Pedagogical grammar of the aspect "ZHE" in Mandarin Chinese for Thai university students

Abstract

To study the grammatical structure and semantic grammar of the aspect marker “ZHE” in Mandarin Chinese and to compare this with the aspect marker /jù:/ in Thai. Also, it focuses on Thai university students’ errors, analyses them, and takes the results as input to design grammar lessons on “ZHE” in order to encourage Thai university students in their understanding and precise usage of “ZHE”. The research finds that the grammatical structures of Mandarin and Thai have some differences and some similarities. For example in both Mandarin and Thai “ZHE” (in Mandarin) /jù:/ (in Thai) are collocated after the verb if no object is present in the sentence. However, if an object is in a sentence, “ZHE” remains after verb, while /jù:/ is moved to after the object. Semantically, “ZHE” and /jù:/ are the same and indicate the imperfective, stative progressive and the progressive. The grammar teaching lesson of the aspect marker “ZHE” is structured in the following order 1) meaning, 2) grammatical structure, and 3) the usage of “ZHE” with different types of verb. As the aspect marker “ZHE” has to be incorporated with a verb, the lesson concentrates on explaining the on-going action or state of both teacher and students in the classroom to encourage students’ memory and accurate usage of “ZHE” in everyday life.