A Study On The Influence Of Mother Tongue Negative Transfer On The Use Of Verbs In Chinese Senior High School Students’ English Writing

Writing is the overall reflection of the proficiency of a language, which directly reflects learners’ language ability. With the growing attention of China to English teaching in the senior high school stage, more scholars have been focusing on the study of Chinese senior high school students’ English writing. Of all the kinds of words in English, verbs are definitely the most important and the most frequently used ones. Verbs are the central part and the soul of the whole sentences. So the use of verbs in Chinese senior high school students’ English writing is worth studying.The influence of the mother tongue on foreign language learning has always been studied by many scholars. The influence of the mother tongue on foreign language learning includes positive influence and negative influence, which are called mother tongue positive transfer and negative transfer. Mother tongue positive transfer promotes foreign language learning, while negative transfer hinders foreign language learning. This can be seen from learners’ writing. Studying the effects of mother tongue negative transfer on Chinese senior high school students’ use of verbs in their compositions and the causes of the errors can help students learn English verbs more effectively and avoid the errors caused by mother tongue negative transfer. And this can give enlightenment to English teaching.According to the review of previous literature, the following characteristics of previous scholars’ studies on language transfer are discovered: Firstly, there are plenty of studies abroad on language transfer, but the targeted studies on its influence on Chinese learners’ English output are of relatively small quantity. Secondly, the number of the studies on the influence of language transfer on Chinese students’ English output in China shows a rising trend, but most of the studies are done through questionnaire or sample survey. Corpus, a research instrument which can achieve a full coverage of learners’ language materials is seldom used.Based on language transfer, contrastive analysis hypothesis and error analysis theory, this thesis studies the influence of mother tongue negative transfer on the use of verbs in Chinese senior high school students’ English writing. There are two research questions:Q1: What kinds of verb errors frequently appear in Chinese senior high school students’ English writing?Q2: What are the causes of mother tongue negative transfer in the use of verbs in Chinese senior high school students’ English writing?This study observes the 30 most frequently used verbs of Chinese senior high school students in the corpus-CLEC(Chinese Learners English Corpus). Some kinds of verb errors are found, including ignorance of the appropriate verb tenses, ignorance of the subject-verb agreement, misuse of the non-finite verbs, misuse of the transitivity of verbs and misuse of the habitual collocations of some verbs. According to the analysis of the differences between Chinese verbs and English verbs, the causes of mother tongue negative transfer on the use of verbs in English writing of Chinese senior high school students are found, including the differences of the verb tense systems, the differences of the subject-verb agreement, the difference of the non-finite verbs, the differences of the systems of transitivity, and the differences of the habitual collocations of verbs. And some pedagogical implications about the teaching of English verbs in senior high school are provided, including treating verb errors in students’ English writing correctly, encouraging students to acquire English verbs by reading, and encouraging students to use more English verbs in writing. It is hoped that this study can attract more attention and much further studies into the field of mother tongue negative transfer.