| Language transfer is an inevitable phenomenon in foreign language learning process. At the same time, it is one of the most important topics in the field of foreign language teaching as well. In the heyday of Behaviorism, it was heavily believed that language transfer is dominant determinant affecting the foreign language learning and teaching. In the late1960s, the importance of language transfer waned, and some linguists even denied the existence of language transfer. In recent years, with the further understanding of language transfer, the role of language transfer has been widely acknowledged. Learners will commit kinds of errors in the foreign language learning process; however, errors in writing attach more and more attention than other errors. The reason for this is that writing can not only show the learners’overall linguistic competence, but also reflect learners’thoughts. Recently, domestic and international researchers have finished a lot of researches on language transfer of mother tongue from different perspectives. Whereas few have made researches about non-English majors’English writing and there is relative paucity of research on language transfer in the Art College Students’English writings. This study aims at investigating influence of Chinese negative transfer in the Art College Students’ English writings through the analysis of students’compositions.Theories about language transfer, contrastive analysis and error analysis are illustrated firstly, then errors collected from90compositions of120sophomores majoring costume designing and melodrama respectively in Sichuan Conservatory of Music are calculated and analyzed. Then these errors are divided into four main categories, including substance errors, lexical errors, syntactical errors and discourse errors, and some of them are further divided into many sub-categories. According to statistical analysis of various errors, the most frequent error will be found, and the causes for each type of error will be discussed. Research results show that the impact of Chinese negative transfer focuses on the lexical level and syntactical level; most of these errors can be attributed to the influence of Chinese negative transfer, but there are still some other determinants of errors; in addition, the author find out that the big problem affecting the Art College Students’English learning is they can not express in English for the lack of vocabulary. On the basis of the research results, some corresponding pedagogical implications are put forward to help reduce the influence of Chinese negative transfer and to promote English learning and teaching as well.The thesis is composed of six parts. Following an introduction regarding the background, purpose and significance of the research, chapter one, reviews the relevant literature about language transfer at home and abroad are introduced, including theories about contrastive analysis and error analysis. Chapter two introduces the objectives and methodologies of the study. Chapter three, the major part of the thesis, focuses on the qualitative analysis of the results of the study. Chapter four puts forward some corresponding pedagogical implications for English teaching and learning. The last part is the conclusion of the whole thesis through previous analysis and discussion, and presents the limitation and suggestions for future research. |
