语言学概论 课后参考答案 XMUCharpter7-9

语言学概论 课后参考 答案 八年级地理上册填图题岩土工程勘察试题省略号的作用及举例应急救援安全知识车间5s试题及答案 XMUCharpter7-9 Key to Linguistics of Xiamen University Charpter 7 7.1.1 1. Regional dialect is the kind of dialect that is spoken and used by the people in a geographical region. Every local group of people spoke the language a little differently from other groups. For instance, these differences may be found in pronunciation, spelling, and the use of words and grammatical structures. With the passage of time, a regional dialect may become the standard dialect of a nation. This is largely due to a number of socio-economic and political reasons. 2. Sociolinguistic studies have revealed that women speakers of English speak more or less differently than their male counterparts. Female speech lacks the assertive tone of male speech. Women tend to use more rising intonations. They may seek permission by doing this. Women use more tag questions and reverse accents than men. They make a heavier use of the inconclusive intensifiers so and such. Women are more careful to follow prescriptive rules of grammar. Moreover, women’s speech shows a more refined perception in certain areas. Women are said to have a color vocabulary that contains items such as azure and turquoise. 3. Yes. Young people are likely to borrow some words originally used in the technical field, like the young may have used the word cool, formerly a word from the Internet. Young people are likely to invent new use of vocabulary and slang words. Aged speakers may be more conscious of their social class by using language to fashion themselves as different from young people. Most of the aged speakers may keep many of their old dialects with them, and some may stick to the prescriptive use of language in order to preserve the tradition, or simply to gain respect. Many old speakers resist the innovation expressions and language change. 7.1.2 1. Dialect is a variety of language which differs grammatically, phonologically and lexically from other varieties, and which is associated with a particular geographical area and/or with a particular social class or status group. A language is typically composed of a number of dialects. Register is defined according to the use of language. It is a technical term used to describe a language variety that is associated with a particular topic, the interpersonal relationship between the speaker and the hearer, and the speech channel. Registers can identify speakers as being members of a particular group, and are for that reason often labeled jargon. 2. Yes, there should be some differences. When scientists are talking about IT among themselves, technical terms may be used. Yet, when they talk to little children, they may try to use vocabulary easy for the children to understand. They may avoid technical terms. 7.1.3 1. a) He is nice. b) They are mine. c) I’m going to do it. d) John will be happy. e) John is happy. f) He will be late. g) He is late. h) Are you tired? i) Are you tired? 2. In Black English, one prominent syntactic feature is the frequent absence of various forms of the verb "be". Another syntactic feature of Black English is the systematic use of the expression "it is" where Standard English uses "there is". 7.2.1 1. Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is a hypothesis associated with the American scholars Edward Sapir and Benjamin Lee Whorf. The hypothesis assumes that people’s habitual thought patterns and ways of perceiving the world are conditioned to a certain extent by the categories and distinctions that are available to them in their native language. Speakers of different languages may therefore have rather different world-views, depending on how different the languages are from one another semantically and grammatically. 2. When language is used in contexts of communication, it is bound up with culture in multiple and complex ways. Members of a community or social group do not only express experience; they also create experience through language. Through all its verbal and non-verbal aspects, language embodies and symbolizes cultural reality. The theory of linguistic relativity claims that linguistic structure tends to influence what they routinely do think. It is recognized that language, as code, reflects cultural preoccupations and constrains the way people think. Culture is semantically encoded in the language itself, and at the same expressed through the actual use of the language. 3. To most Chinese speakers, the associative meaning of ‘dog’ is negative in effect. To most English speakers, the associative meaning of ‘dog’ is positive in effect. 7.2.2 1. This is the result of ever-increasing political, economic, academic and cultural contacts and exchanges among speakers of different languages. 2. The Chinese kinship system is not exactly the same as the English kinship system. At the word level, most English kinship terms does not make further distinctions in terms of relatives on mother’s or father’s side. For example, the term ‘uncle’ can refer to the brother of both one’s mother or father. However, some Chinese kinship terms does make fine distinctions. For example, 伯is used to refer to one’s father’s elder brother and 叔 to one’s father’s younger brother. 3. Linguistically, politeness can be expressed in a number of ways in both languages. For instance, in English-speaking countries, words and phrases like "please", "would you…" can be used for politeness’ sake. In Chinese, words like "请"，"您"are used. To show politeness, people often great each other when they meet. English may use "morning", "hello", "hi", "how are you doing" or other similar expressions. Chinese may use "你好", "上哪儿,", "吃了吗," and other similar expressions. 7.3.1 1. a) i-mode is the name used in Japan for NTT DoCoMo’s mobile internet service. b) FOMA (Freedom Of Mobile multimedia Access) is the name used in Japan for NTT DoCoMo W-CDMA services. c) E-book is electronic book. The "book" is an advanced computer with a large capacity and book-like interface. It can memorize characters and download information from the Internet. d) WAP is the abbreviation of Wireless Application Protocol. e) W-CDMA is the abbreviation of Wideband Code Division Multiple Access, which is a standard of 3G, the Third Generation mobile communication. 2. An individual can not change language. Although language is changing with the lapse of time, the change is beyond the will of an individual. Language change is a constant and unavoidable fact of life. It must obtain the agreement and acceptance from speakers of the language community. Moreover, the change of a language often has political, social and economic reasons. 3. It is true that more and more technical terms are used in every life. The distinction between technical terms and common daily vocabulary is getting blurt. For example, "catalyst" is a chemical term, but is now used in daily communication, as in "Nixon’s visit to China acted as a catalyst for normalization of the relations between the two countries." So it the case with the Chinese "催化剂". 7.3.2 1. a) E-mail: This word comes from the Internet technology. It means mail sent by way of the Internet. b) GSM: this is the abbreviated form for Global System for Mobile Telecommunications. c) Cyberspace: This word comes from the network technology, referring to the universe of environments, such as the Internet, in which persons interact by means of connected computers. 2. boon, damsel, eventide. 3. omitted 7.3.3 7.3.4 a. It nothing pleased his master. Mod. Eng.: It pleased his master nothing. Change: Principal rule changes in the structure of English sentences occurred in their word orders. Today, the negative element has to follow the finite element. b. He hath said that we would lift them whom that him please. Mod. Eng.: He has said that we would lift them who please him. Change: Word order SOV has changed to SVO construction, c. I have a brother is condemned to die. Mod. Eng.: I have a brother who is condemned to die. Change: Old English lost relative pronoun, which is now added to the English language. d. I bade them take away you. Mod. Eng.: I bade them to take you away. Change: In Modern English, pronouns can be inserted between the verb and the adverb. e. I wish you was still more a Tartar. Mod. Eng.: I wish you were still a Tartar. Change: The English speaker today rarely uses "still more". He also pays attention to the use of "were" after "you". f. Me was told. Mod. Eng.: I was told. Change: The placement of pronouns like ‘me’ and ‘I’ has particularly changed. English now uses "I" as grammatical subject. 7.4.1 1. A standard language is the language norm of a nation. It may be artificially created on the basis of a multiplicity of dialects of a language. It may also be chosen from one variety of a language, because it is regarded as a prestigious norm. Once it is established, it is used nationwide. Standard language is always a written form of the language and is preserved through a distinct print culture serving a variety of political, economic, educational, and ideological interests. 2. Generally speaking, standard language embodies a symbolic value beyond its pragmatic use and becomes a totem of a cultural group. Thus, standard language can help unify a nation, express national identity, facilitate the exchanges among speakers of different dialects, 7.4.2 1. National language refers to the full set of all regional, social, and functional, spoken and written variants of a historically and politically defined linguistic community. It is the symbol of a nation and can also be one of the official languages. Generally speaking, official language is used in the government. 2. The most decisive factor in the choice of a foreign language is the purpose of learning a foreign language. Some people learn a foreign language because they need to communicate with the foreigners. Some learn a foreign language because they want to pursue further studies in a university or college in another country. Others learn a foreign language just for pleasure. We should also consider current economic, technological, and academic situation of the world. For example, English has a tendency of becoming a global language. Charpter 8 8.1.1 1. In a general sense, ‘acquisition’ is synonymous with ‘learning’. Yet, in a specific sense, acquisition involves the spontaneous development of rule internalization that relies on natural language use. It is often ‘natural’, without focus on form. Foreign language ‘learning’ is conscious, and metalinguistic through formal school-like settings in the process. The output of acquisition is in the learner’s mind and s/he has access to it for automatic processing and uninhibited performance. On the contrary, foreign language learning requires time for processing, with focus on linguistic form in addition to knowledge of rules of use. 2. Mother tongue acquisition does not require a child to memorize words and sentences. Speakers learn their mother tongue words or sentences by inference - the items are not simply memorized, but slightly or largely sub-consciously internalized into the memory bank. Native speakers are exposed to the language environment and can somehow abstract unconscious knowledge of the grammar of the mother tongue on the basis of the phrases and sentences they hear. 3. Omitted. 4. Formal instruction may contain such elements as social factors, input and interaction that have effect on second language acquisition. It enables the learner to have a systematic mastery of the linguistic system and the rules of use of the second language. However, learners differ greatly in how quickly they learn an L2, in the type of proficiency they acquire and the ultimate level of proficiency they reach. 8.1.2 1. Generally speaking, the child experiences four stages in his first language acquisition: the babbling stage, the holophrastic stage, the two-word stage, and the telegraph to infinity stage. In the first few months, the infant begins to babble. The sounds produced in this period (apart from the continuing stimulus-controlled cries and gurgles) seem to include the sounds of human languages. The holophrastic stage occurs after one year (it varies from child to child). The child starts to use the same string of sounds repeatedly to "mean" the same thing. At this point the child has learned that sounds are related to meanings. When the child is two years old or so, she starts to produce two-word utterances. During the two-word utterance stage there are no syntactic or morphological markers and pronouns are rare. During the stage of telegraph to infinity, child begins to produce utterances longer than two words. However, small "function" words such as to, the, can, is, are often missing; only the content words occur. Halliday’s (1975: 244) functional account of early language development recognizes three phases. 2. To some degree, parents serve as the reinforcement in the child’s first language acquisition. The study by Carroll (2000: 316) shows that there is a direct link between parental speech and child language development, but they are limited in several respects. Although parental speech may influence child speech, it is still a question whether such speech modifications are necessary for normal language acquisition. Throughout the early years, the interaction between parent and child is vital important to language development. Not only does the parent, particularly the mother, provide a model of language for a child to copy, but she also plays a supportive role in encouraging a child to communicate. 3. The words consistently appear in the child’s sentences are the content words, mainly the nouns, verbs and adjectives. The words the child occasionally leaves out are function words which include articles (a, the); prepositions (in, on, with, etc.); the verb to be and auxiliary verbs. The parent can understand her so easily simply because the words which the child used normally occur in the same order as they would in the parental sentences in the context. 8.2.1 1. In the language classroom, the learning can takes places through the teacher’s classroom management and through classroom such as debates, story-telling, group discussions and role-playing. Thus, language learners can be motivated. Language classroom can provide the comprehensible input with the teacher’s presentation and the interactive activities among the students. It can give the learner feedback and the learners may respond to the feedback one way or another. Although most language classroom lays stress on the explicit teaching of linguistic forms, it assists L2 learners, especially beginners, by giving opportunities for them to receive modified comprehensible input that are particularly suited to their current stage of L2 development. In addition, both teaching materials and methods can be tuned to meet the needs of the learner. 2. Neither of them are correct English expressions. In (a), the relative pronoun at the beginning of the attributive clause is missing, and in (b), the agreement between subject and the predicate is violated. Besides, the definite article the is missing in the prepositional phrase "in evening". All this shows that the learner may be influenced by the grammatical patterns of his mother tongue. The Chinese learner of English speaking a language with a syntax dissimilar to that of English tends to have more difficulty with articles and relative clauses. For example, in Chinese, we don’t have to have articles before a noun. 3. Cross-linguistic similarities can produce positive transfer in several ways. Similarities in vocabulary can reduce the time needed to develop good reading comprehension. Similarities between vowel systems can make the identification of vowel sounds easier. Similarities between writing systems can give learners a head start in reading and writing in the target language; and similarities in syntactic structures can facilitate the acquisition of grammar. 8.2.2 1. The learner’s ethnic background, gender, and social status can be said to be the major social factors which can influence the process of L2 learning. They can act as the determinant of the input that learners receive, and what variety of the target language the learner will be exposed to and also the amount of exposure. 2. Omitted. 3. There may be various internal factors that might have an impact on the success in L2 learning. These causes can be termed as a set of variables, such as learner attitudes, the learning opportunities, the learners’ socio-economic class and ethnic background, age, sex, the setting, ethnic identity, ‘cultural distance’, attitudes, and motivation. The relationship between these variables and L2 learning is extremely complex. It should be recognized that it is not age, sex, social class, or ethnic identity that determine L2 proficiency, but rather the social conditions and attitudes associated with these variables. Also, the factors interact among themselves, and their effect on learning depends to a large extent on the setting. Thus, we can see that different learners achieve different levels of success in L2 learning. 8.3.1 1. The gist of Jackendoff’s account of the relation between language and thought is that there is no absolute connection between language and thought. Language is by no means the thought, and vice versa. To Jackendoff (1994: 180), thought is a mental function completely separate from language, and it can go on in the absence of language. Language provides a scaffolding that makes possible certain varieties of reasoning more complex than are available to nonlinguistic organisms. Yet, the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis claims that the structure of the language one habitually uses influences the manner in which one thinks and behaves. Thought is shaped by language. Formulation of ideas is not an independent process, but part of a particular grammar, and differs more or less between different grammars. 2. No. The way people perceive the world is not totally determined by their language. We can find some evidence from our daily life. For instance, infants can think before they can voice an utterance. We contemplate in images as well as in words beside abstract logical propositions. 3. Yes, more or less. This belief involves linguistic relativity, which refers to the idea that people’s language is different since their thought may be different, and there exist varieties of expressions that are available for particular communities to express specific thought. However, language is not itself the form of thought. Thought is given a conscious manifestation through the phonetic forms that it corresponds to. Thought and concepts are independent of language, and language is basically for the communication of thought, but it is also possible for language to enhance human cognitive powers. Complex thought can exist without linguistic expressions but by painting or music. Thought itself is a separate brain phenomenon, though language expresses thought. 8.3.2 1. They are localized in Broca’s area and Wernicke’s area. Broca’s area is in charge of speech planning and output. Wernicke’s area is in responsible for speech comprehension. The angular gyrus area is also playing a role seeing to transform a visual stimulus into an auditory form and vice versa. It is vital important area for the coordination of a speech sound with a perceived entity, for the labeling of objects, and for the understanding of written language. 2. Yes. When we read, we perceive what we read from several levels. By our visual perception, we organize visual stimuli and auditory perception to the organization of sounds or auditory stimuli. The processing of written language exists at three main levels: the feature, letter, and word. Reading speed is determined by three factors, that is, the duration of our fixations, the span of material that is fixated, and the proportion of regressive eye movements. 3. Linguistic information is largely processed at multiple levels in an interactive manner. Language processing takes place simultaneously with the speech perception and visual word perception. Speech may be processed at the auditory, phonetic, or phonological levels of processing. The auditory levels is characteristic of the way all sounds are perceived, whereas the phonetic level is assumed to be specific to speech, and the phonological level specific to a particular language. We perceived speech sounds by identifying the intended phonetic gestures that may produce the sounds. 4.The top-down process is more facilitative than the bottom-up process, because contextual information powerfully influences the perception of individual speech segments. For instance, perception of isolated or unrelated letters is inferior to the perception of letters in a word context. Charpter 9 9.1.1 1. The structural approach to language teaching takes a structural basis. As the structural linguistics is based on the assumption that grammatical categories should be defined not in terms of meaning but in terms of distribution, and that the structure of each language should be the focus of description. The psychological basis for this approach is behaviorist psychology. Language learning is regarded as habit formation. Accordingly, the structural approach to language teaching emphasizes the observable aspects of human behavior and lays special stress on the creation of a linguistic environment in which utterances are systemically repeated with appropriate reinforcements by the parents and/or teachers. 2. Since the 19th century, with Great Britain’s rise as a colonial power, and particularly with the increasing influence of America after the two world wars, English has not only been spread to many parts of the world first as a colonial language and then as the official language or second language but also acquired the role of lingual franca in most international political, commercial, technical and academic settings. Consequently, the teaching of English is becoming more and more important in the world. 3. Psychologically, the structural approach is based on behaviorist psychology. Language learning is accounted for as one of human behaviors, in which repeated stimuli, imitation and appropriate reinforcement play a crucial role. The mentalistic approach assumes that an average child has a human-specific innate language acquisition device (LAD) which enables a language learner to make subconscious hypotheses about the structure of language in general and the structure of the language being learned in particular, and to develop a rule system through systemic changes towards the adult rule system. In teaching practice, the structural approach puts emphasis on the development of linguistic habits via repeated stimuli (sentence-pattern drills), imitation, and appropriate reinforcements. For the mentalistic approach, emphasis is laid on the exploitation of the universality of LAD and the learner’s creativity in language acquisition. 9.1.2 Roughly speaking, the first extract follows the grammar-translation approach. Priority is put on the reading and translation of written language. Accordingly, lessons are organized around systemically-listed grammar points. Sample sentences are given to illustrate the grammatical system of the language. The second extract puts priority on both speech and writing. The lesson takes the functional approach as its basis as it is organized around the functions of language, like "getting people to do things: requesting", "attracting attention", "agreeing and refusing". This approach is aimed at cultivating the learner’s communicative competence. The classroom activities and exercises are organized around language functions and communication. 9.2.1 1. In grammatical syllabus, grammar is viewed as the core for language teaching. Learning units are determined by the grammatical categories. The items to be learned are labeled in grammatical terms. The grammatical rules and vocabulary are carefully ordered according to such factors as frequency, complexity and use. Textbooks written in the grammatical syllabus are normally ordered like this: (a) the phonetic study, (b) a systemic study of grammar, (c) reading texts. The texts are normally taken from original (and often ancient) literary works, and presented as the materials to illustrate and explain the grammatical rules. The texts are always carefully analyzed and translated. They are then read repeatedly until the learner has a thorough knowledge of the grammatical rules. 2. Do you think grammar can be ignored in learning English as a foreign language? Why? No. Any language is rule governed. The combination of morphemes into words and words into sentences are governed by grammatical rules. Different languages may have different grammatical patterns. Sentences are not strings of words put together in a random order. They permit certain sequences of words but not others. Change in the sequence affects the meaning of the sentence. Therefore, grammar cannot be ignored in learning English as a foreign language. 9.2.2 From the extract, we can identify the following differences between the situational syllabus and the grammatical syllabus: (a) In the situational syllabus, the instruction of language teaching is planned around the situations in which the linguistic forms to be taught are normally used. Instead, in grammatical syllabus, grammar is viewed as the basis for language teaching. Learning units are determined by the grammatical categories. (b) The theoretical basis for the situational syllabus is sociolinguistics, which focuses on the relationship between the variation of language in use and the social context. The major situational factors influencing the use of language include (a) the setting, (b) the topic, and (c) the role relationship between the participants. By contrast, the grammatical syllabus is based on the traditional grammar, which emphasizes the grammatical rules governing the sentence structure. (c) In the situational syllabus, teaching materials are organized on the basis of the situations in which the social interaction in question may occur, whereas in the grammatical syllabus, teaching materials are organized around grammatical units. 9.2.3 1. First of all, the communicative syllabus is based on the assumption that language is used for communication, and that learning a language is learning to communicate. It focuses on the cultivation of the learner’s communicative competence. Second, the communicative syllabus is learner-based. It emphasizes the use of genuine teaching materials. The linguistic items to be studied are dependent on the learner’s purposes of communication. Third, the communicative syllabus views language acquisition as a process in which the learner’s communicative competence is developed through practice in the target language. In the language teaching process, the learner is granted with many chances to practise the linguistic knowledge and communicative skills he or she has studied. Fourth, the communicative syllabus stresses balanced practice in listening, speaking, reading and writing. As for the accuracy-fluency tension, in oral practice, the communicative syllabus advocates an ultimate balance between the accuracy and fluency. But at the early stage, fluency is emphasized over accuracy. Fifth but not the last, the communicative syllabus regards the learner’s cosmopolitan knowledge and previous language-learning experience as precious aid to the development of the learner’s communicative competence. 2. The learner plays a central role in the communicative syllabus. First, the communicative syllabus is learner-based. The teaching materials are dependent on the learner’s purposes of communication. They should be useful for the learner. Second, the communicative syllabus envisages language acquisition as a process in which the learner’s communicative competence is developed through practice in the target language. Thus, the learner can have the chance to use the language to fulfill certain communicative tasks. 9.3.1 1. Testing plays an important role in language teaching. Language tests can provide the teachers and students with feedback so that they can improve their teaching and learning of the target language. The test results can help the teachers and students to adapt their behaviors according to the teaching goals. They can also help foster the students’ motive to learn the target language well. The test results can help the teachers and the education administrators to assess the achievements of the students’ studies. Moreover, based on the hypothesis that a well-organized test can differentiate the persons with different linguistic competence, the test results can be used as a criterion to select talents. 2. The development of language testing corresponds to the development of linguistics. According to Spolsky (1979), the development of linguistics underwent three trends in the twentieth century: from historical-comparative linguistics, structural linguistics, to transformational linguistics. Consequently, language testing also witnessed three trends in the century: the prescientific trend, the psychometreic-structural trend, and the psycho-sociolinguisitc trend. This development also corresponds to the development in the language teaching methods: from the grammar-translation method, the audio-lingual approach to the communicative approach. Generally, language-testing trends appear later than their corresponding linguistic theories and language teaching methods. This suggests the influence of linguistic theories and language teaching methods on language testing. 9.3.2 1. When we are to decide whether a test is good or bad, we should take three factors into account: (a) Validity: This is the most important index for the quality of a test. We should consider whether a test adequately covers the syllabus area to be tested, whether the test proves the theoretical construct on which it is based, what a test superficially appears to measure, whether the test can reflect the result of the teaching and learning that precedes it and throw light on the future teaching and learning, and whether a test reflects the validity criteria. (b) Reliability: This refers to whether a test produces the consistent results when given to the same candidates twice in a succession or marked by different people. (c) Efficiency: This refers to whether a test is practical. It involves questions of economy, ease of administration, scoring, and interpretation of test results. 2. While validity is concerned with the degree to which a test measures what is intended to measure, reliability is concerned with whether a test produces the consistent results when given to the same candidates twice in a succession or marked by different people. The two criteria are usually in tension. While one can have test reliability without test validity, a test can only be valid if it is also reliable. The two concepts are mutually exclusive in some circumstances. But if a choice has to be made, validity is after all the more important. 9.3.3 1. The questions in 1) belong to the discrete point test, because the test consists of many questions on a number of linguistic points, but each question tests only one linguistic point. Besides, the questions here are objective so that the test can be scored objectively and the results are easy to be analyzed statistically. The questions in 2) belong to the integrative test, because they are a combination of cloze test and dictation. The testees are required to fill in the blanks in a passage with either a single word, a sentence or a larger unit while they are listening to the same material. 2. (a) The achievement test is aimed at assessing the testee’s mastery of the knowledge and skills set by the syllabus as the teaching goals the contents of a particular course. It is usually given at the end of a period of study. The achievement test focuses on the result rather than the process. Thus, it is of little use in diagnosing how the testee is getting along with the study of the target language. (b) The proficiency test is aimed at discovering what the testee has already known about the target language. It can be used to predict whether he has the ability to accomplish a certain task in the future. The proficiency test does not care what kind of language training the testee has ever received. It focuses more on the result than the process. (c) The aptitude test is designed to measure the testee’s aptitude or natural ability to learn the target language. It is based on the assumption that the learner’s mastery of his native language is closely related to his potential to learn a foreign language. The drawback of the aptitude test is its failure to assess the effect of the learner’s attitude, learning strategies, learning environment and other related factors. (d) The diagnosis test aims at discovering how the testee is getting along with his study of the target language. A well-designed diagnosis test can help the teacher to find out what is wrong with the student’s previous study and how it can be remedied in the future study. It cares more about the process than the result. Its drawback is that it only covers a limited range of linguistic knowledge or skills and thus cannot reflect the whole process of language acquisition. (e) The subjective test is a test the result of which may be influenced by the marker’s linguistic knowledge, understanding of the scoring standard, the mental state at the time of scoring and other personal factors. Its strong point is its effective assessment of the testee’s comprehensive mastery of the target language. (f) The objective test is a test the result of which is free of the influence of the marker’s linguistic knowledge, understanding of the scoring standard, the mental state at the time of scoring and other personal factors. The result remains consistent when the paper is scored by different markers or even by a machine. However, the knowledge and/or skill to be examined by a question is rather restricted, and the multiple-choice leaves room for the testee to get the correct answer simply by guessing and thus undermines its reliability. 9.3.4 1. The development of a test involves the following factors: (a) the purpose of the test, (b) the type of the test, (c) the content of the test, (d) the question forms of the test, and (e) the proportion of each section in the whole test paper. 2. CET-4 is a proficiency test, aiming at assessing the testees’ mastery of the English language. Section I is Listening comprehension. This section is subdivided into two parts. The first part is a discrete point test, in which the testees are to listen to some short dialogues and then choose from the options marked by A, B, C, and D the best answer to each of the questions they hear. The second may take either of two forms. The first form is also the discrete point test, in which the testees are required to listen to some passages and then choose from the given options marked by A, B, C, and D the best answer to each of the questions they hear. The second form is an integrative test, in which the testees are required to listen to a passage and then fill in the blanks with the information they hear. Section II is Reading comprehension. This section requires the testees to read some passages and then choose from the options marked by A, B, C, and D the best answer to each of the questions. Section III is Vocabulary and Structure. This section is in the form of discrete point test. The testees are required to choose from the options marked by A, B, C, and D the best answer to fill in each of the banks. Section IV may take one of three forms. The first form is Cloze Test, in which the testees are required to read a passage and choose from the options marked by A, B, C, and D the best answer for each of the blanks in the passage. The second form is Questions and Answers, in which the testees are required to read a passage and then fill in the blanks in the following sentences with information taken from the passage. The third form is Translation, in which the testees are expected to read a passage and then translate the underlined sentences into Chinese. Section V is Writing, in which the testees are expected to write a passage of about 120-150 words on the given topic and cues. It takes the form of communicative test. 9.4.1 1. (1) She didn’t went back. This error belongs to intralingual transfer. The cause for the error is the learner’s overgeneralization of the rule for negation by inserting didn’t. Obviously, the learner fails to change the past form went into its base form go. (2) Do she works in factory? The cause for the misuse of do is dubious. The error may belong to intralingual transfer caused by the learner’s overgeneralization of the insertion of the auxiliary verb do to form a yes-no question. The learner fails to differentiate the third-person singular form and the other number forms. The error may also be due to the context of learning. To interpret in this way, the error is caused by the teacher’s overemphasis of inserting the auxiliary verb do to the front of a sentence to form a yes-no question. The omission of the definite article the in the prepositional phrase "in (the) factory" belongs to interlingual transfer, as the learner has mistransferred the Chinese construction (在工厂里) into English. (3) Works she in the factory? The error is due to intalingual transfer. It is cause by the learner’s overextension of the rules to change such sentences as "She is in the factory" and "She has a factory" into yes-no questions by inverting the subject and the linking verb be or the possessive verb have (or has). (4) These flower need badly watering now. The error belongs to both interlingual transfer and intralingual transfer. The cause for the misuse of the singular form flower for the plural form flowers is the learner’s mistransfer of the Chinese morphological rule. The cause for the mislocation of the adverb badly is the learner’s overextension of the English grammatical rule to locate the adverbials after the predicate verbs. (5) He is one of the greatest alive novelist? The error also belongs to intralingual transfer. The cause for this error is the learner’s failure to differentiate the predicative adjective alive from its synonymous attributive adjective living. (6) I spotted the two aircraft from a distance. The cause for this error is ambiguous. It may be due to either intralingual transfer or context of learning. As an intralingual transfer, the error may be caused by the learner’s failure to differentiate the collective noun aircraft from its corresponding count noun airplane(s) by overextending of the rule of nominal modification. As an error arising from the context of learning, it may also caused by the teacher’s overemphasizes such irregular forms of nouns modified by numerals as in "two sheep", "three deer", etc. 2. The student’s utterance is an error. This error belongs to pragmatic failure. The Chinese student obviously fails to be aware of the cross-cultural differences in the expressions of greeting between Chinese and English. He thus misused the Chinese greeting to his American teacher. If the American teacher knows little about the Chinese culture, a communicative failure may arise. 9.4.2 1. In traditional language teaching, grammaticality is viewed as the most important criterion to assess the learner’s proficiency. Any error made by the language learner is seen as a faulty version of the norm of the target language. Whenever an error occurs, the teacher will take pains to correct it. In the procedural approach, errors are envisaged as a kind of interlanguage. It is an immediate stage in the process of development from the native language to the target language. Seen in this perspective, errors are no longer what the learner should be shamed of. Instead, they are the reflection of the learner’s efforts to progress in their study of the target language. 2. In order to have a proper attitude towards the errors and mistakes made by foreign language learners, teachers should change their approach to error analysis. Instead of seeing the errors and mistakes as a faulty version of the norm of the target language, they should view them as the reflection of the learners’ efforts to make progress in their development from the native language to the target language. They should try to identify the real cause for these errors and mistakes, and then take appropriate measures to help the learners to make more rapid and smooth progress towards the target language.