A Contrastive Study On Chinese English-learners’ Thinking Process In Chinese And English Arithmetic

Mother tongue thinking and foreign language thinking in foreign language learning have long been focused on by scholars.Some scholars hold that learners should get rid of mother tongue thinking in order to learn foreign language well;some studies find that mother tongue thinking is helpful to foreign language learning.For a better understanding of the effects of mother tongue thinking and foreign language thinking on foreign language learning,the research designs a questionnaire to test the subjects—Chinese English Learners based on the theories of language and thinking as well as other related theories.The subjects have been divided into three groups: primary learners,intermediate learners and advanced learners.The research instrument is a list of simple arithmetic problems written respectively in English and Chinese and with questions at the end of the list.The research instrument can be used for quantitative analysis and qualitative analysis.The questionnaires are distributed to subjects at different time.The subjects record beginning and ending time in each test and answer the related questions,depict their psychological activity and thinking process during the arithmetic.After detailed studies the paper comes to the following results:1.There is significant time difference that subjects spend on Chinese and English arithmetic;2.Subjects do Chinese arithmetic faster than English arithmetic both in speed and accuracy rate.3.Subjects spend more time on English arithmetic because they translate the English numbers into Chinese.4.From longitudinal comparison,it shows the high English level subjects do faster in English arithmetic than those low English level subjects.5.Chinese English learners’ English thinking ability is correlated with their English proficiency.The results indicate that on the one hand,under the influence of language environment and culture background,English learners greatly rely on their mother tongue to study English.Therefore,learners always translate what they have learned into Chinese to complete the communication.Translation is an important method for English learners.On the other hand,foreign language thinking can be cultivated.Though English learners can not reach the native speakers’ level,with the improvement of English proficiency,they can use English more skillfully,thus shortening the translating time.Finally they get close to the foreign language thinking.The development of mother tongue thinking to foreign language thinking is similar to the development of interlanguage which is an infinite reaching process.When the learners shift from one language to the other in no time,we can say learners have the foreign language thinking ability.This research can bring some enlightenment on domestic English teaching: seeing from the status quo of our country’s foreign language education students learn foreign language mainly in the classroom,they can hardly be exposed to the authentic foreign language communication and the culture derived from the language.The use of foreign language generally limits in classroom and examination.All these make it difficult to the formation of foreign language thinking.Therefore,domestic foreign language education needs to adjust the teaching method and emphasize the study of authentic English and cultivate the students’ comprehensive abilities.Furthermore,teachers should adopt multiple teaching methods including the traditional grammar-translation method to achieve a better teaching result,cultivating the students’ foreign language thinking ability.