AbstractsLanguage, Literature & Linguistics

This paper examines the personal pronouns in second language acquisition across English and Mandarin, with a special focus on Mandarin speaking English learners. As Mandarin belongs to the Sino-Tibetan language families, the differences in personal pronouns between English and Mandarin distinguish in various ways. For instance, personal pronouns in English have cases while Mandarin does not; it makes English more specific than Mandarin as the cases play an important role in the sentence. On the other hand, Mandarin personal pronouns make greater distinctions between grammatical number and gender than their English counterpart. Language mistakes can be expected with Mandarin speaking English learners in the use of personal pronouns, such as unclear references and gender errors. The primary goal for Mandarin students acquiring English as their second language is to speak English properly and avoid errors. This paper thereby explores the impact of the first language interference towards Mandarin speaking students. Two ways of learning a new language are also analyzed through the problems that occur to Mandarin speaking students while acquiring English personal pronouns. Thus, in order for Mandarin speaking students to learn English personal pronouns effectively and properly, it is necessary to be fully aware of their native language interference and their learning attitudes. The aim and importance of this paper is therefore to offer Chinese Mandarin speaking students a comparison between the structure of their own language personal pronouns and the English one. This is done in order to facilitate their learning process in acquiring English as a second language by making them aware of the crucial differences in context between the two pronoun systems, so that first language interference might be reduced. Keywords: English, Mandarin, Personal pronouns, Language interference, second language acquisition