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Introduction
Learning, including learning a second or foreign language, is influenced by students’ prior knowledge (Brown, 2000). In the case of Chinese students learning English, prior knowledge of Chinese language patterns may notably affect their acquisition of English (Brown, 2000; Lightbown & Spada, 1999; Odlin, 2003). Language transfer, or the incorporation of patterns from the native language into the target language, is a common source of errors among learners of a second or foreign language (Brown, 2000; Lightbown & Spada, 1999). While by no means the only source of learner errors, language transfer often plays a significant role (Lightbown & Spada, 1999).

As reported by Jia (2003), one area where language transfer is particularly prevalent among Chinese learners is the formation of English plurals. Moreover, in a study analyzing English errors of Chinese learners, Mohamed, Lian, and Eliza (2004) pinpoint the misuse of singular and plural forms as one of the errors. This phenomenon may spring from different morphological and syntactic features between Chinese and English. Grammatically, Chinese is not as complex as English in that it possesses little of what is traditionally known in European languages as inflectional morphology (Norman, 1988). Instead, as Norman further indicates, word order, particles, and prepositions carry most of the grammatical roles in Chinese. In contrast, English is an inflectional language, in which prefixes or suffixes play a significant grammatical role (Fromkin & Rodman, 1998).

This article explores the challenges that Chinese students encounter in the formation of English plurals. To this end, the authors (a) examine linguistic features of Chinese and English that may affect plural formation in English, (b) highlight specific areas of challenge for Chinese learners, and (c) present an array of recommended instructional practices.

Aspects of the Chinese Language that Affect the Formation of Plurals in English
To better understand the challenges Chinese students encounter when forming English plurals, some background pertaining to the writing system and structure of both languages is essential.

Writing system. According to Chen (1999), the earliest reliable records of Chinese date back more than 3000 years ago in the form of oracle bone script. From the very beginning, Chinese writing shows its pictographic origin (Norman, 1988). In other words, written Chinese is ideographic, consisting of an individual character or ideogram for every syllable, with each character representing an object or idea rather than a sound. English, on the other hand, is phonographic, with written symbols representing discrete sounds.

It is important to note that the Chinese language, although ideographic, does have a means of representing its sound system in written form. However, this system, Pinyin, is used only as a means of indicating pronunciation. In the Chinese school curriculum, Pinyin is usually taught in the last stage of kindergarten or the first stage of elementary school. After children acquire knowledge of the Chinese sound system, they quickly move on to learning characters, which constitute the Chinese writing system.

Morphological and syntactic structure. English and Chinese belong to different language families. English is classified as an Indo-European language, whereas Chinese is of the Sino-Tibetan family (Fromkin & Rodman, 1998). A distinctive characteristic of Sino-Tibetan languages is monosyllabism, which means that each morpheme is represented by a syllable (Ho, 1997). However, in modern Chinese, according to Chao (1968), words have become dissyllabic or polysyllabic. Specifically, separate words are often joined together to make new meanings. Frequently, when words are linked, the resultant word is idiomatic, having a different meaning than its individual elements. For example, the word, dian bing xiang （电冰箱, which means refrigerator, is composed of three words dian (电) electricity, bing (冰) ice, and xiang (箱) box.

Additionally, Chinese grammar is less morphologically complex than English grammar (Li & Thompson, 1981). Chinese characters are invariable in structure and allow no internal changes (Ho, 1997). Thus, grammatical functions and word meaning cannot be indicated through inflectional or derivational changes as in English. Instead, Chinese uses word order or functional words to realize grammatical roles. For example, the character le（了 ）is used to indicate that an action has been completed (similar to the perfect tense or past tense in English), as illustrated in the following sentences: Zuo tian wo qu le Zhongshan Gong Yuan. (昨天我去了中山公园). I went to Zhongshan Park yesterday. Similarly, the character zhe 着）indicates a continual action or state. This is seen in the following sentence: Ta men zheng tan zhe hua ne（他们正谈着话呢). They are having a talk just now.

In sum, two aspects of the Chinese language that are pertinent to the formation of English plurals are the ideographic writing system and the morphological and syntactic structure of the language. These aspects are markedly different from those of English. Understandably, when Chinese students grapple with the incongruence in these two linguistic systems, problems can arise. Specifically, the use of plural forms presents challenges to many Chinese students learning English.

Plural Forms in Chinese and English
Chinese plural forms. As previously noted, the Chinese language does not use inflections to realize grammatical functions. Rather, Chinese is highly contextual. For this reason, the formation of plurals involves a certain degree of ambiguity. To illustrate, the sentence, shu xia you tu zi (树下有兔子), can be translated as (a) There is a rabbit under the tree, (b) There are rabbits under the tree, or (c) There are rabbits under the trees. The meaning must be derived from the greater context, or the clues in the overall discourse.

While this reliance on context may appear to the non-speaker of Chinese to be imprecise, there are many instances where the context precisely indicates the plural form. An example is as follows: Yi xie xue sheng zai jiao shi li, lao shi zheng gei xue sheng jiang yi ge gu shi. (一些学生在教室里, 老师正给学生讲一个故事). Literally these two sentences are translated, *There aresome student in the classroom. Teacher is telling a story to student. In the first sentence, the determiner, some, is used to indicate that there is more than one student. However, in the second sentence, there is no determiner. It is expected that the reader will naturally understand the plural meaning of the word student because of the context already established within the previous sentence. Thus, context is a primary means of addressing the plural form in Chinese.

However, plurals can be formed in two other ways. First, the use of a numeral or a determiner in front of a noun denotes the plural meaning. Examples include the following: wu zhang zhuo zi(五张桌子 *five desk) and na xie xue sheng (那些学生 *those student). Second, the addition of the morpheme -men to certain types of words can also indicate the formation of a plural. This is illustrated in the following words: lao shi men (老师们teachers), ren men (人们people), hai zi men (孩子们children), wo men (我们we or us). As seen in the aforementioned examples, the morpheme –men（们）is used primarily in conjunction with nouns pertaining to people. One restriction regarding the use of this morpheme is as follows: If there is a numeral that indicates a plural form before the noun, -men （们）cannot be used; for example, san ge lao shi men *三个老师们three teacher + plural marker -men) is not correct. Thus, this means of forming plurals is somewhat limited. It should be noted that in this regard it is not equivalent to the English plural morpheme -s or -es.

English plural forms. As with the Chinese language, English addresses plural forms in a number of ways. English is a language in which inflectional morphemes are used to show grammatical relationships (Klammer, Schulz, & Volpe, 2004). Klammer, Schulz, and Volpe list eight inflectional morphemes, one of which is the plural morpheme. However, because of the arbitrary nature of the English language, plural formation involves more than just adding a plural morpheme. Specifically, English plurals can be formed through (a) the addition of the morpheme –s or –es, (b) the changing of one or more internal vowels, (c) the use of the same form for singular and plural, and (d) the application of the rules of foreign plural nouns to English words (see Table 1).
Most plural nouns in English are formed by adding the morpheme -s or –es (Azar, 1999). Therefore, the use of -s and -es is pervasive and somewhat rule-governed. It is widely known that –es is used for words ending in ch, sh, ss, x, or z; however, exceptions exist. Table 1 provides a summary of some common rules for plural formation involving -s and -es.