A Study Of Chinese Negative Transfer In PRETCO Writing

Chinese students are all interfered by Chinese language during the process ofEnglish learning, which is called negative transfer of mother tongue (MT). In the fieldof second language acquisition, language transfer is an inevitable phenomenon andscholars and linguists have done many studies on native language transfer at collegeEnglish teaching from different points of views home and abroad in recent years.Domestic scholars in college English teaching field have also made more and moreresearches on language transfer from different aspects. But few have done the studyon the influence of negative transfer of mother tongue on PRETCO writing. Writing isthe comprehensive embodiment of certain language knowledge and can fully reflectthe learners’ language level. Writing teaching has always been a hard issue in theprocess of English teaching. Things become even harder when it comes to HigherVocational College (HVC) students with weak English foundation. So in order toimprove the teachers’ teaching level and the students’ English learning level, it isnecessary to carry out the research on the writing problems caused by Chinesenegative transfer.In light of the theories of language transfer, contrastive analysis, error analysisand interlanguage, the author has an integration of quantitive and qualitative analysisof the errors caused by mother tongue transfer in the sample compositions written bythe students in Qingdao Hismile College from the three language aspects which arelexis, grammar and discourse. Sample writings, questionnaire and Excel software areemployed as the data collection instruments in the research. The research questionsare as follow:1) What is the proportion of the errors caused by Chinese negativetransfer in PRETCO writing?2) In what aspects do Chinese negative transfer errorsmanifest in PRETCO writing and in which aspect do they have the highest share?3)What pedagogical implications can we get from this study?The findings show that Chinese does have a negative transfer on HigherVocational College students’ English writings. Errors caused by Chinese negative transfer are the main errors in PRETCO writing which account for53.2%andmanifest at three linguistic levels of lexis, grammar and discourse. Errors of grammarand lexis are more obvious and grammatical errors share the highest proportion.Based on the findings of the research, some pedagogical implications are worked outfor HVC English learning and teaching. The teachers should continue to pay attentionto vocabulary and grammar teaching and as well should draw CA in their Englishteaching to raise students’ awareness of language differences. At the same time,teachers should cultivate students’ ability to think in English, encourage them toenlarge English input and give effective feedbacks on errors in writing to the studentsto reduce errors caused by Chinese negative transfer.