The Study Of Chinese Negative Transfer In English Writing

Language transfer is always a hot issue in the field of second language acquisition. The mother tongue of language learners has great impact on foreign language learning, including both positive and negative influence. Many researchers at home and abroad have examined the phenomenon of language transfer of mother tongue in foreign language writing, which is a difficult skill for most foreign language learners, but few of them employed a quantitative method.Negative transfer of mother tongue is an important element to affect foreign language writing. This study attempts to examine the phenomenon of negative transfer in Chinese learners’ English writing with a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods to serve pedagogical purpose. Four research questions are put forward as follows:1) What’s the percentage of the transfer errors in Chinese learners’ English writing?2) What kinds of negative transfer errors are manifested in Chinese learners’ English writing?3) How to avoid negative transfer of mother tongue?4) What implications can we get from the research of negative transfer?107sophomores of four classes majoring in English in Central China Normal University were chosen as the subjects, from whom50English compositions were given a detailed error analysis. The compositions consist of two genres: expository writing and argumentative writing. The author identified all the errors, spotted the transfer errors resulting from differences between Chinese and English and classified them into different categories. Then lexical transfer errors and syntactic transfer errors were distinguished. After careful examination of the50English compositions, the author counted the errors of each category and presented the result in tables finally. Besides English compositions, interviews were given to15subjects to survey the use of mother tongue in English writing as supplementary evidence to error analysis.In all,467errors are found, of which207are transfer errors, taking up44.3%. The errors of negative transfer are classified into21types which are discussed at lexical and syntactic level. There are89lexical transfer errors accounting for43%and118syntactic transfer errors taking up57%of all the transfer errors. The transfer errors at lexical level include errors in noun, verb, adjective, adverb, article, preposition and pronoun. The transfer errors at syntactic level consist of errors in subject, object, copula, infinitive, tense, voice, mood, subject-predicate agreement, word order, run-on sentence, serial verb construction, dangling element, Chinglish expression and redundancy. Among all the transfer errors the top three frequent transfer errors are errors of tense, nouns and run-on sentences. What’s more, the result of the interview is consistent with the result of the error analysis. The negative influence of Chinese can hardly be avoided in English writing.The findings can give some implications for both English teachers and students. English teachers should:1) Raise the awareness of the learners to distinguish English and Chinese, which belong to different language families;2) Highlight the important items which are different from Chinese, and compare the different uses of the two languages explicitly when necessary;3) Provide enough correct input to the learners so that they can recognize the acceptable forms of English. As for English learners, they should follow the teachers’ instructions. Besides, they should:1) Cultivate English thinking mode;2) Use Chinese as a learning strategy;3) Form the good habit of consulting dictionaries.The thesis consists of five chapters. Chapter one is an introduction of the background, significance of the study and organization of the thesis. Chapter two is literature review including the elaboration of language transfer, related theories and relevant research at home and abroad. Chapter three is about the research methodology which presents the objectives, research questions, subjects sampled, instruments employed, and the procedures of data collection and data analysis. Chapter four is concerned with results and discussion which will analyze negative transfer errors in terms of lexical and syntactic levels in detail. Chapter five gives the conclusion consisting of major findings, implications, limitations and suggestions for future research.