Comparative Analysis: Differences in Acquisition Strategies between Chinese and English as Second Languages ()
1. Introduction
Chinese and English are, respectively, the two most widely used languages in the world, and it is of practical significance to study their second language acquisition strategies. English, as a lingua franca, has more mature and systematic acquisition strategies. Chinese, as an emerging international language, has unique acquisition strategies, such as Chinese characters and tones, etc. However, little research has been done on the strategies for the acquisition of the two as second languages, i.e., cognitive, metacognitive and social strategies.
Chinese is an isolated language with its own set of character systems and its own grammatical system. Chinese characters, for native language learners, are a difficult part of Chinese learning; Chinese tones, for native language learners, are a difficult part of Chinese learning; English is a flexed language with a more stereotyped grammatical structure and a richer word morphology [1].
As far as acquisition strategies are concerned, there are also some differences between Chinese and English learners. Chinese learners may need to focus more on memorizing and writing Chinese characters, imitating and practising tones. English learners may need more vocabulary accumulation, grammar knowledge mastery and application. Cultural differences also affect language acquisition strategies. Chinese learners need to understand Chinese history, culture, traditions and customs in order to better master and apply the language. English learners need to understand Western thinking habits, values, customs and so on [2].
Therefore, this paper takes the two-way observation of Chinese native speakers’ English acquisition and English native speakers’ Chinese acquisition as a comparative sample, adopts the literature analysis method, and uses O’Malley & Chamot’s strategy classification theory as a framework to conduct a comparative analysis from different perspectives, summarize the differences and similarities in their acquisition, put forward suggestions for language teachers and learners, and meanwhile promote the cultural exchanges and fusion between Chinese and English to a certain degree, and contribute to the construction of a pluralistic and inclusive world language environment.
2. Theoretical Framework of Chinese and English Second Language Acquisition Strategies
To analyze the similarities and differences between Chinese and English second language acquisition strategies, it is necessary to understand the basis of division first. The basis comes from O’Malley and Chamot’s strategy theory, which categorizes language learning strategies into three kinds: cognitive strategies, metacognitive strategies and communicative strategies. This theory was chosen as a framework mainly because of its clear tripartite structure, extensive theoretical foundation, and widely verified consensus and operability in the field of second language acquisition research. This classification is more general, and scholars have applied it to the analysis of second language acquisition in comparative studies. The following is an explanation from the theoretical connotation of the basis of the classification, the analysis of examples and the specificity of the Chinese language.
Cognitive strategies: Learners’ direct processing of language materials, utilizing decomposition, combination and other ways to process and memorize language materials. For example, Chinese “Chinese character parts association” break down the Chinese character into parts, associate the parts and memorize the meanings of the parts; direct processing of the character structure can reduce the memorization of Chinese characters; English “root word affixes memorization”: root word + affixes English “root word memory”: root word + affix: “great” + “re-” to deduce the meaning of “reject”, expanding the number of words [3].
Metacognitive strategies: Metacognitive strategies are strategies for planning, monitoring and regulating what one is doing and are strategies that lead to learning. For example, the “Tone Listening” strategy: Chinese learners record their pronunciation, compare it with standard Mandarin, find out their mistakes and correct them. This is a self-monitoring strategy for Chinese learners, which is helpful for the judgment and output of tones. English learners’ “error notes” strategy: English learners summarize their grammar and word errors, analyze the reasons for the errors, and formulate strategies to overcome them so as to correct their own learning methods through metacognitive strategies.
Social strategies: Social strategies refer to the input of linguistic information and the output of linguistic information through communicative means. In the process of second language acquisition, it is a kind of contextualized learning strategy. For example, in the process of Chinese classroom teaching, learning idioms or the meanings of difficult words through group discussion, learners exchange information and opinions and deepen their understanding through mutual communication. In English classroom teaching, students mainly use group discussion. When communication is blocked, learners keep communication going by repeating, paraphrasing, gesturing, etc. This interactive strategy can effectively improve the flexibility of language use.
As an ideographic language, Chinese has its own special acquisition strategies. Due to the special characteristics of the language structure, Chinese language acquisition is characterized by “hybridity”. For example, the memorization of Chinese characters requires the use of both the cognitive strategy of “imagery association” and the metacognitive strategy of “repetition planning”, which can only be used in combination to achieve the purpose of long-term memorization. The mixture of strategies reflects the specificity of the Chinese language.
Therefore, the comparative study of Chinese-English strategies should avoid this theoretical framework and take into account the cross-linguistic differences of Chinese-English strategies. For example, Chinese learners use “contextual reasoning strategies” due to the lack of morphology, but English learners can directly use “morphological labelling strategies” to understand grammar. This demonstrates the possibility of language structure influencing learners’ strategy choice and provides theoretical justification for the choice of strategies in second language teaching.
2.1. Theories on the Acquisition Characteristics of Chinese as a
Second Language
The acquisition of Chinese as a second language has a distinctive uniqueness, which is mainly reflected in three aspects:
Firstly, at the level of the writing system, the Chinese language has an ideographic character that is different from that of pinyin characters. First, at the level of the writing system, Chinese is different from Pinyin in its ideographic nature. The shape, sound and meaning of Chinese characters require unique cognitive processing strategies, i.e., the input and output of Chinese characters require both visual and auditory symbols, which is a unique cognitive processing mode known as the “dual-channel processing mode”. This unique cognitive processing mode is the “dual-channel processing mode”. For example, to learn the Chinese character “水”, you need to memorize its shape, but you also need to think of its sound “shuǐ” and its meaning “水”, which means “water”. The three-dimensional connection between “form-sound-meaning” needs to be strengthened in memorization, and learners often adopt strategies such as copying and associating (e.g., the shape of the character “水”).
Secondly, Chinese tones are also a major difficulty for learners. The difficulty of perceiving tones is also a challenge for learners and requires special auditory discrimination strategies and pronunciation monitoring strategies. Unlike English, where tones are learned in an accented mode, learners need to recognize the nuances of many different tones. For example, the different tones of “ma, ma” require learners to develop special auditory discrimination strategies, observing the waveforms of different tones and imitating the sounds of native speakers. Pronunciation monitoring strategies: Learners need to monitor the correctness of pronunciation tones, either through self-correction or instrumental monitoring, in order to prevent the semantic impact of incorrect tones. This is different from the logic of pitch learning in English, where the stress pattern is rhythmic. The English stress pattern is a rhythmic stress pattern, which emphasizes rhythm and stress position without considering the semantics of pitch.
Finally, from the point of view of the grammatical system, the lack of morphological changes in Chinese makes it impossible for Chinese learners to master. Sentence meaning requires context and order. For example, in “I eat”, “I have eaten”, and “I will eat”, the verb “eat” remains unchanged. In “I eat”, “I have eaten”, and “I am going to eat”, the verb “eat” remains the same, and the tense is determined by the imaginary words such as “have” and “will” or by the context. In English, however, there are many forms, such as “eat”, “ate”, “will eat”, etc. By observing these words, we can find that their tenses are clear. What Chinese learners need to develop is contextual reasoning, not grammatical rules like English learners. To understand Chinese, we need to analyze the context rather than inferring grammatical meaning by observing grammatical markers. For example, “Yesterday he bought a book”. You need to combine “yesterday” to determine the past tense and “a book” to determine the singular. This kind of “context dependence” requires the development of contextual reasoning strategies. For example, you can gain experience in contextualization by reading more books. Understanding a sentence by the time, number, or other words in the sentence is very different from the way ELLs get grammatical information by using morphological rules directly.
2.2. Theory of the Acquisition Characteristics of English as a
Second Language
The acquisition of English as a second language is equally unique:
In pinyin writing, since the sounds and forms in English are fixed combinations, it requires that the learner first possesses the meta-linguistic competence of phonemic awareness. It helps learners to recognise, analyze, and manipulate the smaller phonemes of the language. English vocabulary learning is different from Chinese character learning in that learners have to learn both sound and form at the same time, but it requires learners to master the rules of combining sound and form. For example, if a learner sees a cat and can correctly pronounce [katat] or [katat] according to the rules of pronunciation, or vice versa, and can correctly spell cat after hearing the pronunciation of [katat], this difference has a direct impact on the kind of cognitive strategies learners will use to learn vocabulary. For example, phonological associations are reinforced through phonetic learning and summarization of pronunciation patterns.
In terms of phonology, stress patterns and alliteration patterns in English pose a challenge to learners. The placement of word stress in an English sentence affects the tone and semantic meaning of the sentence. Consecutive reading refers to the continuous discourse in which the pronunciation of the preceding word is linked to the pronunciation of the following word, e.g., not at all will be pronounced as [ˈnəʊtænätɔːl] [4]. Solving this kind of problem requires English learners to develop rhythm perception strategies that are different from those of Chinese learners. Chinese is a tonal language, and rhythm is mainly reflected in tones; English is a stress-timed language, which is mainly timed by the interval of stress. In addition, the weak and continuous reading patterns of English require learners to develop special listening strategies, such as listening to a large number of English materials to familiarize themselves with the common weak and continuous reading patterns so as to improve their listening comprehension.
In terms of grammatical systems, English has a special morphosyntactic system. For example, English has a tense system in which different forms of verbs are used to express actions or states that occur in different times, such as past, present and future. For example, work (general present tense), works (general past tense), will work (general future tense) and so on. Another example is the system of articles, in which the indefinite article a and the definite article is used with strict grammatical rules rather than without articles, as in Chinese [5]. All these differences require English learners to have a good sense of grammatical monitoring and to constantly check and correct their grammar in the process of comprehension and expression, which also directly affects the use of metacognitive strategies. Learners need to use metacognitive strategies such as planning, monitoring, and evaluating to help themselves learn and master English grammar knowledge better. For example, making a plan for grammar use before writing, monitoring their grammar use during writing, and assessing and correcting their grammar errors after writing.
3. Comparative Analysis of Chinese and English Second
Language Acquisition Strategies
There are different learning methods for learning Chinese and English languages when learning both languages at the same time. Learning strategies such as memorization, reasoning, induction and so on are used in both Chinese and English languages, but there are great differences between the learning strategies of Chinese and English languages.
3.1. Comparative Analysis of Cognitive Strategies
Memory strategies are also essential in Chinese language learning. The characteristics of Chinese characters determine that Chinese learners have to memorize a large number of characters. Generally, learners use associative memory methods to memorize Chinese characters by associating them with things or scenes or by using parts or radicals in Chinese characters. In some cases, learners use modern technology to memorize Chinese characters through games, such as Chinese character learning software or apps. Memorization strategies are also essential in English learning. They are mainly used to memorize the sounds, shapes and meanings of words. Sometimes, learners also use the root-affix memory method to memorize a large number of words by remembering the rules of a word’s composition. There is also the possibility of using contextual memorization methods to memorize learned words in context.
Reasoning strategies are mainly applied in understanding and using Chinese. Since Chinese is an ideographic language, learners need to reason to recognize Chinese characters. For example, in the process of learning vocabulary words, students do not know the vocabulary words, so they can get the radicals and structures of the vocabulary words through reasoning and deduce their meanings. At the same time, learners have to apply reasoning to the language environment to reason out the contextual meaning of the Chinese characters. English learners mainly reason about grammar and sentence structure, i.e., reasoning to understand English grammar knowledge, English sentence structure and sentence pattern, reasoning to understand English correctly and English sentence pattern and grammar correctly [6]. For example, to learn an article through English learning, learners need to understand the meaning of the article by reasoning about sentences and logical structures.
Unlike English phrases, learning Chinese characters is a combination of memorization and deduction. Learning Chinese characters is about memorizing the way they are written, their sounds and meanings, and then deducing what they mean in different contexts. The study of English words emphasizes the accumulation of words and the use of words. The learning of English words emphasizes the accumulation and use of words, which requires learning the pronunciation, spelling and meaning of words and memorizing and learning words in context. In addition, the study of English words also includes the mastery of word formation methods such as root words and suffixes.
In short, the learning of various strategies such as memorization and reasoning has different methods and focuses differently in both Chinese language learning and English language learning. English word memory learning is different from Chinese language learning. In Chinese language learning and English language learning, learners need to use different learning methods, and different learning methods have different focuses, which requires learners to use different methods in Chinese language learning and English language learning.
3.2. Comparative Analysis of Metacognitive Strategies
Planning, monitoring and regulating strategies in language learning strategies are linguistic imperatives. However, for two different Chinese and English, planning, monitoring and regulating strategies are applied in different ways and means and serve different purposes.
For Chinese language learners, planning strategies are essential. Because Chinese characters are inherently complex and specific, learners must learn to plan: how many characters to learn each day? How to memorize and review, etc. In addition, learners must consider how Chinese is relevant to their lives. How to read Chinese books? How to watch Chinese movies, etc. For English learners, they must also consider planning strategies. The difference is that they plan for planning vocabulary, grammar, and listening and reading. English language learners must consider short-term and long-term goals, such as how many words to learn in a week. How many English articles a month, etc. At the same time, they must also consider their own actual situation and adjust their English learning program at each stage [7].
The use of a monitoring strategy for Chinese learning is to monitor the learning of Chinese characters. The learner has to monitor the learning process and the learning effect: whether he/she has really mastered the characters and their usage, whether he/she has mastered the learning method, and whether he/she can find problems and correct them in time. English learners have to monitor the progress of their listening, speaking, reading and writing abilities, such as checking their pronunciation recognition, vocabulary accumulation and grammar knowledge through listening tests; they also have to monitor their learning attitudes and habits to keep themselves in the best possible learning state at all times.
The adjustment strategies in Chinese learning are often linked to the difficulties in learning Chinese characters, such as Chinese learners adjusting from the “context memorization method” to the “character comparison method” to solve the “homophone confusion” while English learners’ adjustment strategies are more focused on the “context memorization method” and the “character comparison method”. English learners’ adjustment strategies focused more on skill balancing; e.g., when English learners found it difficult to express themselves orally, they adjusted their strategies to conversation practice or English corner practice. The difference between the metacognitive strategies of the two languages is, in fact, the difference in the influence of the linguistic epistemic system of Chinese characters and the pinyin system of English, as well as the difference in the purpose of language teaching on the regulation strategies.
3.3. Comparative Analysis of Socialization Strategies
Chinese cooperative learning usually adopts group mutual supportive, cooperative teaching, in which learners explore problems in learning groups, and learners help each other, share knowledge or experience, and make progress together in cooperative learning. Chinese classroom teaching usually adopts group discussion, role play and other ways of cooperative learning and communication. In English cooperative learning, learners focus on more independent and autonomous learning and need help to get help. In English classroom teaching, learners think independently, explore independently, and cultivate learners’ cooperation and innovative thinking in the form of group project debates. At the same time, learners pay more attention to the use of social media, Internet forums and other communication tools to expand their learning horizons and broaden the scope of knowledge.
Chinese learners grow up in a collectivist culture like to mingle with friends and pay attention to group interests in communication. When communicating in a collectivist culture, learners will choose to participate in group projects, make friends and other communication strategies. In British cooperative learning, learners are more independent and self-directed learners. In their choice of communicative strategies, they tend to use communicative strategies that demonstrate their self-efficacy, such as participating in collaborative projects, actively expressing dissenting views in the classroom, and sharing their learning on communicative software. This is in line with their sense of independence in cultural values and is also conducive to the cultivation of self-confidence and language useability in language learning.
Although the group socialization strategy in Chinese is conducive to the development of learners’ sense of output and cooperation, it is not conducive to the development of learners’ individual and independent thinking; although the autonomous and digital socialization strategy in English is conducive to the development of learners’ independent thinking and intercultural communication, it is not conducive to the over-emphasis of learners’ unilateral thinking in the form of positive group feedback. These two major types of strategies are specific reflections of cultural values in language learning and are specific manifestations of the differences in language learners’ understanding of the relationship between socialization and language learning.
4. Analysis of the Factors Influencing the Differences
in Strategies
4.1. Influence of Language Characteristics
Chinese is a typical consensual language. Grammatical rules are part of the semantic logic and do not depend on explicit tense words and article markers, so students naturally choose to “perceive as a whole”. To memorize Chinese characters, we need to establish semantic logic; for example, the character shape of “山” is the shape of a mountain peak, while to memorize Chinese characters in English is to memorize the English word “山峰形状-音-符”, which is a “mountain peak shape-sound-symbol” relationship. When learning grammar, students use a lot of grammar points to memorize. Unlike the English linear pronunciation of “consonants + vowels”, Chinese tones are non-linear and can only be memorized by “muscle memory + auditory imitation”.
Since English is a morphosyntactic language, grammatical forms are emphasized. Learners often adopt the strategy of “rule deduction”; for example, after learning the “subject + predicate + object” structure, learners can easily associate the tense rules with “-ed” when they see it. The Chinese lexical system is a word formation system. Chinese vocabulary construction is a collocation of word meanings, such as telephone = electricity + words, and learners only need to memorize “语” rather than “词”.
4.2. Influence of Cultural Cognitive Patterns
Chinese culture belongs to a high-context culture, which pursues the meaning of communication, so learners are conservative in their communication strategies. For example, in the classroom context, influenced by the tradition of “respecting the teacher and emphasizing the way of life”, East Asian learners tend to question the teacher’s teaching to show that they are “observing the teacher’s words” [8]. Learners in high-context cultures are more likely to use “collective learning reference” to explain differences in strategies, such as observing peers’ handwriting to change their own writing strategies, rather than “individualized plans” as English students do.
English culture is weakly contextualized and explicitly transmitted. English learners get “direct communication” if the language is not understood, and the strategy they adopt is “Please me, could you please share that again?” to meet their own needs, which is different from the weak context of “direct communication”. If the language does not work, English learners adopt the strategy of “Please me, could you please share that again?” to fulfil their needs, which is more consistent with the strategy of “communicative immediacy” in a weak context. At the metacognitive level, weak-context cultures advocate “individual decision-making”, and learners prefer to allocate their own time to memorize vocabulary and test grammar points rather than being supervised by the teacher, which is different from the Chinese learners’ strategy of “being instructed”.
4.3. The Role of Native Language Migration and Cognitive Inertia
Native Chinese speakers’ strategy misuse triggered by negative Chinese language migration also includes native speakers’ English learning of the conjunction “Raining rain, I didn’t go to the park” triggered by the Chinese phrase “Raining rain, I didn’t go to the park”; English stress-rhythm perception errors triggered by Chinese tone perception inertia: reading “banana” as “banáana”. I didn’t go to the park; and English stress-rhythm perception errors triggered by Chinese tone perception inertia: pronouncing “banana” as “banáana” triggers the learners’ “Accent Marking Strategy”.
The mother tongue is the stereotype of “form-fit thinking” that ELLs must abandon when learning Chinese, such as memorizing Chinese characters; the mother tongue is the alphabetic-phonetic correspondence rule that ELLs use to learn English; and grammatically, it is the “subject-predicate correspondence” that ELLs use to learn English. Grammar is the stereotype of “subject-verb correspondence” for English learners, and the rules of “measure word thematic practice” must be free from the interference of the native language.
4.4. Impact of Individual Differences in Learners
A learner who is field-dependent is more likely to learn Chinese. Because he can infer the language according to the whole language context, for example, he can infer the rules of “polite language” from the context. The field-independent learner is better suited to the rules of English, such as inferring lengthy utterance structures from context. This difference in cognitive styles increases the degree of Chinese-English strategy bias [9].
Learners with instrumental motivation tend to adopt “test-taking strategies”, while learners with integrative motivation tend to develop “meaning-oriented strategies”, such as learning idioms from martial arts novels. The difference in motivation leads to the “instrumental-humanistic” difference in strategy selection, which in turn affects the depth and durability of strategy utilization [10].
5. Teaching Implications
5.1. Teaching Optimization for Cognitive Strategies
Chinese is an ideographic language, and Chinese character shapes and tones are difficult to teach. In teaching, we can adopt the “associative memory exercise”, in which the character “明” is split up, and “日” + “月” = “明”, which is the shape of “明”. The shape of “明”. For tones, the “musical score method” turns tone curves into melodic memorization of tones, and with gestures, it becomes students’ muscle memory. Chinese is a “logical” language in which students can summarize the subtle rules according to the text and dilute the requirements of the obvious rules.
English is a language that combines form and meaning, and the input of grammatical form is the basis of cognition. Sentence structure rules come first, and contextual rules for contextual dialogue and contextual reading come second. Vocabulary acquisition uses “contextualization” to guide students to use “contextual word guessing”. For example, if the vocabulary is given in the sentence “The hiker found a cache of water in the cave”, the learners are guided to guess the meaning of “water” from the words “cave” and “water”. And “water”, the learners are guided to infer “cache” as a “hiding place” so as to adapt to the phonological-semantic relationship of English vocabulary.
5.2. Differentiated Instruction of Metacognitive Strategies
As Chinese phonology is difficult to learn and Chinese is difficult to write, words often fall behind due to a lack of planning. We can design a “segmented task list” for students in teaching: In teaching Chinese characters, we can set up a progressive task of “5 characters—3 groups of characters—make words into sentences” and combine it with the “Pronunciation recording comparison table”. The “Pronunciation Recording Comparison Chart” allows learners to record audio tones every week and mark the errors when compared with the standard pronunciation. In addition, in view of the hidden rules of Chinese grammar, learners can be guided to set up an “error log” to categorize and record errors such as “wrong word order”, “misuse of quantifiers”, and so on. The learners can be guided to set up an “error log” to classify and record “order errors”, “misuse of quantifiers”, and other problems and analyze the influence of native language transfer.
ELLs are strong in self-planning, but the scientific validity of the assessment tools needs to be strengthened. Using the “Strategy Effectiveness Questionnaire”, ELLs can test the effectiveness of one week’s study and the mastery of methods such as “root word mnemonics”, “sentence diagramming”, etc., and make timely adjustments to ineffective strategies. We will make timely adjustments to the ineffective strategies.
5.3. Intercultural Teaching Innovations in Social Strategies
Because of the “face-saving culture”, learners do not like to ask questions in class. Teaching can use a “group task system” to eliminate personal pressure, such as “Chinese character story sharing”: learners in groups use body language to express the origin of Chinese characters, which not only realizes the effectiveness of communication but also enriches the complexity of expression.
Cultural differences lead to the misuse of communication strategies, such as calling teachers by their first names [11]. Therefore, we can adopt the “situational simulation method”, for example, setting up a “classroom help” scenario, learning to use “Could you clarify the grammar rule again?” instead of “Repeat the rule?”. For example, we can design “debate class” and “role-playing” activities for real-life scenarios to learn about the overuse of English “communicative strategies”.
5.4. Suggestions for Strategy Integration and Dynamic Adjustment
Although there are differences between Chinese and English cognitive strategies, the underlying logic of “associative memorization” and “contextual speculation” can be interchanged. For example, when Chinese students master “Chinese character component association”, they can associate it with “English word learning”, and vice versa; when English students master “sentence diagramming”, they can associate it with “Chinese compound sentences”. The underlying logic of “Compound Sentence Hierarchy Analysis in Chinese” (i.e. “Because ...... so ......”).
Teachers are advised to conduct a strategy use survey every semester to track the dynamics of learners’ strategy use. For example, Chinese learners tend to use “mechanical memorization” more than other strategies and follow up with “meaningful memorization”; English learners tend to use social strategies less than other strategies and can be encouraged to participate in social interaction through the “classroom point system”; they can be encouraged to participate in social interaction through the “classroom point system”. The “classroom point system” can be used to encourage communicative participation and form a closed-loop mechanism of “strategy evaluation-teaching adjustment-feedback”.
6. Conclusions
By comparing the advantages and disadvantages of learning strategies in Chinese and English as second language acquisition, this paper draws the following conclusions: Chinese learners tend to use cognitive strategies such as Chinese character association and tone imitation, whereas English learners rely on regularization strategies such as sentence deduction and phonetic correspondence; metacognitive strategies are affected by culture, and Chinese learners rely on the teacher’s segmental guidance, whereas English learners have a stronger ability of independent planning and error assessment; in social strategies, Chinese learners rely on teachers’ segmental guidance, whereas English learners have a stronger ability of independent planning and error assessment; and in social strategies, Chinese learners use social strategies less. In socialization strategies, Chinese learners are less likely to take the initiative to interact with each other due to the “face culture”, while English learners are more accustomed to asking for help or applying communicative strategies directly.
The causes of the differences are mainly due to the structural characteristics of the language, the type of cultural cognition, and native language transfer. This suggests that when teaching Chinese and English as a second language, Chinese teaching should strengthen associative memorization and autonomous planning training, while English teaching should focus on rule-context integration and cross-cultural communication strategy development. Respecting and utilizing these differences, we should adopt targeted teaching strategies to promote learners’ effective acquisition.
Conflicts of Interest
The author declares no conflicts of interest.