A Study On The Phenomena Of Negative Transfer Of Native Language In Uyghur College Students' English Learning In Xinjiang

As the largest provincial administrative district of China, Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomy Region is a multiethnic place where Uyghur nationality is its principal minority. With the accelerating pace of economic globalization and western development, the need for English talents is on daily increase in minority areas, however, English is the third language for Uyghur undergraduate students who accept two kinds of languages and letters, coupled with the relatively slow development of social economy, lack of language environment, complexity of cultural background, insufficiency of education and teachers, singularity of education pattern and backward notion of education and so on, they feel more difficult to learn English. Besides, another important reason is the negative transfer of their native language.As for negative transfer, in the 1950s, Robert Lado, a well-known linguist and educationalist of America, pointed out transfer theory that language transfer phenomena is a main obstacle of language acquisition, and differences between L1 and L2 will cause learning difficulties in L2 learning and block the acquisition. The proposing of this theory has produced a great influence on the study of foreign language acquisition and learning. At present, most Chinese scholars focus their studies on Chinese L1 transfer in English learning, and few scholars set their feet in the studies of L1 transfer on minority students'English learning, especially, studies on L1 transfer from Uyghur language to English are much less.To truly find out the influence of L1 transfer in Uyghur college students'learning, the author employs interviews, questionnaires and writings together in different universities, and adopts SPSS 13.0 to analyze the data. Finally, the writer draws the conclusion that Uyghur College students are greatly influenced by L1 transfer in English learning. It is grammar that is affected most by Uyghur grammar, while some other aspects are also influenced by Chinese mandarin greatly. The main reason that causes this transfer is L1 thinking mode. Besides, Uyghur students'inner obstacles to English learning are superficial learning motives, poor self-study ability and inappropriate learning methods etc. Finally, according to the study and analyses, some countermeasures are put up to help achieve the purpose of avoiding negative transfer.