Based on the Interlanguage Hypothesis (Selinker, 1972) and the U-shaped Developmental Hypothesis (Kellerman, 1985), acquiring a foreign language is a movement along a continuum of grammar, which can appear as different developmental processes. The present study investigates the developmental process of the ba-construction acquisition across different proficiency levels. The subjects were 71 students of Chinese at USC and 24 native speakers of Chinese as the control group. Grammatical Judgement, Translation, and Picture-cue Production tasks were conducted to achieve the goal of understanding the L2 acquisition of the ba-construction.;The results show that there is a U-Shaped developmental pattern in the acquisition of the ba-construction across different proficiency levels. The acquisition order of the six properties of the ba-construction was found. It is proposed that teaching materials need to add the repetition of the ba-construction use, and the exercise design should be more communicative.
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