Second language acquisition of the English passive voice by adult Chinese learners

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dc.check.date2029-12-31
dc.check.infoControlled Access
dc.contributor.advisorHoward, Martin
dc.contributor.authorZhao, Beien
dc.date.accessioned2024-10-01T12:05:48Z
dc.date.available2024-10-01T12:05:48Z
dc.date.issued2024
dc.date.submitted2024
dc.descriptionControlled Access
dc.description.abstractThis thesis investigates the acquisition of the English passive voice, presenting a longitudinal analysis in relation to a number of factors, namely learning environment (ESL versus EFL contexts), proficiency level, learning time, and their interaction. Additionally, it explores the characteristic linguistic expression of Chinese learners in employing English passive constructions and examines the alternative constructions that learners resort to when the passive is not used. It also includes an analysis of common error patterns and their frequency of occurrence in writing, challenges in recognizing the passive voice during reading, and speech onset latency time in generating passive constructions in spontaneous speech. The research collected longitudinal data from Chinese university learners of English across two educational contexts: in English-speaking countries (the United States, the United Kingdom, and Ireland) representing the ESL environment, and within Mainland China, representing the EFL context. Participants were categorized into three proficiency levels: pre-intermediate, intermediate and advanced. In the English-speaking context, 11 intermediate learners and 10 advanced learners participated. In the Chinese context, 180 pre-intermediate learners and 139 intermediate learners were involved. Furthermore, 10 native English speakers were included as a control group to establish a benchmark. All the participants are aged between 20 to 25 years, with a gender ratio of 3 females to every 2 males. Participants were required to complete both written and oral tasks, designed to generate robust and inclusive data for the analysis of English passive acquisition. The collected data were recorded and analyzed quantitatively and qualitatively. The study findings indicate that learning in an English-speaking environment enhances the acquisition of passive constructions over time, although the EFL setting in China also sees significant learner improvement, albeit with a broader error range compared to the ESL learners. Enhanced L2 proficiency correlates with fewer passive construction errors and faster response times, underscoring a link between proficiency and passive usage accuracy. Higher proficiency learners show increased, more native-like passive usage, with BE-passive constructions preferred across all proficiency levels and contexts. GET- and HAVE-passive are less common, mainly used by more advanced English learners. When a passive construction is not used, the active voice is the predominant alternative, with middle voice as a rarer substitute. Besides, learners sometimes produced sentences that, while grammatically active, conveyed a passive meaning.en
dc.description.statusNot peer revieweden
dc.description.versionAccepted Versionen
dc.format.mimetypeapplication/pdfen
dc.identifier.citationZhao, B. 2024. Second language acquisition of the English passive voice by adult Chinese learners. PhD Thesis, University College Cork.
dc.identifier.endpage256
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/10468/16473
dc.language.isoenen
dc.publisherUniversity College Corken
dc.rights© 2024, Bei Zhao.
dc.rights.urihttps://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
dc.subjectSecond language acquisitionen
dc.subjectEnglish passive voiceen
dc.subjectAdult Chinese learners of Englishen
dc.titleSecond language acquisition of the English passive voice by adult Chinese learners
dc.typeDoctoral thesisen
dc.type.qualificationlevelDoctoralen
dc.type.qualificationnamePhD - Doctor of Philosophyen
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