A Study Of L1Transfer Phenomenon Of TPC In Chinese Learners’ Writing

Due to the differences in syntactic structure between English and Chinese, there existsome problems when Chinese learners acquire English syntax. In1968, Zhao Yuanren putforward the concept of topic, which has established its syntactic status in linguistics. In1970s,from the perspective of language typology, the American linguists Charles Li and SandralThompson stated that Chinese is a language featuring topic prominence while Englishfeaturing subject prominence. Fuller and Gundel (1987) remarked that there are somedifferences in the positions and forms between subject and topic. It means that a topic must bedefinite and generally at the beginning of the sentence, but a subject need not. So far, somecontrastive studies between English and Chinese have been done by many linguists at homeand abroad. However, analyses of the influence of Chinese topic prominence construction(TPC) on English learners’writing are still rare.As for the English learners in China, Chinese TPC in their English writings can beconsidered as a specific form of language transfer. This thesis will take language transfer,contrastive analysis and error analysis as the theoretical basis to explore and analyze theinfluence of Chinese topic prominence construction on students’ writings by collectingwriting data.In the research,80participants are selected from Shanxi Normal University who aredivided into two groups according to their English proficiency level. One is the low level group and it consists of40freshmen from the Department of Mathematics and ComputerScience. The other is the high level group and the students are40English majors in their thirdyear. Then, a writing task is assigned to the two groups. After collecting the writings, theresearcher analyzes the data and tries to answer the following questions:1. How is TPC in Chinese manifested in English learners’writings？2. Are there any differences in TPC phenomenon between different English proficiencygroups?3. What are the possible reasons?The data analysis reveals that:Firstly, four types of TPC are mainly manifested in Chinese English learners’ writings:noun phrase as topic, clause as topic, verbal phrase as topic and prepositional phrase as topic.Secondly, students at the low level tend to use noun phrase and clause as topics, whilethe two phrases are usually used as objects in English. Besides, with the increase of learners’English proficiency, their English writing abilities can also be improved. That is to say,students can make English sentences more properly and their writing feature becomes moretarget-like subject prominence.Thirdly, three possible factors can explain the reasons. First of all, Chinese is alanguage featuring topic prominence and due to the negative transfer of mother tongue, sothere exist TPC phenomenon in learners’ English writings. Besides, the learners’ insufficientcommand of English grammar can also account for the phenomenon. Last but not the least,teachers’ ignorance of teaching the typological differences between English and Chinese isalso a factor.The findings of the research make it easier to understand the acquisition process ofEnglish learners in China in their English writings with more exposure to English. Besides,the findings also play a significant role in English teaching in China. The English teachersshould emphasize the typological differences between the English and Chinese and help thelearners know better about distinctions, so learners can come closer in their acquisition ofnative-like syntactic constructions. In this way, they can avoid making syntactic errors andimprove the writing ability.