本研究主要探討以中文為母語的學生對英語存在句的第二語言習得，探討的主要議題包括是否有母語轉換 (L1 transfer) 的現象，以及總學習年限對英語存在句習得的影響。本實驗共有三部分，第一部份為翻譯題，第二部分為看圖造句題，第三部分為文法判斷題。實驗參加者為63位國一學生，依其英語學習年限分成三組（第一組為學習英語一至三年，第二組為學習英語四至六年，第三組為學習英語七年以上的學生）。
根據對比分析，本實驗發現，在受試者所造出的英語存在句中，的確有母語轉換的現象，但是效果並不顯著。其次，學習年限的確對第二語言的習得有所影響，學習年限越久，第二語言的表現越好。此外，題型的設計的確能測出受試者不同的反應，且存在句中不同的句法及語意成分對受試者有不同程度的影響。整體而言，在理解方面，句法和語意對受試者並沒有難易的差別；但在造句方面，語意的習得比句法的習得還要容易。

The present study aims to investigate the phenomenon of L1 transfer and the effect of the length of learning in Chinese ESL learners’ production and comprehension of English existential sentences. Sixty-three Chinese first-year junior high school students participated in the experiment, and they were further categorized into three groups according to the total length of learning English: Group 1 (1- 3 years), Group 2 (4-6 years), and Group 3 (above 7 years). The experiment consisted of three tasks, two production tasks (i.e., the Translation Task and the Picture Description Task), and one comprehension task (i.e., the Grammaticality Judgment Task). The three tasks were designed based on the syntactic and semantic properties of English and Chinese existential sentences.
Based on Contrastive Analysis (Weinreich 1953, Lado 1957, Stockwell, Bowen & Martin 1965, among others), the results showed that L 1 transfer was found in the subjects’ production and comprehension of English existential sentences, but the effect was not significant. The length of learning proved to have impact on the L2 learners’ performance (i.e., the longer immersion in an L2 setting, the better performance). In addition, the task formats were found influential in that different tasks resulted in different performance. Finally, it was found that the syntactic and semantic properties showed different degrees of difficulty for the subjects. The subjects did not perform significantly differently on syntax and semantics of English existential sentences in comprehension, but the significant difference was found in production.

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