Formation of Statement Sentences

Statement sentences in English consist of subject，verb，object and other elements，a rule on subject-verb agreement(singular or plural)and rules on tenses wherever applicable.The word order of the three core elements:subject，verb and object in Chinese is the same as in English but the positions of adverbs of time and adverbs of location are different.What characterizes the Chinese language most is its morphological simplicity:Chinese characters are independent single syllable morphemes;there are no morphological changes involved(Chang，1992).Beginner level students need not worry about subjectverb agreement nor be concerned about tenses.Instead we need to alert them to shift their attention to the following:adverbs of time must be placed before adverbs of location and they both must be placed before the main verb.Another feature is the positioning of modifiers，which are always placed before the nouns(both subject and object)being modified.

These typical Chinese syntax characteristics are in sharp contrast to those in English.Our English-speaking background students of Chinese would potentially misplace them if they followed English word order from habit，a typical negative language(from L1 to L2)transfer scenario.Hence，we here advocate a rule of thumb to our students，which is that the positioning and sequencing of all elements within a typical basic Chinese statement sentence can be regarded as the fundamental model for any types of sentences at beginner levels.All they have to do is to insert their own words/expressions into the elements columns to come up with their own statements.The word order of statements also serves as the base model for them to generate other basic sentence types，such as Yes-No questions，WH questions and their corresponding responses.In other words，the base word order virtually remains unchanged and students can apply this hypothesis to generate whatever they want to express within the limit of learned vocabulary.