ba structure (stage 5) 1 Structure Explanation

Example: ba structure

English He ate the rice.

Chinese ta ba fan chi le. Chinese order He(BA) rice eat PERF.

The ba structure which presents as S (ba) O + V + other elements (Order/Command) is unique in Chinese. Semantically, the structure expresses the disposal of or the effect of an action on the ba-object (Li and Thompson, 1981). The ba in this case is treated as a verb and a ba-object as the topic of the ba-complement (Bender, 2000: 126-129). Therefore, in the example, with the insertion of ba, the actual predicate ‘chi le’ (as ate) becomes the complement of the object ‘fan’ (as rice), while the ba-object ‘fan’ is the topic of the ba-complement ‘chi le’. The ba structure therefore relies on the s-bar procedure information exchange.

2. Rationale of the Task

It is necessary to comprehend whether the learners have acquired the ba structure and to what extent, since this structure marks a significant step in Chinese language progression. For this purpose, the designed tasks should facilitate the employment of a

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ba structure into their spoken language and ease the difficulties in using it.

It was found in the pilot study that the choice of using the ba structure relies immensely on contexts. When learners are asked to state the procedure of completing a certain task, the ba structure is used regularly. According to Li and Thompson (1981: 487), ‘the structure is highly likely or obligatorily used when the speaker intends to express what has happened to a known entity’. The tasks designed for ba structure should base on this principle. For instance, the task should require learners to describe how to borrow a book from the library or how to purchase an everyday item in the supermarket.

3. Task

Learners are required to illustrate the procedure of applying for a job in a company. Alternatively, they could discuss the procedure for conducting an event that they feel more confident in describing, such as cooking a simple dish or making paper crafts. The selection of situations should be adjusted according to the task-takers’ individual interests.

7.4 Task-based Language Teaching Syllabus

The debate regarding the effectiveness of instructed SLA has taken places for dozens of years (Pienemann, 1989; Doughty, 2005). According to Pienemann’s (1989, 1998a, 1998c), the stages of acquisition in one language are not skipped, and the route itself cannot be altered. Therefore, the rate of instructed SLA following the proposed acquisition sequence seems faster than that of naturalistic SLA. Pienemann’s (Pienemann, 1985) Teachability Hypothesis was generated based on a similar proposal. It was widely proved that proper instruction could make a difference to L2 learning (Doughty, 2005; Pienemann, 2008a). Doughty (2005) has further emphasized that the instruction could help improve the acquisition with certain condition – what can be acquired by the point of input.

In terms of instruction in SLA, it is potentially effective, provided it is relevant to learners’ needs and language capacity (Doughty, 2005). Task-based language teaching

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(TBLT) is one of the concepts which have been discussed to facilitate L2 learners’ acquisition and offers students materials to work with. TBLT seeks to develop the students’ IL from a prescribed developmental sequence by using languages to solve a problem (Willis and Willis, 1996). In this regard, the students could actively engage in the process of completing a task or achieving a goal, which allows the reconstruction of their ILs in a relatively unconscious way.

Task-based instruction woven into teachability could mollify the difficulties which occur for L2 learners in the process of acquiring certain grammatical structures. Thus, the individual tasks designed according to what is teachable could be very purposeful with specific grammatical needs in different entries to the learner's lexicon and therefore learners could largely benefit from such tasks.

The tasks designed in the previous section of this chapter aimed to test the students’ acquisition of a particular structure. Theoretically, the tasks for teaching and testing are on two different tracks which could not be simply exchanged. It is obvious that the tasks in TBLT consist of a complete cycle for language teaching and provide the students with support in acquiring a certain structure; however, the rationale of the designed tasks for one particular structure (for either teaching or assessment) is very similar. Therefore, the tasks used for teaching could be adopted and then revised to use for the purpose of testing, and vice versa.

A teaching syllabus has been designed in order to set up an example for implementing TBLT in Chinese L2 acquisition under PT. The designed syllabus could set a good example to facilitate future teaching of L2 learners of Chinese in a logical and efficient way. To further examine and prove the possibility of revising the tasks for use in both teaching and assessment, an example of teaching one particular structure (ba structure at stage 5 of the proposed hierarchy) in the proposed Chinese hierarchy has been provided (see Appendix D). This example could show how the tasks should be designed under the framework of TBLT and how it could be linked and revised to use in both teaching and assessment.

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Ellis (2003: 27) has claimed that ‘communicative tasks that have been designed to induce processing of some specific linguistic feature in production’ positively elaborate the possibility of retrieving speech data through tasks. Therefore, this chapter presents the task design for the Chinese L2 learners, for the sake of facilitating the output of particular Chinese structures aligned with the proposed processing hierarchy. The basic framework of task design was illustrated, as well as the discussion of task design in previous PT-based studies. Regarding the four selected structures standing for different stages of Chinese L2 procedural skills, different tasks were designed and revised on the basis of the results from a pilot study. Ideally, the designed tasks would benefit learners in different aspects. On the one hand, they could allow the teachers to assess the learners’ language capacity. In this case, further actions could be taken by the teachers to either reinforce the instruction in these grammatical points, or to move to the structures in the next stage. On the other hand, the designed tasks may be used for the teaching purpose with necessary changes. Additional research is required in this aspect.

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