Methods to Help Students Acquire the Chinese Potential Complement "V de/bu C"

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to find effective ways for students who are at Elementary Chinese 2000 level in a Liberal Arts College to learn and acquire the Chinese potential complements (V de/bu C). Since students learned “neng/bu neng Verb Complement (neng/bu neng VC)” at the previous level, they tend to generalize the usage of it and avoid risk by using “V de/bu C”. To better accomplish this project, the prerequisite knowledge of resultative and directive complements should be provided or emphasized to the students, because the potential complements are derived from these two complements. It is very essential to differentiate these two grammatical structures: “neng/bu neng VC” and “V de/bu C”; and to provide strategies to help students acquire the “V de/bu C” structure and use it in daily conversation. Three lesson plans, with various teaching approaches and authentic materials, were designed for helping students acquire the potential complements. At the end of this unit, the students will be assessed by writing and making a storybook using the provided vocabularies and potential complements. The research suggested that using authentic materials, in combination with adopting second language teaching approaches such as Visual Input Enhancement and Processing Instruction, is a highly effective way to help engage students to learn the potential complements.