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Article published In:
Chinese as a Second Language (漢語教學研究—美國中文教師學會學報)
Vol. 52:3 (2017) ► pp.232–254

Effects of providing explicit negative evidence on students’ perception of ungrammatical sentences using –le

| University of Kansas
| Mount Holyoke College

This study investigates the effects of the use of explicit negative evidence in teaching on students’ perception of two types of ungrammatical Chinese sentences in which –le should not be used. Two groups of advanced learners of Chinese were pre-tested immediately before receiving instruction that included explicit negative evidence about the use of -le, and post-tested twice: once directly after the completion of the instruction, and again four weeks later, using a grammaticality judgment test. The results of the grammaticality judgment test indicated that including explicit negative evidence in teaching helps advanced English-speaking learners of Chinese identify sentences in which –le is used incorrectly. The implication is that including negative evidence in teaching can reduce errors caused by negative transfer from a student’s native language.

Keywords: negative evidence, teaching interference, Chinese aspect marker -le
Article outline
  • 0.Introduction
  • 1.Research on the influence of negative evidence in teaching
  • 2.Studies on the acquisition of –le and the two forms under investigation
    • 2.1 Summary of research on the acquisition of –le
    • 2.2 The forms under investigation
  • 3.The empirical study
    • 3.1 Research questions
    • 3.2 Hypothesis and predictions
    • 3.3 Experimental design
      • 3.3.1Grammaticality judgment task
      • 3.3.2Teaching intervention
    • 3.4 Subjects
    • 3.5 Results
      • 3.5.1Native baseline data
      • 3.5.2Performance of the experimental group and the control group on the pre-test
      • 3.5.3Performance of the experimental group and control group on the immediate post-test
      • 3.5.4Performance of the experimental group and the control group on the delayed post-test
  • 4.Discussion
  • 5.Pedagogical implications
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 14 December 2017
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/csl.52.3.02li
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