< An Error Analysis of Chinese Word Order as Relevant to First and Second Year Students at the Sabaragamuwa University

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.