A Critical Area of Portuguese as a Foreign Language Acquisition by Chinese Learners: The Relative Phrases
Abstract
This article addresses an area of difficult acquisition/learning for Chinese speakers of Portuguese as a foreign language (PLE): relative clauses. So, it is proposed to analyze data from these constructions produced by those speakers, taken from learners' corpora and from experimental tests, and to contribute to the discussion of the influence of explicit teaching on the process of acquiring a second language. language (FL/L2).
It is concluded that Chinese speakers of PLE/L2 use, in addition to the canonical strategies, various alternatives to the formation of relatives; that manifest a tendency to substitute relatives of constituents more embedded in the hierarchy by the SUJ position and that the formal context seems to positively influence the acquisition of relative clauses. It is also suggested that teachers L2 learners should consider learner corpora data in preparing the their work materials, as this type of data allows the teacher to quickly identify learning errors, as well as intermediate stages of grammar of speakers that may still contain elements of transfer from L1 or from other previously acquired L2.