Acquisition of English Ditransitives by Mandarin Chinese Learners

Abstract

AbstractBoth English and Chinese ditransitives imply a “transfer”, but differ in terms of transfer directions and dativisable verb types. This study investigates (1) the classes of English dativisable verbs that Chinese EFL learners are most likely to produce and (2) the role of L1 in the acquisition of English ditransitives. Concordances of dativisable verbs in the Chinese Learner English Corpus show that the verb classes of “giving” and “communicated message” constitute the largest proportion of the correct usage of ditransitives by Chinese EFL learners. A grammaticality judgement test was administered to a group of postgraduate students (n = 106) and a group of undergraduate students (n = 134) at two different proficiency levels. Under four different conditions of treatment, they were required to make a judgement of the English translations of four different types of dativisable verb. Results show that L1 transfer facilitates the grammaticality judgement when English dativisable verbs are congruent with their Chinese counterparts and hinders the judgement when there is incongruency between English dativisable verbs and their Chinese equivalents. It was further found that the “top-down” approach of instruction of L2 English ditransitives is more effective than the “bottom-up” approach. This study concludes that the central task challenging Chinese EFL learners is, to a large extent, to reorganise the conceptual structure of ditransitives.KeywordsDitransitiveTransfer directionDativisable verb classesTop-down approachConceptual reorganisation