The Negative Influence Of The Native Language On Chinese College Students' English Writing

The thesis investigated the negative influence of Chinese on college students' English writing in organization, grammar, expression .semantics as well as usage Of punctuation. The aim of this study was to make clear the variety of the negative transfer of Chinese in college students' English writing so that both teachers and students could get inspiration or help from it in their teaching or learning of English writing.The problems dealt with were: l.What were the main problems in college students' English writing ? 2.0f the problems ,what were caused by the negative influence of the native language ? 3. How can we rise above the negative influence of Chinese in English writing?It was hypothesized that 1) of the students' problems in their English writing, most were caused by the negative influence of Chinese, 2) the negative influence of Chinese played a bigger part in college students' English writing than its positive influence.Sixty students participated in the study as subjects. They were asked to write a composition within 100-120 words on the topic of "To Work in Big Cities or Small Cities" which comes from Wang Changxi's 2004 CET-4 Model Test Papers. The subjects' writing samples were compared with the model sample from Key to Wang Changxi's 2004 CET-4 Model Test Papers and combined with the results from the questionnaire and the interview to analyze and discuss the negative influence of Chinese on college students' English writing. The method in this study was mainly contrastive analysis and was a combination of qualitative and quantitative studies, in which empirical study was dominant and descriptive study served as a supplement; and the data collection instruments used in the study were: sample writings, a questionnaire, an interview and SPSS software.The results showed that the main problems in Chinese college students' English writing were: digression from the point, too many grammatical mistakes(especially in those grammatical aspects which do not exist in Chinese such as definite articles and prepositions), unidiomatic expression, confusing usage of words, misuse Of punctuation. These problems were mainly caused by the negative influence of Chinese which played a bigger part than its positive influence in Chinese college students' English writing.The significance of this study lies in that it not only investigated the problems in college students' English writing but also found out the causes of those problems. By comparing and analyzing the writing samples, this study presented a detailed comprehensive description of the main problems and the causes of the problems so as to help both the teachers and students have a better understanding of the negative influence of Chinese in college students' English writing.