When the overseas students go certain place to learn Chinese, they may encounter different difficulties and make various kinds of errors during the process of learning Chinese. One of the errors which will be discussed in the following paragraphs will be the errors during the acquisition of interrogative sentence for overseas students. The three kinds of errors include the misplacing of interrogative pronouns, the intermixing of query modal particles and false addition of query modal particle吗. When foreign students are learning the interrogative sentences, the errors should draw the attention from the learners.

First, let’s have a look at the first kind of error, the misplacing of interrogative pronouns. The elementary overseas students are inclined to say the following error sentences. For example, the students may speak out the sentences like 什么你要买? 什么时候你回国?哪儿你明天去?But the right sentence should be 你要买什么? 你什么时候回来?你明天去哪儿? The respective meanings of the right sentences in English are the following. What are you going to buy? When are you coming back? Where are you going tomorrow? The error is caused by the influence of the mother tongue. In learning the expression of interrogative sentences, the learners are influenced by the negative transfer of the mother tongue and speak out the Chinese sentences in English order. The error is mainly made by the elementary learners. It is believed that the error will reduce with the improvement of the proficiency of the learners.

Second error is intermixing of query modal particles. For the Chinese learners, the learning environment is essential. Therefore, this is the reason why many foreigners choose to study in China. But many people will also make some mistakes during the process of learning. The query modal particles in Chinese mainly include 吗,呢, 吧. The overseas students will mix the query modal particles frequently. For example, the students will say sentences like the following. 这是谁的书吧?你在那儿干什么吗?But the right sentences should be 这是谁的书呢?你在那儿干什么呢?

Third type of error is the false addition of query modal particle吗.In the teaching process of Chinse to foreigners, the query modal particle吗 should not appear in the specific questions, the positive and negative questions and select questions. But the students will not distinguish the kinds of interrogative sentences and will use 吗 to express doubt. When students confront with such sentence, they should pay attention to this.