An Analysis of the Negative Transfer of Native Language in English Writing
[Abstract] Second language acquisition (SLA) research shows that first language (L1) transfer is one of the important factors that influence SLA. Many Chinese students inevitably make various errors in the course of English writing, because they are not clear about the differences between English and Chinese, and they just apply Chinese usages directly in English writing subconsciously. In this paper, the common errors that due to the negative transfer of native language in the process of writing in English are collected and classified into the lexical level, the syntactic level and the discoursal level, hoping to help the Chinese students to know their errors and the causes of their errors more consciously. Then, this paper also mentions some countermeasures aiming to reduce the negative transfer from our mother tongue, hoping that transfer errors can be diminished to some degrees in English writing.
[Key Words] native language; negative transfer; English writing
1. Introduction
Second language acquisition is different from the first language acquisition, and the second language learners generally fail to attain native-like competence if they do not learn English in English-speaking countries. SLA research shows that first language (L1) transfer is one of the important factors that influence SLA. Error Analysis (EA), which is theoretically based on cognitive psychology, examines the actual errors produced by the learner in the target language. It sees errors as a natural phenomenon that unavoidably occurs when learning a first or second language before correct knowledge is acquired and completely internalized.
According to the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis, the language we learn as a child (i.e., mother tongue) strongly influence the ways we think and view the world. It is inevitable that in learning a second language transference happens and learners tend to perceive meanings in the second language (L2) from their own culture. It is now widely held that there are differences between the L1 and L2, so the learner’s L1 knowledge would interfere with the L2.
In the heyday of behaviorism, people noticed learners’ use of prior linguistic information (ch
iefly his mother tongue) or some physically carryover of native language surface to a second language context, namely language transfer. They found the differences between native and target language would either lead to positive transfer or negative transfer, also known as interference. The behaviorists ascribed errors largely to the interference of learners’ native language. Their native language habits prevented them from learning second language habits. Therefore, this paper analyzes the negative transfer of Chinese in English writing.
Writing is one of the four basic skills in learning a second language. In China, writing has become a popular language test form. All kinds of English tests in our country, such as the College Entrance Examination, the CET-4/6, and the test for majors, have a writing test and regard writing as an authentic integrative language test, but English writing has been a difficulty for the Chinese students. Chinese students’ writing abilities are far from being satisfactory. They make many kinds of errors in the writing. According to Ellis, errors due to mother tongue interference amount to 51 percent in China, which indicates that the intralingual transfer is still the dominated cause for Chinese students’ errors. Among them,
writing error is a major sort. Due to the first language interference, Chinese make various errors in the course of English writing.
2. Common negative transfer errors in writing
The errors in the writing include subject-verb agreement, passive voice, articles, singular or plural forms of nouns, tense, the place of adverbial, the mixed form of English and Chinese, improper Chinese-English translation, and so on. In this paper, the common errors that due to the transfer of native language in the process of writing are collected and classified into the lexical level, the syntactic level and the discoursal level.
2.1The lexical level
Due to the different historical backgrounds, different cultures entrust languages to different connotations. Glossaries in Chinese and English are impossible to be correspondent. These differences often can cause the negative transfer as follows:
2.1.1The different connotation of words
It is very common that an English word is equal to several different Chinese words in meanings especially the nouns represent relative addressing. e.g.

版权声明：本站内容均来自互联网，仅供演示用，请勿用于商业和其他非法用途。如果侵犯了您的权益请与我们联系QQ:729038198，我们将在24小时内删除。