Influences Of Negative Language Transfer On Chinese Vocational Collage Students' English Writing

Language transfer has always been an important research topic in applied linguistics, second language acquisition (SLA) and language teaching, and its significance has been generally acknowledged in English teaching field. There are four manifestations of language transfer:facilitation, errors, avoidance and over-use. Facilitation is regarded as positive language transfer (PLT), and learners'errors are regarded as negative language transfer (NLT).Writing is very important because one's overall abilities in language learning can be testified in it. However, writing is considered the most difficult skill because it is viewed as the last obtained one (Sun,1995). Although lots of vocational college students have learned English for several years, they cannot write English compositions skillfully. Taking such factors into consideration, it is of vital importance to carry out researches to study the reasons that impact vocational college students'English writing level.This study investigated the influence of NLT on vocational college students' English writing. First, this thesis briefly summarized the previous researches of NLT in writing and introduced the research method. Second, the author expounded the development of NLT theory, introduced the factors that caused NLT and discussed different characteristics of Chinese and English in writing. Then, the author classified the collected data of 118 English compositions from students in Sichuan TOP IT vocational institute and analyzed the errors at lexical, syntactic and textual levels. Finally, the author explored the influence of NLT on vocational college students' English writing and gave some suggestions as to improving vocational college English teaching.This study was designed to answer the following research questions:(1) What types of errors emerge from vocational college students'English writing?(2) How does NLT influence vocational college students'English writing?(3) What are the reasons for the influence of NLT on vocational college students' English writing? In order to answer the questions properly, the research explored the NLT errors in 118 compositions and 106 questionnaires, and came to the conclusions that:(1) There are 625 errors in 118 vocational college students'compositions collected by the author, among which 301 errors are caused by NLT. Types of NLT errors are as follows:1) 154 NLT errors are at lexical level, they are errors by misusing function words, errors by confusing with content words and making habitual errors in collocation; 2) 95 NLT errors are at syntactic level, they are errors by ignorance of tense and voice and errors as Chinglish expressions; 3) 52 NLT errors are at textual level, students'unawareness of cohesion causes errors and Chinese circular thinking pattern is responsible for the logical confusion in the structure of the text.(2) The influence of NLT on vocational college students'English writing is reflected at lexical, syntactic and textual levels.1) Lexical level:Under the influence of Chinese thinking habit, most vocational college students would use the writing strategy of word for word translation, which causes errors in function words, content words and collocation.2) Syntactic level:Ignoring the differences between English and Chinese, the students tend to borrow Chinese sentence structure mechanically in their English writing, which leads to errors in tense and voice as well as Chinglish expressions.3) Textual level:Influenced by Chinese circular thinking pattern and implicit expressive way, vocational college students often employ parallel and repetitive structures, and rarely consider paragraphs cohesion and logical structure of the text.(3) Before vocational college students learning English, they have already attained their Chinese knowledge and Chinese thinking patterns. During the English writing process, they don't know how to organize the English words into idiomatic expressions with their limited vocabulary and grammar. Therefore, vocational college students often ignore the differences between English and Chinese when they are writing in English. Under the influence of their mother tongue, they usually employ Chinese way of thinking and always apply Chinese usages to English mechanically at the level of lexis, syntax and text. As a result, NLT influences students'English writing.Through the study of NLT in vocational college students'writing, the thesis had a realistic significance in the fact that the English teachers should take notice of the differences between English and Chinese as well as the factors of NLT to improve English teaching at vocational colleges. When teaching English writing at vocational colleges, teachers should pay more attention to the comparison of English and Chinese, so that the students can understand the differences of the two languages at lexical, syntactic and textual level. In addition, teachers may teach students how to establish cohesion in their English writing and how to increase their English input through listening and extensive reading. Finally, in order to make English writing more active and interesting, teachers may encourage students to read aloud and recite famous English articles and epigrams.