A Survey on Chinese as Second Language Learners’ Acquisition of the Structural Auxiliary Word “de” (的)

Abstract

It is comparatively complicated for foreign students to grasp the usage of “de” (的), as a structural auxiliary word. With the second language acquisition theory, interlanguage theory, and related theories of error analysis, as well as natural linguistic data collected from South African students’ Chinese composition and homework and the data from HSK dynamic composition corpus, this study takes 83 international students from National education school in Wuhan University of Technology as our research subjects. In the study, we have designed some questionnaires, aiming to investigate and analyze Chinese as Second Language learner’s acquisition of the structural auxiliary word “de” (的), and to try to understand the mechanism and motivation from a micro perspective. It is found that (1) the average error rate of the use of “de” (的) for various types of attributions is 48.5%, with different error rates as to specific type of attributives; (2) the ability of the learners to distinguish between “de” (的) and “de” (地) in the object position is lower than that in the predicate position; and (3) the learners can relatively easily distinguish between “de” (的) and “de” (得), compared to their performance in differentiating “de” (的) from “de” (地). Finally, from the perspective of L2 learners, this study provides some suggestions are proposed as to the teaching of structural auxiliary word “de” (的), including textbook compilation, exercise design, and classroom teaching, in the hope of offering some help and enlightenment in teaching Chinese as a second language and in Chinese ontology.