English Transitivity Alternation in Second Language Acquisition ― An Attentional Approach

The correct use of English verb argument structure is crucial for foreign learners of English language. This book investigates the acquisition of English transitivity alternation by Chinese English learners at low and upper-intermediate levels respectively, which provides pedagogical implications to English teaching in China and other non-English speaking countries.

Although repeatedly proven to be problematic to English language learners at various proficiency levels, English transitivity alternation has seldom been chosen as a target form in Second Language Acquisition (SLA) studies. Based on an experimental study recruiting 162 Chinese English learners at different proficiency levels, this book suggests that the acquisition of English transitivity alternation follows as a consequence of the cognitive processing of language input, which is induced by the nature of task requirements in different learning conditions. Moreover, the requirements of learning tasks in different instruction types also interact with individual differences (i.e., language analysis ability and grammatical sensitivity ability). Readers of this book will have a deeper understanding of all those variables involved, and will learn that pedagogical issues should be considered in a more thorough, comprehensive manner in order to explore better solutions for English learning and teaching.

Yuxia Wang is an Assistant Professor with the School of Foreign Languages, Shanghai Jiao Tong University. Her research interests lie in second language acquisition, language pedagogy, psycholinguistics and neuro-linguistics. Her most recent projects focus on the cognitive mechanism in second language acquisition.