A Study On Chinese Negative Transfer In Students’ English Writing In Junior Middle School

The level of writing in language learning is the concrete manifestation of the students’ comprehensive ability to use a certain language. Writing has been considered as one of the important and difficult points for middle school students. Therefore, the analysis and research of errors in writing can reflect the barriers and dilemma in students’ process of learning English. Mother tongue of students has a great influence on their second language learning, which is often referred to as language “transfer”. As one of the important theories of linguistics, language transfer can be divided into positive transfer and negative transfer. Positive transfer can promote the second language learning, while the negative transfer may hinder the learning of second language. Once this hindrance is reflected in the students’ English writing, there will appear writing errors. A systematic study of this kind of errors can help teachers to improve their effectiveness of teaching and consequently it has been attracting the great attention of many researchers.Based on such theories as Error Analysis, Contrastive Analysis, Language Transfer, Interlanguage and Markedness Theory, this paper focuses on the negative impact of the mother tongue(Chinese) transfer on middle school students’ English writing. The research data are collected from the English compositions written by the students of Grade 2 of Shenna Junior Middle School, Xining, Qinghai Province. By analyzing the errors in students’ writing, some expected results and findings are obtained and corresponding measures are proposed so as to promote the teaching of English writing and improve students’ competence in English writing.In this study, both qualitative and quantitative research methods are adopted. The errors collected from 120 English compositions are classified into different types and further discussed. The classification is based on the criteria of errors proposed by C. James in his book named Exploring Error Analysis. The paper lists 17 kinds of errors frequently made by the students in their English writing. It can be summarized as lexical errors, syntactic errors, and discoursal errors. The error frequency analysis shows that the errors from mother tongue negative transfer account for the most, and the most frequently-made error is related to tense. In addition, errors in there be structure and Chinglish(Chinese English) are also obvious. By analyzing the errors in students’ writing, we found that middle school students tend to think in Chinese way and directly translate or use Chinese sentence patterns in their English writing. This is an important factor that leads to Chinese negative transfer. Additionally, there are some other factors like markedness, learning and teaching that often lead to Chinese negative transfer.English and Chinese are two different language systems, both of which have their own modes of thinking. Students’ language expression, language form and the application of rhetoric will inevitably be affected by Chinese thinking in their English writing. Based on the results of current teaching and learning conditions, the paper puts forward some pedagogical suggestions. Firstly, teachers should seek out the method to enlarge students’ vocabulary and increase the amount of reading in order to reduce their lexical errors in English writing. Secondly, as the recitation is an important way to learn English, we can enhance students’ culture motivation to stimulate their potential in English writing by asking them to recite some typical texts and sentences. Thirdly, it is necessary to construct the writing framework of English thinking to improve students’ awareness of discourse in English, instead of translating Chinese into English directly. Students need to pay attention to grammar instead of listing words one by one. Fourthly, it is essential for teachers to give students more encouragement in English learning. Hence, teachers should have a positive attitude toward the negative transfer in students’ writing and try to optimize the teaching materials and ways in order to effectively improve students’ English writing.