A Study Of Negative Transfer In Students’ English Writing In Middle School And Its Countermeasures

As one of the basic skills of English,writing plays an important role in students’ English learning.It is not only the embodiment of students’ English comprehensive level,but also the embodiment of students’ foreign language communicative competence.Middle school students are in the critical stage of developing their English writing ability,but they are affected by the characteristics of second language acquisition at this stage.Middle school students are faced with a variety of problems in English writing,among which the problem of negative transfer can not be ignored.Based on the relevant theories of language transfer at home and abroad,this paper compile the English writing samples of middle school students to explore the specific influence of negative transfer on middle school students’ English writing and its countermeasures.This thesis introduces the definition,types and essence of language transfer,and further reviews the research on the impact of negative transfer on English writing learning at home and abroad.Then introduces the theoretical basis of the study,the main theories are comparative analysis theory and error analysis theory.This study takes the students from two classes of Grade 8 in Xihua No.2 Middle School as the research subjects.Firstly,a questionnaire is used to have an overall understanding of the current situation of the students’ writing in two classes of Grade 8.At the same time,the author collects the writing samples of the students,and classifies them based on the theory of error analysis and analyzes all kinds of errors in detail.Finally,combines with the writing strategies and countermeasures obtained from the interviews,the author verifies and further explores the feasible countermeasures to effectively reduce the impact of negative transfer.This study shows that the students’ English writing errors of middle school resulting from negative transfer are mainly embodied in four aspects: substance,lexicon,syntax and discourse.And students’ neglect of the differences between English and Chinese language systems and modes of thinking is the main reason for the negative transfer.The research results indicate that teachers and students can reduce the negative transfer through analyzing the differences between Chinese and English expressions and designing effective teaching methods,which can gradually cultivate students to form the habit of English thinking from the perspective of input and output.Furthermore,it is important to strengthen the writing training ofmiddle school students from the aspects of lexicon,syntax and discourse so as to improve the English writing quality of middle school students.