论文正文.docx

1、论文正文Effect of Language Transfer on English Writing of Chinese Students 1 Introduction As an international language, English is playing an increasingly important role in international communication. Listening, speaking, reading, translation and writing are five basic requirements for English learners

2、. However, the results of many researches and various kinds of English tests indicate that the current situation of college students English writing is not optimistic, with approximately 50% students not being able to write good English writings. The low writing ability of college students is expose

3、d in the following aspects. The first is a great number of grammatical mistakes, such as subject-verb disagreement, wrong plural form, mess of voice and tense and so on. The second is vocabulary problem, for example, scarcity of glossary, wrong spelling of words and collocation error. The third is p

4、oor transformation of thinking pattern. In most cases, students tend to organize in Chinese first then translate what they have thought into English, thus causing the emergence of Chinglish, a hybrid English form with Chinese characteristics which deteriorates communication in its accuracy and expre

5、ssiveness. The forth is students passive attitude towards writing. The majority of students lack enough motivation and interest in English writing.There is a mixture of reasons for the low quality of college students English writing. As for the teaching process, college teachers always attach too mu

6、ch importance to grammar acquisition and intensive reading and neglect the significance of writing, thus it is often the case that students seldom have writing tasks except in the final test. Teachers usually encourage students to accumulate more words, but seldom do they inspire students to put the

7、 words they have learned into application. Hence, students only master the conceptual meaning of word, while are not familiar with its usage. In addition, some teachers writing knowledge and writing skills are relatively weak, which also makes them look beyond their grasp in guiding the students wri

8、ting. In terms of the examination paper, the majority of question type is multiple-choice, which can only test students language input capacity instead of language output capacity. In university CET exam papers, the mark of writing part only occupy 15% and up to now the national average score for th

9、is part is under 7. As a result, teachers and students all hold the view that writing is not easy to score anyway and more energy should be given to the section of listening and reading comprehension, which further weaken their writing capacity. From the perspective of the teaching of writing, there

10、 is a lack of special writing teachers. Students, especially non-English majors, are not taught to learn step by step to write a composition. The learner is difficult to stand in the perspective of discourse to understand and grasp of the process of writing as a whole, let alone flexible and effecti

11、ve writing strategies. When it comes to the thinking pattern, Chinese students suffer heavily from the negative transfer of their mother language in that idea conceived in Chinese is ungrammatically or unidiomatic ally expressed in English. To tackle the poor quality of college students English writ

12、ing, this paper offers a literature review of language transfer, focuses on positive and negative transfer of Chinese as a mother tongue in English writing from the aspects of definition, manifestation and causes of language transfer as well as explores measures against negative transfer. 2 Language

13、 Transfer Theory2.1 Literature review of language transfer studyLanguage transfer has been an important issue in second language for a long time, which goes through ups and downs as well as continuous controversy throughout the 40 years history as an independent discipline in second language acquisi

14、tion. The history of language transfer research dates back to several centuries ago. From its rises and falls, with the development and transformation of the theory of second language research, the study of language transfer has undergone three stages of development. The first stage is the flushing

15、period from 1950s to 1960s. Under the framework of structure linguistics and behavioral psychology, the study of language transfer is dominated by contrastive analysis hypothesis. The period between late 1960s and 1970s witnessed the criticism of language transfer. Affected by Chomskys theory of uni

16、versal language, behaviorist point of view has been seriously criticized, contrastive analysis hypothesis and language transfer theory has been deserted, the influences of transfer in second language has been weaken and denied. Since 1980s, however, there has been a renewed interest in language tran

17、sfer studies. With the gradual formation and development of cognitive and social school, study of language transfer has achieved full expansion, from the initial study on language itself only to the study of language learners and reorganized the effect of transfer in second language learning in vari

18、ous angles, such as cognitive psychology, language, socio-cultural and so on. Up to now, a great many of research papers and works concerning language transfer have been published. Among the many publications are Language Transfer: Cross-linguistic Influence in Language Learning by Odlin(1989), Cros

19、slinguistic Influence in Language and Cognition by Jarvis and Pavlenko(1989), Interlanguage and Learnability from Chinese to English by Yip(1995), to name only a few. 2.2 Interpretation of language transferBeing a hot topic in second language acquisition, however, language transfer has not yet forme

20、d a complete and clear definition. The concept of transfer derives from psychology of behaviorism. Transfer is “a term used by psychologists in their accounts of the way in which present learning is affected by past learning” (夏新蓉, 2004: 17). Lado in his works Linguistics Across Culture puts forward

21、: “Transfer refers to a mental process in which the knowledge people have grasped acts in a new learning environment”. Lado holds that people incline to transfer the language forms and meanings of one language（usually mother language）and corresponding culture into another language （usually the secon

22、d language learning）”(1957: 92). However, Corder(1981) regards transfer as borrowing, emphasizes that borrowing is a type of language behavior rather than a process of study or characteristics of language structure, while, others insisted that transfer is a strategy for communication. Now，the most f

23、requently quoted definition is Odlins working definition, which defines that transfer is the influence resulting from the similarities and differences between the target language and any other language that has been previously(and perhaps imperfectly) acquired( 1989: 27).2.3 The main categories of l

24、anguage transferThere are different kinds of categories according to different yardsticks. From the perspective of the effect on the second language learning, language transfer is often divided into positive language transfer and negative language transfer.2.3.1 Positive transfer What does the posit

25、ive transfer mean? There are many ways to define this term “positive transfer”. The definition from Wikipidia is like this: when the relevant unit or structure of both languages is the same, linguistic interference can result in correct language production called positive transfer correct meaning in

26、 line with most native speakers notions of acceptability. According to this definition, it is not difficult to understand the term of positive transfer. It refers to habits, models and rules of mother tongue promoting the second language learning. And generally speaking, the more similar the two lan

27、guages are, and the more the learner is aware of the relation between them, the more positive transfer will occur. Positive transfer can promote learners ability to perceive and use foreign language. For example, similarities between Chinese Pinyin and English Phonetic Alphabet help Chinese students

28、 master the correct pronunciation, similarities between German vocabulary and English words can reduce the time needed to remember new glossary, and similarities between native language and target language in culture can help learners understand the meaning of some special vocabulary easily. 2.3.2 N

29、egative transferAs for the definition of negative transfer, it is opposite to that of positive transfer. The interference and obstruction of mother language in the process of the second language learning can be called negative transfer. And negative transfer occurs when speakers and writers transfer

30、 items and structures that are not the same in both languages. To some extent, it is negative transfer that leads to errors in the process of learning the second language. For instance, difference in conceptual meaning and connotative meaning results in misunderstanding of foreign language, differen

31、ce in sentence formation leads to wrong sentence structure, and difference in textual organization comes to the obscure English writings with Chinese characteristics. 3 The Influence of Positive and Negative Transfer upon Writing3.1 The positive transfer and its performance upon writing3.1.1 The pos

32、itive transfer in lexical levelThe positive transfer of mother tongue firstly represents on the cognitive level, in the understanding process. It is known to all that mastering a language requires a good management in vocabulary. In the preliminary stage of language learning, it is not advisable for

33、 teachers to explain all the new words and language phenomena in English, for students are not able to get it and it may reversely damp learners confidence and interest in learning a second language. In fact, before learning a foreign language, the knowledge, intelligence, ability, and experience we acquired from mother tongue serve as a too