The acquisition of medio – passive constructions - A teaching perspective
The acquisition of medio – passive constructions - A teaching perspective

Summary/Abstract: The aim of the present paper is to examine how Romanian learners of English acquire theEnglish medio -passive constructions. The hypothesis is that since the domain of theEnglish middles is restricted, language-specific and a subset of their Romanianequivalents, the English middles are hard to acquire for the Romanian learners. Theprediction was that this would lead to negative transfer which would further result in errorsand avoidance of the target structure. The prediction was tested by means of agrammaticality-judgement task and a translation task, the subjects being Philology studentswho have studied the structure previously and High School students who have not studiedthe structure yet. The tendency in both groups was to judge the English middles in generalas illicit, using the avoidance strategy.This proves that acquiring the English middle is difficult for the Romanian learners ofEnglish and that in order to acquire these language specific properties, the Romanianlearners of English need explicit instruction with both negative and positive evidence in theinput.

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