A Study On L1 Influence In Chinese English Beginners' Compositions

It is generally believed that first language transfer is more likely to occur at the early stage of second language acquisition. This thesis aims to explore the syntactic features that presented in Chinese English beginners'compositions and to investigate the effect of transfer, namely, the influence of similarities and differences between L1 (Chinese) and L2 (English) on the acquisition and production of sentence patterns by Chinese English beginners. 167 writing samples from Beijing middle school students are collected and analyzed. First of all, 6 variables are established: the simple sentence, the compound sentence, the compound-complex sentence, the initial adverbial and the incomplete sentence. Then, complex sentences are further divided into the adverbial clause, the objective clause, the predicative clause and the attributive clause. At the same time, some typical syntactic errors are analyzed and discussed. In order to find what other factors interact with transfer, an EFL writing questionnaire is administered, and 46 sample writers respond to the questionnaire.Findings of this research confirm that Chinese English beginners are greatly influenced by their mother tongue when learning and producing English sentences. The similarities between the L1 and the L2 can be facilitative, so that it is easier for Chinese English learners to acquire and use English adverbial clause and objective clause. However, the covert differences disguised as salient similarities may lead to negative transfer; for example, Chinese English beginners prefer to use"when"and"because"to introduce time clauses and cause clauses, and to put all the adverbials at the beginning of a sentence. The differences between L1 and L2 may result in negative transfer which may take the form of error.