A Study Of Negative Transfer In Senior High School Students' English Writing

Negative transfer of Chinese has always been both the difficult point in Chinese students'learning of English writing and the hot point for English teachers and scholars to research. The author tries to study the negative transfer of Chinese by analyzing errors in senior high school students'English writings from the standpoint of language transfer, contrastive analysis and error analysis. The author hopes that the analyzing of errors conducted in students'compositions can be helpful for learning the general situation and problems existing in students'English writings, in the hope of being beneficial to the English writing teaching.The author make an investigation with the help of 94 students from Changchun. They are asked to write an article about 120 words within 30 minutes. After finished writing, the subjects are required to answer the questionnaires. Through analyzing the sample writings, we find that the errors made in subjects'writings are caused by the negative transfer of Chinese to a great extent. In the collected writings, negative transfer at lexical level ranks the highest, at syntactical the second and at discourse the third. Through the analysis of the questionnaires, the author notices that the subjects have a weak mastery of vocabulary for some reasons and they have dim consciousness of the differences between Chinese and English writings. They are affected by thinking set of Chinese when writing. Besides, they have few opportunities to practice English outside class. All of these contribute to errors made in writing.Based on the research, the author puts forward some strategies which may facilitate English learning and teaching as: attaching importance to vocabulary teaching; high lightening differences between Chinese and English; cultivating English think, on the hope of proving hints for teachers and students.