An Empirical Study On Language Transfer Of Tujia Nationality High School Students In English Learning

Foreign language learning is often being learned in the background of mother tongue. The differences between native language and target language often result in barriers and errors in target language learning. Hence, as a key issue of foreign language learning research, language transfer has been studied for about a century by linguists and foreign language teachers. Actually, it is the particular dialects of varied ethnic groups that Chinese learners were first exposed to when they began their foreign language learning. It is for this reason that this study is accomplished by focusing on the cultural setting of Tujia nationality in English learning. Taken students of grade three at NO.1senior middle school from Changyang Tujia Autonomous County, Hubei province as the sample, the author investigates differences and similarities between Tujia language and English language and explores influences derived from the perspectives of phoneme, syntax, and cultural psychology through contrastive analysis. The writer also endeavors to explore problems encountered by Tujia nationality learners during their English learning. The purpose of this thesis is to improve English level of Tujia nationality students. Besides, the writer, who is an inhabitant of Changyang Tujia Autonomous County, from her own learning experience, deeply tastes impact of Tujia ethnic regional dialect on English learning.In phoneme, the whole procedure is entirely computer-based in order to make the experiment scientific and accurate. Praat is the main tool to acquire sound waves and spectrums of each sample respectively. The results shown in each table and chart are reliable and valid. In terms of grammar and syntax, the top ten grammatical problems are generalized by the analysis of writing section of monthly examination of English.100writing samples are collected from students of arts and students of science. Both of the classes are not special class for bright students. Finally, the characteristics of cultural psychology are analyzed by questionnaires from40students in order to discuss positive and negative influences produced by these features on English learning. Ten boys and ten girls are from a class of arts, the others are from a class of science. Both of the classes are the same classes as described before. The results of the questionnaires are obtained with the help of computer analysis:SPSS (Statistical Product and Service Solutions).This thesis employs second language acquisition theories to examine language transfer which may reveal differences and similarities between native language and target language, and to probe into L1interference in Tujia nationality students’English learning based on the preceding research. It aims to explain and predict problems and errors in English learning and then propose useful countermeasures for English teaching. At last, the author discusses how to maintain endangered Tujia language in the background of globalization and multilingualism.