陳娟

Abstract:The passive voice is a difficult grammar point for Chinese junior high students, but it is very important. Chinese junior high students have great difficulty in learning the passive voice because of the difference which exists between the Chinese passive voice and the English passive voice, such as the structure, the tense and so on. However, the research about the acquisition of the Chinese junior high learners' English passive voice is still lacking.

The thesis is based on the corpus linguistic approach. It takes English passive voice of Suzhou high school entrance examination from 2013 to 2015 as the research content, and takes 5000 junior high graduates in Suzhou SIP as the research objects. Based on the theories of Contrastive Analysis, Error Analysis and applying the methods of quantitive analysis and qualitive analysis, the thesis analyzes the sampled errors in two different dimensions. The analysis of Corpus 100 samples randomly selected to generalize the errors which occur in the exam paper by the junior high graduates shows that a).the passive insufficient use or no passive structure proportion is the largest mistakes that the junior high students make. b).The passive verb forms are used incorrectly and it mostly because students are not familiar with the complex usage of the verb forms. c).The excessive use of the passive voice and some verbs has no passive form. The reason is that students do not grasp the grammar rules completely. "Learners' errors can also provide researchers with how they are based on the fact the language learning or acquisintion, and what is in their learning process using learning strategies and steps" (Corder) At last, a conclusion is drawn to the acquisition of the Chinese junior high learners English passive voice, based on some constructive advice, so the thesis is of some realistic value.

Key words:corpus approach；under-used passive；over-used passive

中圖分類號：G633.4 文獻標(biāo)識碼：B 文章編號：1672-1578（2016）06-0002-02

1.Background

Corpus linguistics, as a newly emerging approach for studying language, is now attracting more and more researchers' attention. Leech (1991) emphasized tis significance by referring to it not only as a new methodology, but also as "a new research enterprise". Corpus studies provide "big picture" patterns that are a complementary perspective to more intensive analyses form case studies and ethnographies. (For additional detail on advantages of corpus work in SLA see Granger, 2004: Myles & Mitchell, 2004; Barlow, 2005).

The description of voice by Huddleston (1984), provides a useful definition: "Voice applies to a system where the contrasting forms differ in the way semantic roles are aligned with syntactic functions, normally with some concomitant marking on the verb. The terms active and passive are applied on the basis of the alignment of the roles with functions in clauses that express an action. If the subject of a sentence is aligned with an active role, with the role of agent performing the action, the sentence is called active. If the subject of a sentence is associated with a passive role, the role of patient receiving the action performed, the sentence is called passive.

"Learners' errors can also provide researchers with how they are based on the fact the language learning or acquisintion, and what is in their learning process using learning strategies and steps" (Corder) I have the chance to observe Su zhou senior high school entrance examination in 2015.Collecting these errors and analyzing these problems will have a great significance. A thorough study of learners' errors will be of great help to middle school students and teachers.

2.The study

2.1 Research questions.The purpose of the study was to find out the passive error types and reasons that Chinese junior high school students make through analyzing the examination paper. It will be of some realistic value to the Chinese junior high school learners and draw a conclusion to the acquisition of the Chinese junior high learners English passive voice, based on some constructive advice. The following questions are addressed:

(a)Can we effectively describe three types of passive errors committed by Chinese junior high school learners?

(b)According to the analyzing of Suzhou examination paper in 2015, what are three main passive errors that Chinese junior high school learners make?

(c)What are the reasons which lead to the passive errors and what are some constructive suggestions?

In order to answer the questions above, we adopt corpus-based approach. It is based on the theories of Contrastive Analysis, Error Analysis and applying the methods of quantitive analysis and qualitive analysis.

2.2 Subjects.The thesis takes English passive voice of Suzhou high school entrance examination from 2013 to 2015 as the research content, and takes 5000 junior high graduates in Suzhou SIP as the research objects. the thesis analyzes the sampled errors in two different dimensions. The analysis of Corpus 100 samples randomly selected to generalize the errors which occur in the exam paper by the junior high graduates.

2.3 Procedure.Over 5000 junior high school students take part in the Suzhou senior high school entrance examination every year. We selected 100 samples randomly from the paper from 2013 to 2015. We choose all the exercises about passive voice. There are three translation sentences. "The child was finally found safe and well." (小孩最終被找到了,安然無恙。) "He was attacked while he was waiting for a bus."(他在等公共汽車時遭到了襲擊。) "Some works of art in this museum were stolen last week." (上周這家博物館的一些藝術(shù)品被偷了。) Based on the theories of Contrastive Analysis, Error Analysis and applying the methods of quantitive analysis and qualitive analysis, the thesis analyzes the sampled errors in two different dimensions.

2.4 Results.The result shows that a).the passive insufficient use or no passive structure proportion is the largest mistakes that the junior high students make. Many students drop the verb "be". For example, "He attacked while he was waiting for a bus." They dropped "was". b).The passive verb forms are used incorrectly and it mostly because students are not familiar with the complex usage of the verb forms. For example, "Some works of art in this museum were stolen last week." In this sentence, most students mistook steeled or stole for stolen. c). Excessive use of the passive voice and some verbs have no passive form. For example, "a car accident happened last night." Many students mistook "was happened" for "happened."

3.Discussion

Corpus approach is adopted in the study. Since corpus compilation can be extremenly time-concuming and expensive, knowing how much is enough is a corpus, issues convering how to represent categories become increasingly complex (Fletcher,2004; Hundt, Biewer, & Nesselhauf, 2006). It has many advantages. It can provide much convenience to the language research. Through the analyzing the dataof Suzhou senior high school entrance examination from 2013-2015, there are three main errors which are over-used passive, under-used passive and malformed passive. Because the passive voice is very important but difficult for Chinese junior high school learners, we hope the results and advice will give the students and middle school teachers some valuable help.

Due to some objective factors, the present study still has some limitations. The three types of passive errors are investigated in the present study, which may not cover all cases of passive constructions errors.

References:

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