Elements of a written interlanguage: A computational and corpus-based study of institutional influences on the acquisition of English by Hong Kong Chinese students John Milton RESEARCH REPORTS General Editor: Gregory James VOLUME TWO Elements of a written interlanguage: A computational and corpus-based study of institutional influences on the acquisition of English by Hong Kong Chinese students John Milton LANGUAGE CENTRE The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology This report is a shortened, edited version of the author’s thesis, ‘The description of a written interlanguage: Institutional influences on the acquisition of English by Hong Kong Chinese students (a computational and corpus-based methodology)’, for which he was awarded the degree of PhD at Lancaster University, 2000. Language Centre The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology Copyright © August 2001. All rights reserved. ISBN 962-7607-15-0 Postal Address: Language Centre, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Clear Water Bay, Kowloon, Hong Kong SAR, CHINA Telephone: (852) 2358 7880 Facsimile: (852) 2335 0249 Dedication To Warqa and Kay Contents Editorial Foreword ix Acknowledgements xi Summary xiii Preliminary notes xv Corpora used in this study xv Interlanguage corpora xv ‘Control’, ‘Target language’ and Standard English corpora xvi Qualifications xviii Chapter One: Distributional features of HK interlanguage 1 Introduction 1 Rationale for the data used 2 Word-class distribution in HKIL 3 Variation among ILs, registers and acquisitional sequences 10 Similarities between HKIL and SE conversation 12 Rhetorical questions 13 Repetitiveness 14 Co-ordination and subordination 15 Dissimilarities between HKIL and SE conversation 17 Plural nouns and determiners 18 Orders of acquisition and difficulty 24 Predicted and observed orders of acquisition and difficulty 26 -ing participles 28 The marking of possession 31 Verb morphology 32 Negation 32 Summary: A natural order of acquisition or an institutionalised IL? 36 Variations between English NS students’ texts and professional texts 37 Linguistic features of input 40 Chapter Two: The grammar of HK interlanguage 43 Overt ‘local’ errors in HKIL 43 Lexical bundles and templates 45 Details of word-class error frequency and distribution 46 Noun number, articles and S-V concord 49 Noun number 49 The articles 53 Ø for the 54 the for Ø 55 Ø for a 55 the for a 56 vii S-V discord 56 Variant patterns of subordination 58 That-complement clauses 58 -ing participles and infinitives 60 Ungrammatical use of pronouns and subordination 61 Information structure and subordination 62 Prepositions 64 Distributional factors 64 Overuse 65 Underuse 67 Verb arguments 68 Verb choice 73 Omitted copulas 73 Auxiliary BE 74 The existential in HKIL 75 Summary 77 Chapter Three: Doubt and certainty in HK interlanguage 79 The concept of ‘hedging’ 79 EFL students’ difficulties in hedging 80 Adverbial hedges 82 Intensifiers 83 Syntactic roles of adverbs 85 Adverbs of time and place 86 The imposition of coherence and certainty through adverbial connectors 87 The expression of epistemic modality by that-complementation 92 Degrees of depersonalisation and impersonalisation 98 The expression of epistemic modality by modal verbs 99 Variations in the expression of doubt and certainty among L2 students 104 Epistemic clusters 107 Chapter Four: Conclusion 109 Summary 109 Future directions 110 Bibliography 111 Appendix 1: 1994 UE, A grade sample examination script 119 Appendix 2: 1994 UE, D grade sample examination script 121 Appendix 3: 1994 GS, A grade sample examination script 123 Appendix 4: Sample Taiwanese learner’s text 125 viii Editorial Foreword Hong Kong’s local education system is not producing students with adequate English language pro- ficiency, charges one of the city’s top business leaders, David Eldon. Standards of English in Hong Kong are falling behind those of neighbouring cities, such as Beijing and Shanghai, according to Eldon, who is chairman of the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation, one of Hong Kong’s largest employers. Expatriate executives from Hong Kong often make similar charges. The down- ward slide reportedly began before Britain returned control of the territory to China in 1997. Eldon has asked the government to move faster to provide more visas to English-language teachers from countries such as Australia and the UK. (The Financial Times, 14th December, 2000) Since I was appointed as [Education] commission chairwoman last month, the declining proficiency in English and Chinese has been the primary area of concern shared by the people I have met … The writing and oral skills in both languages of the new generation has [sic] generally declined. We have to find the reasons. (Rosanna Wong Yick-ming, as reported by Gary Cheung in the South China Morning Post, 3rd May, 2001) Ever since Professor Roy Harris’ (1989) controversial inaugural lecture at the University of Hong Kong, in which he characterised Hong Kong English as “the worst English in the world”, the theme of ‘declining standards’ has been a mantra in local society (cf. Moody 1997). For long, there was only disputed anecdotal evidence on which to base judgements, and demographic and sociolin- guistic arguments were used to shore up defences. In recent years, however, public examination results have tended to lend support to the popular contention that English language ‘standards’ have indeed ‘dropped’. What ‘standards’ are being referred to is not always altogether clear, however, but there is certainly a widespread dissatisfaction with many students’ inability to manipulate adequately the mechanics of the language. Hong Kong students’ English has long engaged the attention of language professionals (cf. Yung 1958; Board 1969; Shak 1971; Budge 1986; Chan 1987; Ho 1988; Bunton 1992; Field & Oi Yip 1992; Field 1994; Tang & Ng 1995; Chui 1996), but many investigations have tended to be intuitive, or based on restricted sources. John Milton’s timely report suggests some of the reasons for the continued existence of certain idiosyncratic features of Hong Kong students’ written English, often characterised as ‘ungram- matical’. He bases his extensive analysis on fresh evidence, gleaned from a substantial corpus of scripts of Hong Kong matriculation examinations (the Hong Kong Examinations Authority’s Use of English Examination), compared with public examination scripts of students of a similar age to the Hong Kong examinees (the University of Cambridge ‘A’ level General Paper). He not only shows that the English interlanguage of Hong Kong students is homogeneous, but also, for the first time, offers analyses, based on frequency counts, to reveal the degree to which this interlanguage diverges from a native standard. By comparing the data from the two populations, he demonstrates the extent to which Hong Kong students overuse, underuse or misuse certain English words and expressions, in comparison to their native-speaking peers. He is thus able to offer a much more precise characterisation of Hong Kong students’ English than has hitherto ever been made. Milton does not confine himself to a description of the use of isolated words and expressions, but expands his enquiry to include aspects of some of the typical discoursal features evinced in the data, such as patterns of subordination and the expression of epistemic modality. He claims that these and other aspects of Hong Kong students’ interlanguage are systematic, but shows that ix second-language acquisition theories “have not proven very dependable in predicting or accounting for these observed features in HK learners’ written production”. The general characteristics he high-lights are of a local, often stigmatised, variety of English that is perpetuating itself through insti-tutional reinforcement, but he notes that this variety, distinguished by “conservative production strategies”, is “accommodated remarkably well to the demands and constraints of [the students’] educational environment”. He suggests, however, that there is a clear need for teachers and students to become aware of the differences between the types of disparities between Hong Kong inter-language and Standard English. More adequate descriptions of these differences than have yet been available are needed, to inform curricula, textbook design and classroom pedagogy. 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