Challenges And Curricular Innovations For Chinese English Learners In Acquiring English Tense ...

66 Pages·2015·0.64 MB·English

Florida State University Libraries
Electronic Theses, Treatises and Dissertations The Graduate School
2013
Challenges and Curricular Innovations for
Chinese English Learners in Acquiring
English Tense and Aspect: Simple Present,
Present Perfect, Simple Past, and Past
Perfect
Jiunn-Ying Kung
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THE FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY
COLLEGE OF EDUCATION

CHALLENGES AND CURRICULAR INNOVATIONS FOR CHINESE
ENGLISH LEARNERS IN ACQUIRING ENGLISH TENSE AND ASPECT:
SIMPLE PRESENT, PRESENT PERFECT, SIMPLE PAST, AND PAST PERFECT

By
JIUNN-YING KUNG

A Thesis submitted to the
School of Teacher Education
in partial fulfillment of the
requirements for the degree of
Master of Science

Degree Awarded
Summer Semester, 2013
Jiunn-Ying Kung defended this thesis on June 28, 2013.
The members of the supervisory committee were:

Rebecca Galeano
Professor Directing Thesis

Lawrence Scharmann
Committee Member

Elizabeth Jakubowski
Committee Member

The Graduate School has verified and approved the above-named committee members, and
certifies that the thesis has been approved in accordance with university requirements.
ii
To my parents,龔紹龍 and高文瑜 .

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I wish to express thankfulness to many people who helped me to complete this thesis. First,
I would like to acknowledge my parents, 龔紹龍and 高文瑜, who have always been supportive of
my research and have always encouraged me to pursue my interests; I am also very grateful to 陳
偉家for being supportive throughout the study, for cheering me up to keep going when things
were not going well, and for reminding me to take a break.
I am very grateful to my thesis advisor, Dr. Rebecca Galeano, who has guided me to
construct the thesis, without her support in not letting my anxieties rise when times got tough,
and her guidance and help in writing have made this thesis possible.
I am also thankful to Dr. Patrick Kennell and Dr. Mari Haneda for providing ideas on topics
and for assisting me to get started. I am very grateful to Dr. Lawrence Scharmann and Dr.
Elizabeth Jakubowski for being my committee members and for being very patient when things
got tough for me. Without their understanding, this thesis could not be defended. I would like to
thank Dr. Kelly Torres, who has always believed in me and has guided me when I got confused
from time to time about my studies.
Last but not least, I am also thankful to Dr. David Griffin from Kansas State University,
who has encouraged me to pursue the Master’s Degree.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

List of Tables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vii
List of Figures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . viii
Abstract . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ix
1. INTRODUCTION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.1 Tense and Aspect . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
1.2 Description of Theoretical Framework . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
1.3 Statement of the Research Problem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
1.4 Definition of Terms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
2. LITERATURE REVIEW . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
2.1 Theoretical Framework . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
2.1.1 Contrastive Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
2.1.2 Hierarchy of Difficulty . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
2.1.3 Teachability Hypothesis . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
2.1.4 Fossilization and Essentiality of Communicative Competence. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
2.2 Tense and Aspect in English . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2. 0
2.2.1 Simple Present, Present Perfect, Simple Past, and Past Perfect. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
2.3 Aspect in Chinese . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
2.3.1 Aspect Expression in Chinese . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
3. ANALYSIS AND TEACHING RECOMMENDATIONS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
3.1 Analysis of Intralingual Transfer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
3.2 An Analysis based on Hierarchy of Difficulty . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
3.2.1 Analysis for the Aspectual Marker Le . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
3.2.2 Analysis for the Aspectual Marker –Guo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
3.2.3 Analysis for the Aspectual Marker –Zhe ad Zai . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
3.3 Teaching Strategy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
3.4 Instruction for Le and - Guo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
3.5 Instruction for Zai and - Zhe . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
3.6 Instruction for Interlingual Transfer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43

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3.7 Suggestion for the Overall Teaching . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
3.8 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
REFERENCES. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . 55

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LIST OF TABLES

Table 1. The Definitions and Usages of English Tense and Aspect. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
25
Table 2. Aspectual Markers of Chinese . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
28
Table 3. Examples for Teaching the Split of Le and -Guo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . .
40
Table 4. Examples for Teaching the Split of Zai and -Zhe . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ..
42
Table 5. Examples for Teaching the Time Frames . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
43

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LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 1. The Distinction of Time Frames for Repetition and Regularity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
Figure 2. The Distinction of Time Frames for Continuation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
Figure 3. The Comparison of the Time Locations of Referenced Events . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
Figure 4. Analysis for the Aspectual Marker Le . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
Figure 5. Analysis for the Aspectual Marker –Guo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
Figure 6. Analysis for the Aspectual Markers Zai and –Zhe . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
Figure 7. Analysis for the Association of the Grammatical Structures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
Figure 8. Sequence of Teaching . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45

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ABSTRACT

The learning of past tenses and aspects in English is difficult for Chinese learners due to the
fact that there is no past tense in the Chinese language (Chiswick & Miller, 2004). This
difference creates a learning obstacle in Chinese people achieving communicative competence in
English, because grammatical competence is an essential component in achieving
communicative competence. Communicative competence is the ability to (a) use grammar and
vocabulary, (b) speak for longer periods of time yet retains coherence, (c) use and respond to
language under certain settings in communication, and (d) repair communication breakdown
(Hymes, 1972; Lund, 1996). However, without a sufficient knowledge base of English grammar,
Chinese learners find it more difficult to construct the components required in communicative
competence, which impedes the English learning and affects the lives of the learners if they live
in the country of the target language. According to related studies, the learners have difficulties
acquiring particular basic linguistic structures in English, which relatively impedes their
development of English proficiency and communicative competence (Chen, 2009; Lim, 2007).
Also, as shown on the score of the TOEFL (test of English as a Foreign Language) exanimation
in 2012, the Chinese learners scored lower when compared to examinees of other nationalities.
The present thesis is a review of pedagogical literature that focuses on constructing a
framework of effective instruction, which based on previous studies and theories in the field of
foreign and second language education. The focus of this research is on how learners can acquire
the ability to use English to locate and describe events in time. Specifically, the study will be on
particular tenses and aspects in English. Among the twelve tenses and aspects, the ones to be
focused on are simple present, present perfect, simple past, and past perfect. Those target tenses
and aspects usually create problems for the Chinese learners, and also often are the last ones to
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