As teachers of EFL (English as a Foreign Language) in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, we are sometimes flabbergasted by the errors that the/earners make in their English scripts. Apparently, there was no pattern to the...As teachers of EFL (English as a Foreign Language) in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, we are sometimes flabbergasted by the errors that the/earners make in their English scripts. Apparently, there was no pattern to these errors. However, when the researcher observed the frequency of similar error over a few years of her experience as an EFL faculty for Saudi learners, the theory of Lexical Relations appeared to offer an answer. Therein also lies the genesis of the current study. In a positive development, the study did bring to light certain factors that directly played a role in the Saudi EFL learners' English errors. These have been presented in this paper with the hope that with the diagnosis in hand, it will be easier for the EFL teachers to find a solution to the dearth of English proficiency among the Saudi EFL learners.展开更多
Based on Nation's (2004) classification of word knowledge and Jiang's(2000) psycholinguistic model of vocabulary acquisition in a second language,this experimental study centres on the role Of L1-Chinese in de...Based on Nation's (2004) classification of word knowledge and Jiang's(2000) psycholinguistic model of vocabulary acquisition in a second language,this experimental study centres on the role Of L1-Chinese in developing the semantic and syntactic aspects of the word lack by Chinese EFL learners.Two production tests and an acceptability test are employed among 90 subjects.From the results of the study,it can be seen that Chinese EFL learners have great difficulty in acquiring lack because of the negative influence of their L1- Chinese.That is,Chinese EFL learners are more likely to misuse an L2 word with multiple word classes, when the syntactic category of its L1-Chinese'equivalent'word is only identical with one of these classes. Thus,it is proposed that both Chinese EFL teachers and learners should pay more attention to the cross- language'equivalents'that do not belong to the same word-class category in their L2 word acquisition to prevent the negative Ll-transference and the occurrence of lexical fossilization.展开更多
文摘As teachers of EFL (English as a Foreign Language) in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, we are sometimes flabbergasted by the errors that the/earners make in their English scripts. Apparently, there was no pattern to these errors. However, when the researcher observed the frequency of similar error over a few years of her experience as an EFL faculty for Saudi learners, the theory of Lexical Relations appeared to offer an answer. Therein also lies the genesis of the current study. In a positive development, the study did bring to light certain factors that directly played a role in the Saudi EFL learners' English errors. These have been presented in this paper with the hope that with the diagnosis in hand, it will be easier for the EFL teachers to find a solution to the dearth of English proficiency among the Saudi EFL learners.
文摘Based on Nation's (2004) classification of word knowledge and Jiang's(2000) psycholinguistic model of vocabulary acquisition in a second language,this experimental study centres on the role Of L1-Chinese in developing the semantic and syntactic aspects of the word lack by Chinese EFL learners.Two production tests and an acceptability test are employed among 90 subjects.From the results of the study,it can be seen that Chinese EFL learners have great difficulty in acquiring lack because of the negative influence of their L1- Chinese.That is,Chinese EFL learners are more likely to misuse an L2 word with multiple word classes, when the syntactic category of its L1-Chinese'equivalent'word is only identical with one of these classes. Thus,it is proposed that both Chinese EFL teachers and learners should pay more attention to the cross- language'equivalents'that do not belong to the same word-class category in their L2 word acquisition to prevent the negative Ll-transference and the occurrence of lexical fossilization.