On The Influence Of Chinese Negative Transfer On Lexical Errors In English Writing Of Senior High School Students

In the process of second language acquisition, language output reflects the learning level of a learner. Writing is an essential part of output and an indispensable course in English learning in senior high schools. Language transfer is a common phenomenon in second language acquisition and has a serious impact on English writing. At present, there exist some researches on Chinese negative transfer on writing but most of them are on textual level and subjects are university students. As a critical period of second language learning, senior high students are ignored. Therefore, the research on this topic is necessary. As the researcher had observed, most senior high students could remember lots of words, but few of these words can be applied into their writing flexibly. In this article, the author takes transfer theory, comparative analysis, error analysis theory and interlanguage theory as important theoretical basis. An experiment was carried out in Shenyang New Generation Senior High School. A total of80students were chosen as the subjects. The researcher resorted to a pretest and a protest, questionnaires and interviews as the main instruments. The research intends to answer the following questions:1) What aspects of lexis in English writing are influenced by Chinese negative transfer?2) Why are the lexical errors made of Chinese senior high students in English writing?3) How can the negative transfer be avoided in learning and teaching? The analysis shows the negative transfer of Chinese mainly manifests on word selection, the misuse of part of speech and word collocation. The reason of the transfer lies on the different language systems, different culture backgrounds and different cognitive structures, limited language input, students’ affection etc. Several suggestions are given on pedagogy:1) In lexical teaching, teachers should use English as much as possible and try to expand the connotative meaning of words, and then put the new words and phrases into practical contexts2) Teachers should have a clear concept of transfer and on this basis make some valid teaching plan.3) Language input should be strengthened by enlarging the amount of reading and by using various Medias such as movies, PPT. in this way, student’s language sense could be cultivated and their interest in English could be raised.