The Acquisition of English Past Tense by Junior High School Students in Taiwan

• Main Authors: Kuan-ming Teng, 鄧冠明
• Other Authors: Huei-Ling Lin
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2009
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/28251214046895307297

碩士 === 國立中正大學 === 外國文學所 === 97 === The study aims to investigate the effect of lexical aspect on L2 acquisition of English past tense by junior high school students in Taiwan in terms of the Aspect Hypothesis proposed by Andersen and Shirai. The participants were 113 third graders at junior high school (36 for Low group, 39 for Mid group, and 38 for High group). The study made use of a cloze test to elicit data from the subjects’ responses and explored the research topics: (1) the prediction of the Aspect Hypothesis on simple past, (2) L1 influence on the use of simple past, and (3) the relation between learners’ L2 proficiency and their simple past use among the categories of lexical aspect. Based on the statistic outcomes, the results of the study supported the prediction of the Aspect Hypothesis on simple past. That is, simple past initially associated with telic verbs, then spread to activities, and finally extended to states. Meanwhile, the present study found the perfective marking –le in Chinese might cause a positive transfer effect on the use of simple past in English. In addition, when learners’ general English proficiency increases, the effect of the Aspect Hypothesis will become weakened on learners’ use of simple past. At last, through the study, the researcher also provided some suggestions and implications for future directions of studies and English instruction.