Formation of the Negative No to Yes-No Questions
Theoretically，the negative“No”to Yes-No questions would be formed by applying the counterpart of“no”，which in Chinese is“bu”or“mei(you)”.What has complicated the situation is the nature of the Chinese negator“bu”(not).“Bu”does not normally concur with perfective aspect markers such as“le”or with telic situations(Ernst，1995).In this context，the negative“no”is“bu”plus the verb in the question，and the negative“no”to a question containing verb plus perfective aspect marker“le”is“meiyou”.
Through the above brief comparisons between the two languages，it is not hard to arrive at some conclusions about the characteristics of basic Chinese syntax.The positioning and sequencing of the essential elements within a sentence virtually remain unchanged in the five basic sentence types.Chinese sentences are free from verb reflection and subject-verb number agreement.The word order in question sentences is also free from subject and verb inversions and insertions of auxiliary verbs，etc.Many regard Chinese as a tenseless language，however we do encounter at basic levels perfective aspect markers such as“le”“guo”，etc.which，to a certain extent，relate to tenses but the rules are more relaxed and simpler than in English.
Overall，our students can appreciate the fact that this small number of Chinese syntax rules are much simpler than their counterparts in the English language.This is particularly relevant and in tune with our tertiary students’cognitive ability development.As such，if we can successfully introduce these simple word order types and design successive class exercises and activities to help the learning and conceptual understanding of the Chinese syntax，we could envisage the establishment of a solid foundation for further studies in this discipline.Our approach is strongly supported by another study of“the similarities between L1 and L2 writing strategies and the transfer of L1 writing strategies into L2 writing suggests that helping L2 learners to develop writing strategies in their L1 can have positive consequences for their L2 writing”(Karim and Nassaji，2013).
We strongly feel that our current prescribed textbook’s assumed teaching principles，the structure，designs and progression are insufficient and inadequate in creating a learning environment for the implementation of the syntactic approaches that we advocate in this paper.The Chinese character texts used across both semesters in our first-year beginner-level course are short，simple and sometimes informal dialogues that are based on the scenarios of students learning Chinese in China.
Of course，we can make full use of the dialogue format of the texts by asking students to summarize the main points of given texts into a verbal monologue narration or to create their own dialogues on the same topics but about their own experiences.The danger is that，in the absence of an understanding of the basic Chinese word order types，students would develop their conversations based on their ideas in English，hence the formation of sentences would intuitively and inevitably follow the English syntax.
This is a typical first language negative transfer scenario and it is vital for us to anticipate and prevent it from happening in beginner classes.We are all aware of the facts that students learn best when they are in control and when they can apply the newly learned words and sentence structures in describing their own life and personal experiences.Beginner level students are not able to take full advantage of the ever-growing vocabulary and sentence structures as the course progresses.Limited by previously learned vocabulary and sentence structures，they are unable to express the finer details of their everyday life and compose more descriptive and grammatically sophisticated sentences.
We realize that we need to develop our own means to illustrate what the basic Chinese syntax looks like at this stage and how and where the essential elements of a sentence are positioned and sequenced.We need to demonstrate to students how to compose different types of sentences based on the word order of statement sentences.We need to showcase how close and relevant a short writing piece can be to students’real life，even at the beginner level of target language proficiency.
With these considerations in mind，we start the process of creating supplementary materials to illustrate the application of the word order system from students’perspective.The primary purpose is to set an example to show students how to apply the language information they have already learned in class to express themselves in a similar situation.This is particularly true with beginner level classes，where tertiary students’primitive target language proficiency lags far behind their mental maturity，resulting in a great mismatch between what they might want to talk about and what they are actually capable of expressing.When students are exposed to ample sample sentences describing their studies，daily routines，family，social or even fictional events，they have been reminded of the basic syntactic structures we have focused on at these levels.In all subsequent class activities，such as summarizing or retelling of a given text，students naturally would come up with their own sentences following the textbook or extra texts’patterns.
We believe this is where genuine learning has taken place:students are encouraged to express ideas of their own rather than working on exercises set by textbook designers and drilling on the information from the textbook or the teacher.The textbook’s character-oriented approach requires students to compose their sentences from the very beginning in Chinese characters(or in pinyin).By using the same amount of learned characters，we provide options for descriptions that exceed what the textbook character texts offer，offering something that students otherwise might not be aware of and giving a precedent for students to follow.Reflecting on the development of extra passages based on the character texts，naturally the most challenging period is at the beginning in the first semester，when no matter how hard we tried，there is always a limit on the number of intelligible，meaningful，expressive and grammatically appropriate sentences that can be generated within the initial limit of the learned vocabulary and sentence structures.
A sample of our development in Appendix 2 is a typical piece of writing to illustrate the versatility this approach can offer.The original texts are about a student’s late arrival to class and other students’assumptions about her reasons for being absent.The texts introduce grammar points on perfective aspect marker“le”and the continuous tense“zhengzai”.Of course，there are many possible ways to expand them.By adding an imaginary local student’s daily schedule，with details of timeslots，the duration of actions，locations and companions etc.，the development of a more descriptive writing piece by students when applying learned syntactic structures is definitely much more doable.It is also very easy to demonstrate and elaborate on the application and the differences of“le”and“zhengzai”when a specific timeslot is chosen from the schedule as a reference point.
The topics in the textbook range from greetings，borrowing pencils/laptops to visiting karaoke bars，so it is very hard for us to construct a cohesive and relevant set of themes，which is a necessary framework required to build students’target language proficiency.Adaptation and localization of the textbook topics and further teaching material development became parament to achieve the learning outcomes as set in our curriculum.Ideally，we need to enable students to build their language skills around topics such as themselves，family，studies，and their life in general.Hence emphasising the relevance to our students’aspirations of the contents is one priority.We need to step into our students’shoes to image what they might want to say in the particular settings，situations，events and stories that the textbook provides.As the texts in the textbook are all dialogues，so the extra texts we are going to create should be narrative passages.We have hence created 15 supplementary written pieces corresponding to the 16 lesson topics from the textbook for the entire academic year.Excepting the first few，an average piece contains about 250 to 300 or even more Chinese characters.This wealth of writing samples has served as a stepping-stone for our students to generate stories of their own choice.
From a class teacher’s point of view，how to make the best of the supplementary texts to achieve the learning outcomes is an individual decision.These extra learning materials offer many activities，practices，exercises and methods to be explored.We would like to discuss one particular approach:initially teacher-led，followed by students’self-driven processes using the extra texts to practice and consolidate the application of the basic Chinese syntactic structures that we have proposed in this paper.
In a typical classroom situation，we first need to get students to be familiar with the textbook texts or supplementary texts by reading aloud，first from the pinyin texts，then the character texts.To check whether and how students understand what has been described，we ask students to conduct a conversation based on an extra writing piece.Developing questions based on the sample narration，students need to resort or revisit to the basic word order types.They can prepare their questions in pairs or independently.Here again the syntactic structures that we proposed in the chapter are being applied in a genuine context.Their answers would be based on the descriptions and the whole process is conducted in the target language.Students need to refer to and apply the information from the Rule of Thumb Approach to Basic Sentence Formation in Chinese(Appendix 1)on the formation of affirmative and negative answers to generate their own responses.
Branigan observed that research on dialogue has demonstrated that the processes of language production are sensitive to the communicative environment:through the course of a dialogue speakers are sensitive to the characteristics of the communicative situation，and in particular to the linguistic behaviour of other participants(Branigan，Pickering，and Cleland，2000).And consequently the participants in the dialogue would start to express themselves in similar ways.These effects suggested instances of what Bock called“structural priming”，where speakers demonstrate a tendency to produce sentences with previously heard or produced syntactic structures(Ferreira and Bock，2006).As our students’conversation is based on a sample narration with given information，this process is more about application of the syntactic structures that we would like them to drill on.
When we ask students to retell or summarize one aspect of the narration，they need to refer to and apply the information from the statement sentence word order type.When we ask each of them to contribute a question about one detail in the narration，they would consult and use the information in the Yes-No or WH question sentences.A climax comes when we switch this kind of activity to a student-initiated one.We can ask students to craft a dialogue based on the given narration without their own input or，what is more exciting，a dialogue based completely on their own ideas in an identical situation.
Another activity is also popular with students.The teacher can ask each student to write down a few details such as their whereabouts，the people they are with and at a certain spot time in the previous night，etc.in English(fictional or factual)on a piece of paper.They need to ask each other in Chinese at least four WH questions on where，when(or from a specific timeslot to another timeslot)，with whom and doing what to get details from their conversation partners.Then each student must come up with one complete Chinese sentence which must contain the four pieces of information and confirm with their partner about the written details on the paper prepared at the start of the activity.
These exercises are all designed to reinforce understanding and use of correct word order.The teacher needs to rapidly spot major discrepancies in application during the students’verbal presentations of their sentences，ask them to refer to the details of a particular syntactic model and make corrections immediately.As the course progresses，we can lift the minimum standard expected of the students’preparation and presentations.
The above demonstrates the practice and advantage of syntactic approaches in the teaching of Chinese to tertiary-level total beginner students.The following focuses on the effect of these approaches on building up students’confidence towards their learning of Chinese.It is widely understood that studying Chinese is quite challenging for university beginner students whose mother tongues are alphabetic-based languages because those students are not only faced with a completely different and non-alphabetically-based writing system，but also study the language at a mature age.All this requires the students to maintain positive psychological conditions and gradually develop self-confidence in their language acquisition.
While the similarities between Chinese and English in terms of the basic syntactic structures are taken as a reference in the introduction of the simple word order rules，we must also remind ourselves that the students discussed in this chapter are English-speaking students who are either native speakers of English or those who have learned English.This fact suggests that the teaching of Chinese syntactic structures to English-speaking tertiary students could well be based on students’knowledge of English and is therefore not so much about building a new understanding of the essential Chinese sentence patterns for students，but more about helping students apply their knowledge of English to the understanding of Chinese syntax.
This point may also be explained in a sense by adult education theory or andragogy，because tertiary students are young adults and the teaching of a foreign language to these students can be considered a form of adult education.Andragogical theory has been defined by Malcolm S.Knowles as the art and science of helping adults learn(Jarvis，1990:22).Among several andragogical principles which were developed by Knowles over the years，the most relevant one to the discussion in this chapter is the role of the learners’experiences(Knowles，1990).John Daines，Carolyn Daines and Brian Graham in Adult Learning，Adult Teaching stated:“Whatever the exact nature of the differences，there can be little doubt that compared with children，adults bring a massive amount of acquired knowledge and experience to any new learning situation.They also possess considerable practical experience of the process of acquiring new knowledge，opinions and skills...”(Daines，Daines，and Graham，1988).
It can be assumed that“learners’experiences”here refers to all kinds of experiences，such as those of previous study，work and social practices，which learners could bring to their learning of various subjects and skills.There is little doubt that adult learners’prior language skills could also be used as a form of experience that would assist in the learning of foreign languages，particularly where English-speaking students learn Chinese.The syntactic approaches discussed in this paper，as we saw earlier，show how tertiary students’English skills could be transferred to their learning of Chinese.
In view of the above，it can be said that，for English-speaking tertiary student beginners，the study of Chinese is in large part a process of borrowing their own pre-existing knowledge of English to help them learn Chinese syntactic structures more efficiently and effectively.An important task of the teaching is then，by adopting syntactic approaches，to make such a process of knowledgeborrowing a success.
An advantage of the process of knowledge-borrowing is clear;that is，it can help students gain confidence in their learning of Chinese.We make this claim because this process，which enables students to build a strong comparative awareness of the existence of the basic syntactic similarities between Chinese and English，can make students develop a cognitive sense that Chinese is more learnable.In addition to providing students with comparative language references，such a cognitive sense could well work as a much-needed confidence booster for students learning Chinese.
It must be noted that using English as reference for introducing Chinese syntax can also identify a sub-difference between these two languages，that is，compared with the structures of English，Chinese language structures have more specific and non-flexible rules.This identification arguably could also contribute to the development of students’confidence，because it illustrates the stronger syntactic inflexibility，or rather，the more-regulated nature of the Chinese syntax，thereby consolidating students’understanding that Chinese is easier to be structured.All this can further provide students with much-needed psychological conditions to build their self-confidence at the beginning stage of learning Chinese.
The last point is important in that it helps to modify a conclusion that can be drawn from this article.While identifying the similarities between Chinese and English and the rule-governed nature of Chinese syntax，the syntactic approaches，as we saw above，can be an important way of responding to the syntactic feature of Chinese language;and more importantly，it could produce a positive interactive development in students learning，which includes the following stages in order of occurrence:the introduction of rule-governed Chinese syntax—the knowledge-borrowing of English syntactic structures—the more efficient study of basic Chinese language skills-the development of selfconfidence in learning—increased interest which enhances learning(Hidi，1990)—and finally the improvement of the learning outcome.All this leads to an understanding that the syntactic approaches are efficient from the point of view of helping students build their foundation in the Chinese language as well as developing their confidence in their study of Chinese.