A Study On The Influence Of Naxi Senior High School Students' Chinese Proficiency On English Writing

The globalized world has created a situation in which third language acquisition is becoming the norm.China is a multi-ethnic country with ethnic minorities accounted for nearly 10% of the total population,while a great number of ethnic students are experiencing a language learning process from their mother tongue,Chinese to English.However,we seldom make empirical studies on phenomenon of minorities' third language acquisition,such as Naxi.Thus,the need for such a research in Chinese context is entirely understandable.This thesis discussed the phenomenon of cross-linguistic influence in Lijiang where the research selected 295 Naxi senior high school students as participants from No.1 High School of Ancient Town District.The focuses of the present study were two-group correlations and cross-linguistic influence of second language(Chinese)on third language(English),exploring what the major types of errors were caused by L2 negative transfer in their L3 writing and discussing what the differences are between the high L3 proficiency and the low L3 proficiency of Naxi senior high school students in the case of determiners for cross-linguistic influence source in L3 acquisition.In order to examine two-group relationships: L2(Chinese)proficiency vs.L3(English)proficiency and L2 proficiency vs.L3 proficiency in writing,the researcher conducted a correlation analysis via SPSS 20.0.After analyzing the writing samples,the researcher presented negative transfer of L2 towards L3 from four aspects: morphological level,lexical level,syntactic level,and discourse level.Finally,cross-tabulation was applied into analyzing determiners for cross-linguistic influence source in L3 acquisition between the high and the low L3 proficiency groups.There was a positive correlation between L2 proficiency and L3 proficiency;in the meantime,positive correlation was also observed between L2 proficiency and L3 writing proficiency.Therefore,these positive correlations were considered as an indication of a positive effect of learners' L2 proficiency on L3 acquisition,whichsupported the idea expressed in the CEM and the TPM.At the same time,the study found that L2 played a significant role in L3 learning,which confirmed L2 Status Factor.After analyzing Naxi senior high school students' writing samples,the researcher found that syntactical errors were their most committed errors,while the lexical errors were followed.Morphological errors and errors at discourse level were the least of errors.Compared with participants in the high L3 proficiency group,the low L3 proficiency group was more likely to commit errors.Based on the above findings,implications for English teachers and learners were raised in the last part,but the findings need to be confirmed and complemented by further study.