Acquisition of be by Cantonese ESL learners in Hong Kong and its pedagogical implications
The present study of the acquisition of be by Cantonese ESL learners in Hong Kong investigates the relationship between knowledge, input and perfonnance. Be is an . .exponent of two fundamental properties of sentence structure in English: tense and. subject verb agreement. Neither of these properties is realised overtly in Cantonese and therefore Cantonese ESL learners have to establish these properties from scratch. Past research has reported different kinds of p~oblems in the acquisition of English be by learners of different L1 backgrounds, including omission, overgeneralization and substitution of be for have, but few attempts have been made to provide a comprehensive account of these interlanguage features and how the topic can facilitate our understanding of the key issues in SLA. This study aims to fill this gap by examining the data obtained from an English test which consisted of three parts: a grammaticality judgment task, a production task and an acceptability judgment task completed by 243 Cantonese ESL learners in Hong Kong (of primary two and five, secondary one, four and six, and undergraduates of year 1 and 2) and a control group of 12 native English speakers. The results shed light both on
Chan, Mable
Acquisition of be by Cantonese ESL learners in Hong Kong and its pedagogical implications. The present study of the acquisition of be by Cantonese ESL learners in Hong Kong investigates the relationship between knowledge, input and perfonnance. Be is an . .exponent of two fundamental properties of sentence structure in English: tense and. subject verb agreement. Neither of these properties is realised overtly in Cantonese and therefore Cantonese ESL learners have to establish these properties from scratch. Past research has reported different kinds of p~oblems in the acquisition of English be by learners of different L1 backgrounds, including omission, overgeneralization and substitution of be for have, but few attempts have been made to provide a comprehensive account of these interlanguage features and how the topic can facilitate our understanding of the key issues in SLA. This study aims to fill this gap by examining the data obtained from an English test which consisted of three parts: a grammaticality judgment task, a production task and an acceptability judgment task completed by 243 Cantonese ESL learners in Hong Kong (of primary two and five, secondary one, four and six, and undergraduates of year 1 and 2) and a control group of 12 native English speakers. The results shed light both on
acquisition cantonese esl_learner hong_kong pedagogical_implication present_study acquisition cantonese esl_learner hong_kong investigate_relationship knowledge input exponent two_fundamental property sentence_structure english tense and subject_verb agreement neither property realise overtly cantonese therefore cantonese esl_learner establish property scratch past report different_kind acquisition_english learner different background include omission substitution attempt_make provide_comprehensive account interlanguage feature topic facilitate key_issue sla study aim_fill gap_examine data_obtain english test consist_three part grammaticality judgment task production_task acceptability judgment task complete cantonese esl_learner hong_kong primary secondary undergraduate year control_group native_english_speaker shed_light