101004041.

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Previous research has suggested that child but not adult immigrants to the United States and Canada make regular progress learning English as their length of residence (LOR) increases. If children and adults received the same kind of second language (L2) input, such evidence would support the existence of a critical period for L2 acquisition. The present study compared groups of Chinese adults living in the United States who differed in LOR in order to assess the role of input in adults' naturalistic acquisition of an L2. We assessed the Chinese participants' identification of word-final English consonants (experiment 1), their scores on a 144-item grammaticality judgment test (experiment 2), and their scores on a 45-item listening comprehension test (experiment 3). The Chinese participants were assigned to one of four groups (n = 15 each) based on LOR in the United States and their primary occupation (students vs. nonstudents). Significantly higher scores were obtained for the students with relatively long LORs than for the students with relatively short LORs in all three experiments. However, the difference between the nonstudents differing in LOR was nonsignificant in each instance. The results suggested that the lack of an effect of LOR in some previous studies may have been due to sampling error. It appears that adults' performance in an L2 will improve measurably over time, but only if they receive a substantial amount of native speaker input.

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Cusen, Gabriela. "In Between Languages Narrative Research into Learners’ Language “Space”." Acta Universitatis Sapientiae, Philologica 11, no. 2 (December 1, 2019): 119–31. http://dx.doi.org/10.2478/ausp-2019-0016.

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AbstractNarrative has been one of the major concerns in social science research ever since the mid-twentieth century, and the area of second language acquisition (SLA) is no exception. Researchers have turned to the investigation of learner-produced narratives to extend the understanding of many key concepts in SLA theory. This type of research approach takes language learning beyond the acquisition/assimilation of linguistic structures and is meant to focus on learners as social selves actively involved in the construction of a linguistic identity. In this paper, I investigate how learners of English as a foreign language, whose first languages are Arabic, Chinese, French, Hindi, Hungarian, Kurdish, Parsi (Farsi), Romanian, Russian, and Spanish, narrate their own experiences of learning this language. This investigation is based on a dataset of language learning experience written accounts with reference to learner life events. In the analysis, I apply two analytical frameworks for the examination of the data: a) grounded theory procedures (Corbin and Strauss 2007), which are often employed with narrative data, and b) a “positioning approach to narratives” (Bamberg 1997) in order to detect the learners’ positioning strategies in the hope of revealing their linguistic identity claims in relation to who they are and how they make sense of their language learning experience. Results show how the learners position themselves in relation to “the other” (teachers, family, fellow learners, and the researcher), to themselves as learners, and to the language they learn.

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Gong, Zhiqi. "Topic prominence in L2 acquisition." Journal of Second Language Studies 2, no. 1 (April 18, 2019): 140–64. http://dx.doi.org/10.1075/jsls.17016.gon.

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Abstract This study investigated the topic-prominent characteristics of the interlanguage development of native speakers of Chinese learning English as a foreign language (EFL). Two groups of Chinese EFL learners – an intermediate group and an advanced group – were recruited to complete two production tasks: a written Chinese-to-English translation task and an oral story-retelling task. The findings showed that Chinese EFL learners at each proficiency level transferred Chinese topic-prominent structures to their target language production at a varying degree. The topic-prominent constructions in the learners’ production, based on a hierarchy of difficulty, were placed on two slightly different Gradation Zones, one for written production and the other for oral production. Gradation Zones were a generalized reflection of how discourse and pragmatic relations in topic-prominent Chinese were gradually reanalyzed as syntactic relations with the development of learners’ English proficiency level. There was a tendency for topic-prominent features to decrease and subject-prominent features to increase as EFL learners’ proficiency level progressed. It was also argued that sources of these topic-prominent properties in interlanguage were an interaction of factors, including degree of markedness, perceptual saliency, second language (L2) input, and language production task type.

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Armelle, Guemkam Ouafo Diane. "Chinese Learners’ Mistakes in the Acquisition of French: Case of Verb Tenses." World Journal of Social Science Research 5, no. 2 (June 6, 2018): 201. http://dx.doi.org/10.22158/wjssr.v5n2p201.

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<em>The mastery of grammatical categories is a very important aspect during the acquisition of foreign languages in general, and in particular contrastive linguistics. Verb tenses in French are important part of speech grammar. Non-Mastery of them may cause second language acquisition mistake and misunderstanding especially in French with the verb lexeme. Their confusion by Chinese learners leads to mistakes. This paper uses descriptive method to analyze Chinese learners’ mistake in French speaking and writing.</em>

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Zhang, Lanqing. "Common Problems in English Pronunciation Among Chinese Learners and Teaching Implications." Journal of Contemporary Educational Research 5, no. 5 (May 28, 2021): 33–38. http://dx.doi.org/10.26689/jcer.v5i5.2123.

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In the process of learning any languages, pronunciation is an important part of language acquisition because pronunciation may influence a listener’s comprehension of one’s expression. An example is the classical mistake of pronouncing “sink” and “think.” Because Germans cannot pronounce /s/, the rescue worker cannot understand why a man who is “thinking” needs help. In China, English learners are also facing the problems of pronunciation. Gimson, a famous professor of linguistics in Britain, pointed out that when learning a language, one should understand 50%-90% of its grammar and 1% of its vocabulary, but it is necessary to fully master the pronunciation, thus highlighting the importance of pronunciation.[1] However, pronunciation is a difficult part of a second language acquisition. This article analyzes the problems of pronunciation and discuss some methods on how to resolve them.

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Liu, Dongxin, Shuo Wang, Qi Gao, Ruijuan Dong, Xinxing Fu, Esther Pugh, and Jiong Hu. "Learning a Second Language in Adulthood Changes Subcortical Neural Encoding." Neural Plasticity 2020 (October 20, 2020): 1–9. http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2020/8836161.

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Second language learning has been shown to impact and reshape the central nervous system, anatomically and functionally. Most of the studies on second language learning and neuroplasticity have been focused on cortical areas, whereas the subcortical neural encoding mechanism and its relationship with L2 learning have not been examined extensively. The purpose of this study was to utilize frequency-following response (FFR) to examine if and how learning a tonal language in adulthood changes the subcortical neural encoding in hearing adults. Three groups of subjects were recruited: native speakers of Mandarin Chinese (native speakers (NS)), learners of the language (L2 learners), and those with no experience (native speakers of foreign languages (NSFL)). It is hypothesized that differences would exist in FFRs obtained from the three language experience groups. Results revealed that FFRs obtained from L2 learners were found to be more robust than the NSFL group, yet not on a par with the NS group. Such results may suggest that in human adulthood, subcortical neural encoding ability may be trainable with the acquisition of a new language and that neuroplasticity at the brainstem level can indeed be influenced by L2 learning.

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박선희 and 김현우. "SECOND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION AND PROCESSING OF KOREAN LOCATIVE CONSTRUCTIONS BY CHINESE SPEAKERS." Acta Koreana 20, no. 2 (December 2017): 591–614. http://dx.doi.org/10.18399/acta.2017.20.2.010.

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Li, Daguo. "Motivation in Second Language Acquisition in Chinese Research Students in the UK." Evaluation & Research in Education 19, no. 1 (February 15, 2006): 38–58. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09500790608668324.

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Hung, Hsiao-Hsuan. "The Routledge Handbook of Chinese second language acquisition, edited by Chuanren Ke." Chinese Language and Discourse 11, no. 1 (June 3, 2020): 156–63. http://dx.doi.org/10.1075/cld.00027.hun.

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Polio, Charlene. "Acquiring Nothing?" Studies in Second Language Acquisition 17, no. 3 (September 1995): 353–77. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0272263100014248.

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Some earlier SLA research suggests that zero pronouns should be easily acquired by second language learners, yet this has not been carefully examined because studies of nominal reference are usually limited to the acquisition of languages that do not have zero pronouns. This study examines how speakers of languages with zero pronouns (Japanese) and without them (English) use zero pronouns when acquiring a language that has them (Mandarin Chinese). The findings show that second language learners do not use zero pronouns as often as native speakers and that their use increases with proficiency. When examined more closely, it can be seen that the speakers have no difficulty using zero pronouns when there is a syntactic or semantic restriction, but they do have difficulty at the discourse level. It is claimed that this underuse of zero pronouns corresponds with other research that shows that second language learners tend to avoid pronouns in favor of full noun phrases. Some explanations for these phenomena are postulated.

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Journal articles on the topic 'Chinese language Second language acquisition'

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