A Contrastive Analysis of Empty Category Learning in Chinese Students' Oral English Based on TEM4 Data

Based on Chomsky's GB theory from Universal Grammar, this study sets out to investigate features of Empty Category (EC) in Chinese English Majors (CEMs)' oral English and relations between EC using and CEMs' oral proficiency. Taking TEM4 and SPSS 19.0, this study conducts the qualitative analysis based on the quantitative data. Findings from the qualitative study indicate: for EC competence, both students with the high and low level oral proficiency tend to make the same kind of grammatical errors, though high level students made much less errors than the low levels.