Abstract:
The number of students who are learning Chinese as a foreign language in Sri Lanka has been a dramatic
increase in recent years. Chinese language is currently in high demand in Sri Lanka. Just as every other
language; Chinese language also has its own specific grammatical features. Among them,Chinese word
order is the most important. However, many Chinese learners experience difficulties with the Chinese
word order. Basically, it has a word order similar to that of English. But it does not mean that all Chinese
sentences have the same word order of SVO verb (V), the subject (S) and the object (O). And there are
some similarities between Chinese and Sinhala languages. Therefore, some nonnative Chinese learners
tend to make grammatical errors with that first language interference. This study has found four
categories of word order errors committed by students. They are sentence structure errors, preposition
errors, question errors and negative sentence errors (不 and 没有). Word ordering errors (WOEs) are the
most common type of grammatical errors at the sentence level. The major purpose of this study is to a
make a contrastive view of simple Chinese word order in a sentence and help learners identify their
mistakes. This paper explores the difficulties of native Sinhala speakers in acquiring the Chinese word
order. The data was collected from questionnaire method, writing task and long term class observation.
This study indicates that the teaching methods, material and teaching aids used must be changed and
updated.
