A Study Of Negative Transfer In College Efl Learners’ Output Of Adverbial Clauses

The study of Language T ransfer sprung up in 1950 s in the field of Second Language Acquisition,and at that tim e the most widely used theory w as Lado’s Contrastive Analysis.However,with the ignorance of B ehaviorism,Contrastive Analysis based on Behaviorism was criticized in the 1960 s and 1970 s.However,the latter studies found that th ere was an undeniable value of Language Transfer and Contrastive Analysis.They are still applied in many fields of pedagogy now,such as studies from the perspective of lexicon,phonetics,syntax,discourse and so on.This thesis attempts to study the negativ e transfer in the co llege EFL learners’ written output of adverbial clause.Although there are m any contrastive studies of adverbial clause in China,studies on di fferent adverbial clauses and on learners’ written output of adverbial clause with dif ferent English proficiency from the perspective of negative transfer have been scant.Therefore,this th esis endeavors to make a contrastive analysis of Chinese and English adverbial clauses in order to find out the similarities and differences.Then it applies results to college E FL learners’ negative transfer of adverbial clause,attempting to find out the types of frequently used transfer errors in college EFL learners’ written output of adverbial clauses and in what kinds of adverbial clauses transfer errors occur,as well as the differences of negative transfer in the written output of learners with different English proficiency.The study m ainly answers three questions:(1)What kinds of transfer errors occur in college EFL learners’ output of adverbial clauses?(2)How does the ratio of different kinds of transfer errors vary in different types of adverbial clause?(3)How do college EFL learners with different English proficiency differ in transfer errors in their written output of adverbial clause?The study first m akes a detailed descri ption and com parison of Engli sh and Chinese adverbial clauses in terms of distribution,collocation and subject.In doing so,the stu dy aims at finding out the sim ilarities and differences for further predication of transfer errors which probably occur in l earners’ written output.Then 140 students in Com puter Major in Zhe ngzhou University of Light Industry are selected as subjects and they are required to finish a written task.Errors with the trace of mother tongue in a dverbial clause in their outpu t are selected.It discovers that there are five kinds of transfer errors: Independent sentence,Conjunction error,Subject omission,Collocation error and Conjunction omission,which confir ms transfer errors predicted by contrastive anal ysis.The data also show that transfer errors mainly occur in six kinds of adverbial clause and they are adverbial clauses of time,reason,condition,result,concession and purpose.This study employs qualitative study to seek out transfer errors and quantitative study to calculate the rate of transfer errors in different adverbial clauses as well as the number of transfer errors in written outp ut of learners with d ifferent English levels.The results of data show that there is a high frequency of adverbial clause of reason,condition and time and there are many transfer errors in them.There is a high percentage of transfer errors in less fre quently used adverbial clauses of result,concession and purpose.Besides,the study indicates that there is no significant correlation between rate of transfer errors and English proficiency so tha t the assumption that there are fewer transfer errors of higher Eng lish proficiency is wrong,and sometimes learners of a higher English level are proved to have m ore transfer errors than learners of lower English level in so me types of transfer errors such as collocation error.This thesis enriches research system theoretically and gives some suggestions in pedagogy as follows: teachers should use Cont rastive Analysis to analyze learners’ language output,predict dif ficulties and apply them to teaching;teach ers should have a correct attitude towa rds learners’ transfer errors without any ignorance of transfer errors of learners with a higher English level;teachers should not only teach learners foreign language,but also im prove their awareness of the dif ference of Chinese and English.