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Usage-based theories hold that the acquisition of language is the piecemeal learning of many thousands of constructions and the frequency-biased abstraction of regularities within them, and it has long been proved that foreign language acquisition and teaching benefit from this approach (e.g. Tomasello 2003; Bybee & Eddington 2006; Goldberg 2006; Ellis & Römer et al. 2016). However, in teaching Chinese as foreign language (TCFL), no study has investigated the Chinese parallel verbal construction V-lai-V-qu from a usage-based perspective. The goal of this study is to propose pedagogical principles and design teaching demo based on corpus analysis and authentic materials. I use corpora as the main methodology to figure out the frequency of different verbs in the construction V-lai-V-qu and its syntactic distribution. The findings from corpora can prepare for the instruction of this construction in the TCFL classroom (...) I use corpora as the main methodology to figure out the frequency of different verbs in the construction V-lai-V-qu and its syntactic distribution. The findings from corpora can prepare
for the instruction of this construction in the TCFL classroom. The primary four corpora are: Center for Chinese Linguistics of PKU (http://ccl.pku.edu.cn:8080/ccl_corpus/); Beijing Language and Culture University Corpus (http://bcc.blcu.edu.cn/zh/cid/2);
People’s Daily Online (http://www.people.com.cn/); ECNS: China News Service Website (http://www.ecns.cn/). Two research questions: (1) What are the problems of grammar presentation of the construction V-lai-V-qu in traditional TCFL textbooks based on corpus study?
Problems found in TCFL textbooks are: (a). Important types of verbs in the construction Vlai-V-qu are ignored (I summarized Table 1 showing the frequency of verbs in the construction); (b). The English translation for the construction V-lai-V-qu is not quite correct; (c).
Examples of V-lai-V-qu are not comprehensive and representative in language use.
(2) What are the general teaching principles for the construction V-lai-V-qu from a usage- based perspective? How to design a teaching demo by using corpus?
Three usage-based principles are: (a). V-lai-V-qu is a form-meaning pairing; (b). Frequency- based prototypical pattern is needed in the teaching; (c). Context emphasis is incorporated into different forms of drills. Crucially, two types of teaching patterns are designed by using
corpus-analysis:
Pattern 1: Noun (subject) + V1-lai-V1-qu (V1: displacement) + Resultative
Pattern 2: Noun (subject) + V2-lai-V2-qu (V2: non-displacement) + Resultative
Additionally, the news as authentic material from corpora can help explain different patterns in the construction. A corpus-based video script and corresponding practice are also provided to help foreign learners understand the meaning and usage of this construction. This study serves as a model of corpus-based instruction of Chinese constructions from a usage-based perspective, and the pedagogical principles and designing teaching demo in this study can give insights on the teaching of other semi-fixed verbal constructions in Chinese
and beyond.