A cross-sectional study of the performance of groups of Vietnamese
learners is reported with focus on how they deal with the expression of
number in English (singular/plural; definite/indefinite) through a cloze
exercise and a translation excercise. This research investigates the
hypothesis that some NP environments facilitate the distinction between
singular and plural, count and mass, and that the context in which a noun
is used can provide positive clues to the choice of number in nouns. It
has been found that transfer of Vietnamese NP structures into English
occurred where the NP environment was not obviously countable or
uncountable, i.e., it has no conspicuous structural signals for number
determination. Transfer was also found where an NP was taken from its
context. The analysis of learners' errors gives some insight into ways in
which the teaching of the number expression can be made more effective
and beneficial for Vietnamese learners. A number of activities were
suggested, which enable the teacher to exploit the advantages of NP
environments to convey the syntactic-semantic properties of number to
learners. Communicative practice of NP structures (e.g., in a
conversation or a role play activity) can make learners aware of different
aspects of the number expression in English. It is argued that the
pragmatic aspect of the number expression is most important as in use,
the syntactic and semantic properties of the category of number are
unified to achieve communicative purposes.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ADTP/218991 |
| Date | January 1991 |
| Creators | Bich Hanh, Nguyen, n/a |
| Publisher | University of Canberra. Education |
| Source Sets | Australiasian Digital Theses Program |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Rights | ), Copyright Nguyen Bich Hanh |
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