EN2304 English and Chinese in Contrast

Part I

Course Duration: 1 semester
Credit Units: 3
Level: B2
Medium of instruction: English
Prerequisites: Nil
Precursors: Nil
Equivalent Courses: Nil
Exclusive Courses: Nil 

Part II

Course Aims:
This course aims at familiarizing students with some fundamental lexico-grammatical and pronunciation differences between English and Chinese in order to help them understand the nature of learning difficulties encountered by Chinese learners of English in the ESL (English as a second language) learning process. The contrasts will focus on specific grammatical subsystems of the two standard languages. Common ESL errors among Hong Kong Chinese learners will be used to illustrate the adverse influences of the learners’ mother tongue (Chinese) on their ‘learner English’ output.

Course Intended Learning Outcomes (CILOs)
Upon successful completion of this course, students should be able to:

No.CILOsWeighting
(if applicable)
1.Identify the fundamental grammatical differences between English (British and American English) and Chinese (Cantonese and standard Chinese); 
2.Analyze the fundamental grammatical differences between English (British and American English) and Chinese (Cantonese and standard Chinese);                
3.Identify the fundamental pronunciation differences between English (British and American English) and Chinese (Cantonese); 
4.Analyze the fundamental pronunciation differences between English (British and American English) and Chinese (Cantonese); 
5.Apply their understanding of the salient contrastive differences between English and Chinese to overcome ESL learning difficulties encountered by Chinese ESL learners.             

Teaching and learning Activities (TLAs)
(Indicative of likely activities and tasks designed to facilitate students’ achievement of the CILOs. Final details will be provided to students in their first week of attendance in this course)       

CILO NoTLAsHours/week
(if applicable)
CILOs 1 - 5Reading the course book    
The course book, written specifically for this course, contains 8 chapters covering all the topics on the English-Chinese contrastive differences covered in the syllabus, including a set of questions at the end of each chapter. Students are encouraged to have completed the reading assignment(s) of the week before class.		5 hours / week over 13 wks

 

 
CILOs 1 - 5Interactive Lecturing
There will be one three-hour lesson every week. In the lessons, basic concepts in the fundamental grammatical and pronunciation differences between English and Chinese will be discussed. The problems encountered by Chinese ESL learners as a result of the differences will also be discussed.		2 hours / week over 13 wks

 

CILOs 1 - 5In-Class Activities
In the lessons, consolidating exercises will be given to students for reinforcement and/or for checking students’ understanding. Some common ESL errors among Hong Kong Chinese ESL learners will be used to illustrate a variety of adverse influences of Chinese on Chinese ESL learners’ English output. Some discussion topics may also be given to provide students with an opportunity to apply the concepts presented and to consider some of the controversies which exist in the study of individual topics.		1 hour / week over 13 wks

 

 

 

Assessment Tasks/Activities
(Indicative of likely activities and tasks designed to assess how well the students achieve the CILOs. Final details will be provided to students in their first week of attendance in this course)

CILO NoType of assessment tasks/activitiesWeighting
(if applicable)		Remarks
CILOs 1, 2, 5 In-class Test
One 50-minute test will be designed to help students revise and learn the concepts covered in the course. Their performance in the tests will be assessed individually according to how well they are able to

a. identify and analyze the grammatical differences between English and Chinese;

b. apply their understanding of the grammatical differences between English and Chinese to overcome ESL learning difficulties encountered by Chinese ESL learners.    

Students are encouraged to do continuous revision throughout the course. 

 20%Individual work; to be assessed individually
CILOs  5Individual Assignment
One individual assignment will be given to students to apply their understanding of the salient contrastive differences between Chinese and English to overcome ESL learning difficulties encountered by Chinese ESL learners		40% Individual work; to be assessed individually
 CILOs 1 - 5 End-of-Semester Examination    
One 2-hour examination will be designed to help students revise and learn the concepts covered in the course. Their performance in the exam will be assessed individually according to how well they are able to

a. identify and analyze the grammatical differences between English and Chinese;

b. identify and analyze the pronunciation differences between English and Chinese

c. apply their understanding of the grammatical and pronunciation differences between Chinese and English to overcome ESL learning difficulties encountered by Chinese ESL learners.        

Students are encouraged to do continuous revision throughout the course.		40% Individual work; to be assessed individually

Grading of Student Achievement:
Grading pattern: Standard (A+, A, A-….F).
Grading is based on student performance in assessment tasks/activities.

Non-essay type questions in the in-class test and the examination will be marked according to the accuracy of the answers. Correct answers will be awarded full marks of the respective questions, half-correct answers will be awarded half of the marks devoted to the respective questions, and wrong or irrelevant answers will be awarded zero.


Part III             

Keyword Syllabus:

Contrastive analysis, error analysis, and understanding negative transfer in the ESL learning process
 
  • Outline of Contrastive Analysis (CA) and Error Analysis (EA)
  • The distinction between error and mistake
     
Structural differences and negative transfer
 
  • One finite verb per clause in English vs. chaining of verbs in Chinese
  • Noun groups, gerundial phrases, and noun clauses
  • Conditional statements in English and their Chinese counterparts
  • Word class morphology
  • Calque or direct translation
  • Pseudo-tough movement
  • Differences in Q-A sequence between English and Chinese
  • Word order and the position of the question word
  • Ellipsis in Chinese and English in the expression of comparison
  • Europeanization and the influence of Western languages on Chinese grammar
  • Passives in English and Chinese
  • Chinese learners’ problems with the English passive
     
Some typological differences between Chinese and English
 
  • Basic writing unit: ‘word’ vs. character
  • Morphemic structure and syllabic structure
  • Writing systems: The English alphabet vs. logographic morpho-syllables
  • Language family and typological distance: Indo-European vs. Sino-Tibetan
  • Subject-prominence vs. topic-prominence
     
Word classes and grammatical categories 
 
  • Grammar and redundancy
  • Word class and syntactic function
  • Grammatical category
  • Nouns; Syntactic features of nouns in general
  • Syntactic features specific to Chinese nouns
  • Chinese and English pronouns in contrast
  • ‘Dummy it’ and ‘cleft sentence’
  • Relative pronouns; Chinese pronouns
  • Articles vs. measure words
  • English and Chinese adjectives in contrast
  • Expressing the comparative and the superlative
  • The construction: ‘too ADJ to V’
  • The semantics of English -ing adjectives and -ed adjectives
  • Adverbs
  • Prepositions
  • Divergent transitivity patterns
  • omission and misuse of prepositions
  • Conjunctions
  • Hypotaxis and parataxis
     
Pronunciation problems and Cantonese–English contrastive phonology
 
  • Cantonese and English vowels
  • Cantonese and English consonants         
  • Consonant clusters and the maximal syllable structure in Cantonese
  • Rhythm and intonation

Related Links
Department of English