the progressive marker errors in mandarin and vietnamese l1 intermediate advanced esl learner:...

Cognition and Second Language Acquisition Spring 2009Prof. Amy Franklin Carlos Molina Vital

The progressive marker errors in Mandarin and Vietnamese L1 intermediate

advanced ESL learner: teaching advanced grammar for formal writing.

1. Subjects and educational setting

In the present paper I will propose a very general error analysis of the written production

of ten ESL students at the Language and Culture Program at the University of Houston,

Texas. These students have just finished their fourth level (intermediate-advanced). They

would be able to, depending on how well they are doing in class, take the TOEFL test or

even start classes at a community college or a master program. Level 4 is also a point in

which the students begin to be exposed to academic writing, which will be the main focus

of level 5 (advanced).

The data comes from six Chinese (Mandarin L1) and four Vietnamese (Vietnamese L1)

students. The texts have a length of 500 words (aprox.). The students, as it is evident

from the language displayed in their compositions, have diverse level of proficiency in

English, despite being at the same level.

They have 22 hours of English classes, out of which approximately five (depending on

the teacher) are devoted exclusively to English Grammar. Also, there are two extra hours

in the CALL Lab which can be used to work with some extra grammar programs.

The goals of level four in terms of grammar contents are very high. Here I copy from

their syllabus what a successful student will have learned at the end of that semester:

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Regular and irregular verbs in all

tenses

Subject-verb agreement

Question formation

Prepositions

Modals

Comparatives, superlatives, and

equatives

Passive voice

Gerunds and infinitives

Adjective, adverb, and noun clauses

Two-word verbs

Of course, not all of those items are explicitly taught or even worked in class, but the

subjects whose error I’ll analyze here have had classes, practice, and feedback about the

distinction between gerunds and infinitives, and about the use of verbs in every tense and

aspect form simple present to future perfect. So the use of –ing as a progressive aspect

marker and as a nominalization has received attention as part of this level.

2. Tense and aspect acquisition

2.1. Basics of tense and aspect:

Tense and aspect are two linguistic categories that deal with the representation of time.

Usually they are defined and studied as two separate instances (Comrie 1985:6-7, 1976:

1-2): aspect involves the internal temporal structure of a situation, while tense organizes

the location of an event on the timeline taking a point of reference (usually the moment of

speech). Therefore, tense is a deictic category: it refers to a time point of period that only

is accessible by assuming a base point of reference —the moment of speech. On the other

hand, aspect deals with how a verb configures its process on time. There’s no deixis

required, but the assumption that the internal design of the verb can be understood in

different ways: the most basic aspectual categories are imperfect (the event has a

continuing internal structure with not relevant initial or final stages, i.e. unbounded) and

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perfect (the event has a bounded internal structure that allows the perception of the event

as a whole). One important distinction must be made regarding aspect: it can be seen as a

morphological device (or a particle in languages with no morphology) that operates on a

verbal stem to mark a particular aspect, or as the inherent aspect that a verb stem has (for

instance, states such as to know are imperfect, while punctual events such as to drop are

perfect).

Despite the previous definition, it is clear that tense and aspect are intimately related. For

instance, many languages (such as Chinese, Malay, Vietnamese, etc.) can use aspectual

markers to better delimit time frames (perfect aspect conveys, usually, the idea of

something that already took place); also, it is noticeable that the combination of tense and

aspect as in, for instance, the present/past progressive or the present perfect, play a

decisive role in the repertoire for the expression of temporality in many languages (and

there’s still debates about the status of those combinations, particularly the present

perfect Cf. Michaelis 2006). Moreover, it is a well established fact that during the process

of second language acquisition of the imperfect aspect tends to be related to present

tense, while perfect aspect matches simple past forms as a natural combination (Bardovi-

Harlig 1999: 192-205). Due to the mutually complementarity between these two notions,

it would be very difficult to analyze tense and aspect errors separately. In order to have

the necessary basis for the analysis on section III, I will present briefly some ideas about

the present tense and the progressive form –ing.

2.2. Present tense and progressive aspect

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If observed from a crosslinguistic perspective, the definition of the present tense reveals

as a problematic one. Bybee et al. (1994: 124-128) argue in favor of the notion of preset

not as a tense but an aspect: since it is located at (roughly) the same time as the speech is

produced, any possible reference point for the present as a tense is obscured. Instead, they

claim that the present is actually a collection of different imperfective situations

conceived taking into consideration the moment of speech (still a reference point, but not

in a full deictic way) reference point. Those imperfective situations tend to include:

ongoing activities, generic situations, and habitual situations. In sum, they argue that a

present marker actually refers to the meaning of present imperfective situations

(1994:140).

Considering this ideas, the English simple present tense is “exotic”, especially regarding

how it contrasts to the present progressive tense/aspect. First, it is virtually never used to

express an immediate present (not even with states), which is always expressed with the

present progressive. Instead, it suggests a habitual meaning (as in Robert cleans the room

with a vacuum) or generic situations (Lions live in Africa). Second, the English simple

present can’t express an expected or planned future event (as in * Next month I travel to

Peru), but it is the present progressive the form that conveys that meaning (Next month

I’m traveling to Peru). The reasons for those particular uses are beyond the scope of this

paper. However, it is evident that, if the present has a natural tendency to express

imperfect situations, then it must be true that those verbs with inherent imperfect meaning

(states) are natural candidates to be commonly used with present markers. Therefore, the

use of present tense with actions (with inherent perfect aspect) can be seen as a potential

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problem for any learner of ESL (in fact, I use the simple present to express future quite

often, since that’s the use in Spanish).

Michaelis (2004: 3) explains the existence of the generic and habitual meaning as a result

of “coertion”. This means that certain conceptual combinations (a present suffix in a non

stative verb) can produce new meanings (such as the habitual and generic) because we

are “coercing” our conceptualization system to make some sense out of the combination.

The only way to conceive an action as occurring in the present is by iterating it until is

“looks” unbounded (i.e. habituality is conceptually closer to unboundedness, so the new

concept is created). This kind of knowledge supposes a high degree of control of the

meaning of both lexical items and tense/aspect morphology. If a ESL student is going to

learn the use of the present tense in contrast with the (conceptually very similar) present

progressive, he/she will need to master inherent lexical meaning, restrictions in the use of

the present that are “exotic” compared to what most of the languages on the world do,

and to re-structure their own conceptions about the time frame that counts as “the

moment of speech” (Cf. Levinson 1983: 73-79 for a brief discussion on how the location

of time reference varies across different cultures).

2.3. The acquisition of tense and aspect in a L2

It is widely accepted between researchers of L2 acquisition that tense and aspect interact

from their first appeareance in the verbal system of L2 learners. The process of

acquisition of time expressions is divided in three stages according to how time is

expressed (Bardovi-Harlig 2000: 12-13; Yuang and Huang 2004: 50-52):

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A. Pragmatic stage: there’s no systematic use of verbal morphology

(in fact, sometimes the L2 speakers don’t use verbs at all). There are several strategies

to accomplish this: first, there’s pragmatic scaffolding (reliance on the contribution of

other speakers); second, implicit reference (temporal reference inferred from temporal

context); third, contrast of events (similar to implicit reference: the speaker here

points to an event that happens at a place or time that can’t be the same as another);

and finally, following strict chronological order during the narration.

B. Lexical stage: the learners start using temporal and locative

adverbials (in the morning, then, here, there), connectives (and, and then), calendar

reference, nouns, and verbs (start, finish). Verbs are used at this stage as unmarked

forms (“base” or “default” forms). For instance, in Romance languages, L2 speakers

use a 3rd person singular present as the base form for any temporal reference, while in

English the bare firm of the verb takes this role.

C. Morphological stage: then the functional load of adverbials

decreases while the use of morphology increases. It is necessary to emphasize that

tense-aspect morphology is composed in many regards of forms that reinforce,

interact and also reiterate the contribution of lexical items. One of the main

contributions of the morphology is the possibility to refer to events in the past before

another past event, as well as start referring events outside the chronological order.

During the acquisition of tense/aspect forms in English, the first formal categories to

appear are the progressive suffix –ing (initially without an auxiliary or with a non

conjugated auxiliary) and highly frequent irregular past forms (such as gone, was and

had). Regular Past (-ed suffix) appears later, followed by the present tense marker –s,

periphrastic perfect forms (Have/Be + verb) and periphrastic future (Be + going + to +

Verb) constructions. In sum, the progressive is the most salient form for learners of ESL,

while periphrastic or analytical forms tend to appear later.

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Regularities in the process of Tense/aspect acquisition have been explained through

numerous hypothesis that reflect the stance a researcher has on how L2 is acquired (i.e.

UG or learning based on either frequency and/or general cognitive processes). I will

present the Aspect Hypothesis, since it has a functional basis and it’s widely considered

as a starting point for any investigation on this area of L2 acquisition:

1. Learners first use (perfective) past marking on achievements and

accomplishments, eventually extending use to activities and statives.

2. In languages that encode the perfective/imperfective distinction, imperfective

past appears later than perfective past, and imperfective past marking begins with

statives, extending next to activities, then to accomplishments, and finally to

achievements.

3. In languages that have progressive aspect, progressive marking begins with

activities, then extends to accomplishments and achievements.

4. Progressive markings are not incorrectly overextended to statives. (Bardovi-

Harlig 2002: 130)

This means that beginners use of verbal morphology is in function of marking the

inherent (lexical) aspect distinctions of the verbs, instead of using it to mark tense (this

has been called the “primacy of aspect over tense” during the first stages of L2

acquisition). It has also been claimed (Bardovi-Harlig 2000: 277-279) that, alongside the

aspect hypothesis, a Discourse Hypothesis should be considered as part of the acquisition

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process: learners have the tendency of using past marking on the foreground events and

present or zero marking on background events.

2.4. Progressive aspect as nominalizating particle: gerunds vs. infinitives in subject

position

One of the uses of the progressive marker that was object of much teaching at the

subjects grammar class was the distinction between the use of the gerund (a

nominalization achieved through the progressive suffix) and the infinitive (the

combination of to and the bare form of a verb). It is well known that the use of those

forms is amongst the hardest concepts to teach to second language learners (Duffley

2003: 324). In fact, it is not relevant for my paper to even try to come up with a proposal

to clarify this distinction. Most of the times, the way that issue is taught in the classroom

involves long list of verbs that either use gerunds as subjects, infinitives or both. So the

problem tends to be “solved” by resorting to pure memory.

In Duffley’s view (2003: 349) “neither the distinction between particular versus general

nor that between reification versus hypothesis/potentiality, nor any of the derivative

oppositions in terms of factivity versus nonfactivity, referring versus nonreferring or

validated versus validatable”, are able to explain the full range of meanings expressed

respectively by gerunds or infinitives when used as the subject of the sentence. Instead,

he proposes a very abstract solution: “the meaning of the -ing form evokes the event as a

totality of interiority (i.e., as an abstract entity very similar to the representation provided

by a deverbal noun)”. This means that the internal imperfect structure conveyed by the

progressive focuses on the developing of just the internal stages that are, let’s put it this

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way, the middle part of the event. This explains why -ing forms are neutral regarding the

distinction between realized and nonrealized events, while, in the case of infinitives, the

semantic contribution of the preposition to implies the presence of a situation preceding

the bare verbal form, which accounts for the preponderance of nonrealized events with

the infinitive.

This kind of semantic distinctions are extremely complicated to convey. A concrete proof

of this is that Duffley went over numerous explanations from well known cognitive-

functional authors (Givón, Wierzbicka, Langacker, Van Valin, etc.) just to show how the

examples they were using to back their hypothesis could be turned against each other’s

views, leaving the problem pretty much at a stand still. If this is a problem of this level

for a linguist, then It is clear that language teachers and students alike have used the

memorization method as the only viable solution.

In a very interesting poster, Vercellotti and De Jong (2009) analyzed the errors different

intermediate-high English L2 (mixed L1) students made regarding the gerund/infinitive

distinction in the complement clause. They came to the conclusion that a statistically

significant number of errors were present when the students were faced with forms that

can take either gerund or infinitive. It seems then that “the variability of input impedes

acquisition”. One of the most common errors was the use of the bare form of the verb as

a complement (* I like walk). This kind of situation will be present in the data of the

students of UH. It is clear that the use of the –ing form in contexts that are typical for

nouns produces overgeneralization. The students —and according to their teacher (p.c.)

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not only Vietnamese of Chinese students, but almost everyone in class—tend to gerunds

instead of intended deverbal nouns (action for acting, protection for protecting, etc.).

3. Tense and aspect in Mandarin and Vietnamese

I will briefly sketch here the main characteristics of the Mandarin and Vietnamese tense

and aspect system. Both are isolating languages with no morphological process. Also,

those two languages have no intrinsic tense system. To convey tense information they

rely on the context and numerous explicit lexical markers (which can be translated as

“right now”, “today”, etc.).

3.1. Mandarin

The following table (from Duff and Li 2002: 419) illustrates the imperfective aspect in

Mandarin.

The foregrounded progressive form can also be found as zheng zai as the following

examples (taken from Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Present_continuous, but

verified with a native Mandarin speaker) attest:

Foregrounded Progressive: 我 (I) 正在 zhengzai (right now) 穿 (wear) 衣服 (clothes)

I am putting on clothes.

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Present_continuous


Backgrounded progressive: 我 (I) 穿 (wear) 著 zhe (cont) 衣服 (clothes)I am wearing clothes. (from)

This kind of distinction between backgrounded and foregrounded (that overlaps with the

lexical imperfective and perfective aspect, as seen in the translations offered for the last

examples) becomes an important issue for ESL learners: if they perceive an action to be

progressive, they would rely on the use of a specific time frame that foregrounds that

event as an ongoing one, but the basic form of the verb remains. For more state-like

events, then the backgrounded progressive (more of a continuous aspect, I think) is in

order. So, this could mean that for progressive forms, Chinese students may rely more on

context/time frame + simple present.

3.2. Vietnamese

The following table (from Tran and Den 2003: 4) illustrates the basics of the Vietnamese

aspect system.

In Vietnamese the position of the morpheme is very important: it has to precede the verb

(exception to this rule is rồi). However, these tense markers are not required for a

sentence to be grammatically correct and are often inferred in context. If there is

ambiguity, đã, đang, sẽ may be used to clarify the context (Tang 2007: 17). In

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Meanings


Vietnamese, sentences containing only the verb and no other marker are allowed to

express ongoing actions (progressive meaning).

While doing research about tense and aspect in Vietnamese, one source (Duffield: 2009)

proposed that the progressive could be expressed by đang, and also by another form not

present in any other source reviewed: đương. Unfortunately, there’s no explanation

between the differences of those two progressive forms, nor the examples are of any help

for that. So I can only speculate that, maybe tat distinction is between a continuous form

and a progressive one. Maybe the distinction has been all but lost in colloquial speech

and that is why other sourced don’t even mention đương. However, if it’s an active part

of the Vietnamese aspect system, that won’t produce complications for the student, since

English only uses progressive forms that have a suitable equivalent.

4. Error analysis and role of interference

As it was said in section 1, the data I am analyzing comes from the academic writing

classes. Therefore, the characteristics of the language used are necessarily different from

the oral one. To begin with, the pragmatic resources are severely limited in academic

writing: the student needs to create a very fixed context based on the information he/she

has gotten beforehand. That information should be presented in the clearest possible way,

so repetition and explicitness are valued. Also, the assumption of the “ideal audience” (in

most of the cases, the teacher that evaluates the composition) guides the contents they

present. In addition, in this kind of text, narrations are kept to the minimal, and

elaboration of reasons (through appropriate use of transition words) is one of the main

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goals. Therefore, formal texts such as these are prone to present non sequential reference

to events (i.e. “reverse order”), as in focusing on the consequences to then explain the

reasons, etc. This kind of display of information requires a solid use of the tense/aspect

markers in any language.

One of the main objectives of this composition was to practice conditional clauses

(mainly hypothetical ones, which use past and pluperfect forms). Also, the students were

instructed to use many formal idioms that help organize the flow of information, such as

the above mentioned, last but not least, etc. Here is a list of the most common errors

found:

a. Use of present progressive instead of simple present, especially with the verb

become for Mandarin speakers. This is due to the strict telic nature of the verb in

Mandarin. It is impossible to appear with a progressive marker (Haowen Jiang, p.c.).

b. Lack of command of particular constructions that select bare verbs, infinitives or

gerunds. On many opportunities, when gerund and infinitive are possible, the bare

form may surface.

c. Vietnamese and Mandarin L1 speakers at this level don’t know how to use

passive forms that involve the verb be as a non-conjugated form, for instance inside

of an auxiliary verb phrase (“measures have to be taken”, “besides being put in jail”).

Students use simple gerund of just the bare form of the verb. This forms complex

forms are not the object of any particular instruction and they have to be, at one point,

deduced by the students after more exposure to data (and very likely formal data,

since those passives are not usual, I believe, in colloquial speech)

d. The gerund is assumed to be interchangeable with nouns that refer to actions. For

instance, acting instead of actions

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e. The combination of gerund and noun, as if it were a noun-noun construction is

problematic: the students tend to believe that the combination follows the rules of

argument structure instead of head + modifier.

4.1. Vietnamese data

Errors (part that is problematic because of the use of present tense, or an –ing form ) and comments are written in italics. If the sentence is correct, it’s written in bold and italics. A. Student 1

1. These criminal become more common no.

Use of the present tense instead of the progressive form.

2. good penalties for these kinds of crime is putting the criminal in jail, fining

them for their crime, or forcing them to do some community services depending

on the level of the crime.

With no temporal frame the actions are named with gerunds. This is in agreement with

Duffley (2003) explanation about the distinction between gerunds and infinitives.

3. Because it can help preventing the other people have idea to steal an art or sale

animals illegally.

Help is one of those few constructions that use the base verbal form (some people call

this a “subjunctive form”). Here the student has used the –ing form as a nominal

complement. Immediately, the construction prevent someone from doing something is not

used correctly: the verb of influence prevent uses a bare verbal complement. Maybe it is

just because of the lack of knowledge of that construction, but it can also be that the

learner doesn’t want to use infinitive complements. The infinitive to steal should be

considered more of a preposition mistake.

4. Besides putting in jail, another common punishment is that the criminal should be

fined.

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There’s a lack of use of the participle (perfective aspect) in combination with the

progressive in a passive form. The main problem is that these forms of passives are not

understood by the students.

5. so illegal acting which can be harmful to them should be punished.

“acting” is used instead of “actions”. The gerund is once again overused.

B. Student 2

1. I have a proposal to solve this kind of crime. It is put the thieves to the jail and

pays money as well

The student uses the bare verb as a noun. The right form could be infinitive or gerund, so

this follows Vercellotti and De Jong’s (2009) generalization about the bare output of a

phrase that admits either infinitive or gerund.

2. Many people in the world will feel sorry with famous art's missing.

Use of the gerund as a possessed noun. However, it could be just a contraction problem.

(the teacher of these students thinks so.).

3. The punishment for the art theft should be put thieves in jail.

In this case it could be either to put or putting, so it is likely that the possibility of both

prevents the student from making a more accurate decision. The infinitive would be a

better option because of the implicit previous event (having committed a crime).

C. Student 3

1. so police should blockade the border to prevent trafficking.

A more advanced student uses the “prevent” construction with no problems.

D. Student 4

1. the illegal sale of animals is happen every day.

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Problem with the use of the progressive and the present tense (at least the use of the bare

form can be related to an underlying preference for that tense due to L1 interference).

2. … should propagandize to the citizen about the protecting the animals.

The rule by which the gerund is preferred after a preposition seems to working, but the

nominalization is taking another path: the use of articles in front of gerunds is very rare.

So it would be better to say that this is another case of a gerund instead of a noun for

events.

3. governments should add the protecting animals to the education at their country

Same situation as above.

4. I think protect the animals is not the responsibility of a person …

Even though the rule of gerund as subjects seem to be solid for this student, it is still

clear that some “trickier” positions for the subject (such as inside of a relative clause)

might be still out of reach. How would this kind of error be finally overcome? If the

student receives explicit correction, then he/she will be able to recognize more accurately

what a “subject position” means. But how is this possible in natural settings? Is this

position salient enough to grant frequency effects? If those effects are unconscious, then

it is likely to be developed. However, if learning demands some kind of original,

“generative” application of rule, then the learner is let to his/her own devices. It would

be interesting to access some kind of study on the development of these more “obscure”

forms in order to see how much a model like the Competition one can explain this.

4.2. Mandarin

A. Student 1

1. As the crime of art stole increasing these days …Stole seems to be the base form of the verb to steal. Also, if the correct form attempted was “the crime of stealing art”, then this student should have had something different in mind: “art steling” (the stealing of art). In this case, the form “stole” is not the base form but the only participle (past or present) available. This might be due to the fact that the word “steal” was introduced to the students in a reading about stolen art and they

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had to elaborate about the issue on their compositions. So the form Stolen might have been taken as either a gerund for the base form of the verb.

2. some dramatic measures have to take to prevent more perish masterpiece from stealing.

Problems with passive voice: past participles in combination with a non finite be are complicated.

3. With helping of these advent equipments … Another overgeneralization of the thumb rule: “after preposition use gerund”. Maybe use of helping instead of help

4. Infrared ray will make the alarm working when someone illegal enter the museum.

The construction “make someone/something do something” is still not clear. Maybe another instance of the learner’s rule: “verbal complements are gerunds if the verb is not like, want, etc.”

5. Analyzing most of art stolen cases, it is not difficult to find that sometimes thieves can steal art very easy. Although it’s an absolute construction that needs a subject that is logical for the gerund)

Here it is clear that the verb modifier (the so called “adverbial use of the gerund”) is not a problem for this speaker. Mandarin uses the progressive marker to create a very similar construction (Jiang p.c.)

6. If there is no illegal art market existing, thieves do not want to steal any art …This from, very unusual in English and very likely a mistake is due to Mandarin interference. Jiang (p.c.) says that existential sentences such as the one before are formed in a way that replicates what this student used.

B. Student 2

1. Another punishment that could be used for people who commit this crime is forcing them to pay an expensive fine.

This student shows a good command of the gerund and of the infinitive in the same sentence. The construction with “to force” is correct, while the gerund is, in my view, used correctly given that she’s speaking about a possible punishment (not one that has to be applied). This student solves well potentially conflicting constructions.

2. … human beings and animals can begin living peacefully together again.Here she takes risks with a complex construction: modal + progressive construction. Looking on Google, “can begin living” had 7,230 results, while “can begin to live” had 54,400. This is an interesting case that means, she is either really advanced or she is overgeneralizing.

C. Student 3

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1. Animal sales become a serious problem through out the world …The problem is the lexical aspect associated with mandarin: become is strongly considered a punctual verb than can’t develop stages, a requisite for progressive form (Jiang p.c.).

2. … there are just few people work for this field,Could be the complementizer that missing, or a verbal form used as a specifier, which is a complex use that hasn’t been assigned completely to the gerund.

3. if there had enough people work for protect animal …This error confirms that this student hasn’t mastered the use of gerunds as specifiers. Also, the student confuses the preposition regime (and also doesn’t use the gerund after preposition).

4. It [a punishment] should also give serious concerns to those who may be thinking about stolen animals.

More evidence that stolen has been learned as a (mistaken) base form.

D. Student 4

1. … it is acknowledged that the crime about animals hunting and illegal trading is becoming more and more serious.

This student shows an interesting combination: two nouns (animal hunting) and adjective + noun (illegal trading). These are good signs of proficiency. Also, become is used with a progressive form.

2. All above-mentioned are the suggestions that I recommended to decrease the crime rate of hunting or illegal trading animals.

The combination of a gerund and a noun is taken as one that follows an argument structure, instead of being one composed of a head and a modifier (as in, for instance, illegal animal trading) .

E. Student 5

1. more and more animals become endangered species.Another instance of become not used in the progressive.

2. In the other hand, the people who stolen the animals maybe haven't work …It seems that the problem is the lack of auxiliary before “stolen”, but we can see that that is not an issue later on the same sentence (haven’t work). Given the other students data, it seems that “stolen” has not been understood by the students: here is a past form.

F. Student 6

1. They will [r]eclaim their surviving right and curse human being murder …

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Here it should have been “right to survive”: it seems that the student is overgeneralizing the adjectival use of the gerund. Given the fact that this element can be used as a noun, adjective, and adverb (or even as the verb, if we consider its role as an auxiliary), it is no surprise that the students tend to use it too much.

2. we have to become vegetarianism, and hoping that vegetables are never able to talk in the future.

It is possible that for this student both the gerund and the infinitive are interchangeable, which is another case of overgeneralization of the form that has been recently introduced or redefined (the gerund).

3. In the earth, we are meet shortcut of resource.This is the second time this kind of mistake appears. I think that this combination is a signal (a mismatch) that the student is geared towards the acquisition of the progressive, but still uses the base form (maybe due to interference from L1).

4. If animals are able to talk, we are shocking that our lifestyle has to change so much…

Possible overgeneralization from the combination “pronoun + be + gerund”. It is so strong that even the past participle is left aside.

5. Discussion: What do errors tell us about teaching grammar to advanced

students?

One thing that is clear to me after analyzing those texts is that students can show different

levels of achievement. That would certainly be explained by individual differences.

However, it is clear, and no wonder at all, that the influence of L1 is very powerful and it

is present even in advanced students. Sometimes, it seems that the students are

deliberately using their L1 to produce forms that fall beyond what they have been taught

(for instance, existential constructions or the use of perfect passive forms with being).

This would be considered the result of the need of expressing something in more precise

terms (the objective of formal writing) and not being able to produce it with ease.

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I think that advanced students can be divided in two groups: one composed by learners

that take grammatical risks in order to achieve new expressions, and the other composed

by students that shape their productions to what they have been explicitly taught as much

as possible. In my own experience, the students that tend to take more risks are those that

have run out of basic grammatical resources and find themselves in the necessity of

conveying new ideas. Those that are not taking new risks are those students that keep

their production to the minimum acceptable in communicative settings, so compositions

at an advanced level will necessarily expose their flaws. The topics that are proposed at

any advanced level class are complex because the teacher needs to engage the student in

a lively discussion, it is also an opportunity to ask the student to do some extra reading as

a research, and it encourages the student to get used to the academic life he or she might

be starting at an American University (that’s one of the main objectives of the advanced

levels: to prepare the students for higher education in English).

Therefore, errors tell us how committed a student has been to the expression of new ideas

in a very restricted mean such as the grammar given in a L2 classroom.

Furthermore, the case of the use of the progressive aspect in English has been particularly

revealing about what it is to be located at an advanced stage of acquisition. As Yang and

Huang propose (2004: 60-62) there’s not a clear cut between acquisition stages. In this

particular case, the production of formal writing won’t show, because of its stylistic

restrictions, lexical items and pragmatic strategies as a mean to remember to use the

tense/aspect markers. Those are more easily found in oral forms. However, it can still be

argued that the students have used the rules they are familiar with as carefully as possible

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(which is in its own form a way to make one sure that the right forms are used). This can

be seen in the overgeneralization of the gerund over deverbal nouns. The students know

that a deverbal is possible in the positions viewed in the previous section. However, they

decide to use the gerund form since, I suppose, the degree of abstractness it demands can

be perceived as increased formality.

Another issue Yang and Huang cover is that, when faced with new tense/aspect

constructions, the students tend to go back to a heavy use of adverbs, as a way to

reinforce the newly learned construction (2004: 51). In the texts I analyzed the students

didn’t seem to use any unusual amount of lexical temporal expressions, maybe since their

level is already advanced and the composition was the last one they wrote in that

semester.

To conclude this discussion, I will present a summary of the list of elements of formal

instruction that can affect the acquisition of English tense/aspect marking (form Yang and

Huang 2004: 59-67). I think their ideas summarize very well the most important aspects

of what the error analysis presented here has shown.

a. The role of language exposure plays a crucial role: while the subjects on Yang

and Huang study are circumscribed to formal instruction settings, the students I

analyzed had a full immersion setting. However, the nature of the task they are doing

(formal writing) still can be considered a non-immersion form, because they do not

have to go around using formal writing skills continuously. I’m sure that these

students would perform better at an oral task. The pressure of formal writing might be

preventing them from using more colloquial resources that cue their use of

tense/aspect forms.

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b. It took Mandarin L1 students a span of 6 years to finally being able to control the

past tense marker in English L2. This is due to the interference from L1 which only

uses contextual cues and other lexical temporal markers. It is clear form the data

analyzed that most of the UH students are still not in full command of the several uses

of the English progressive aspect (as the case of become not being used in the

progressive form shows).

c. The dependence that grammar textbooks create between lexical markers (adverbs

or relative pronouns, to mention just two) produces that students increase their use of

those lexical elements in addition to the tense morphology in order to have a

“mnemonic aid” when using some verbal morphology. In the case of the errors

analyzed in this paper, it was not clear that the students “undergeneralized” the

instances of -ing (i.e. use them in conjunction with very specific lexical cues). As it

was shown, they most of time overgeneralized their use due to the needs of

expression of a formal subject and the kind of composition they were expected to

produce.

In sum, there’s a great potential in the practice of formal writing and the development of

more complex grammatical resources at advanced levels. Even if it is true that contents

such as the difference between gerund an infinitives and the use of passive voices that

include an –ing form suppose a very sophisticated level of grammatical awareness, the

necessity of expression and the lack of pragmatic and lexical cues will face the learner

with numerous challenges and new possible uses for what they have been taught. Thereby

an advanced level teacher needs to be prepared to monitor the special grammatical needs

of his/her students, as well as to plan the interaction between readings, composition

topics and grammatical contents to emphasize the required input and to maximize the

practice.

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