A Study Of Mother Tongue Transfer In English Writing Of Chinese Art Majors From The Perspective Of Cognition

Mother tongue transfer has been a controversial topic in second language acquisition for a long time.It cannot be denied that mother tongue has great influences on the process of second language learning.Theory of mother tongue transfer deems that the similarities between mother language and target language help and improve second language acquisition,while the differences impede its development.With the increasing investigation in mother tongue transfer,transfer from the cognitive level has become in focus and widely discussed.From the viewpoint of cognitive level,mother language does not only influence the learning process of second language,but also the way and habit of thinking,which is reflected on the output of second language.Transfer of cognitive level includes linguistic transfer and conceptual transfer.This study is based on contrastive analysis,error analysis and interlanguage theory,as well as linguistic relativity.Taking the compositions written by art majors from Shanghai Normal University as examples,the study found that mother tongue transfer is obvious in lexical,syntactical,semantic and conceptual representations from the perspective of cognitive level through comparing the similarities and differences of Chinese and English,analyzing errors appearing in the writing and applying classified statistics.For lexical transfer,inflectional morphemes are a difficult problem for Chinese art majors as there is no morphological variations in their mother tongue.For syntactic transfer,generally art majors are correct in normal word order although there are many grammatical errors,which results from the similarities of normal word order between Chinese and English.Due to the limitation of topic of the collected compositions,the obvious errors in syntax are those in inverted word order,tense,subject-verb agreement and “there-be” sentence.For semantic transfer,students are accustomed to corresponding English words to their Chinese meaning,or using semantic structure of Chinese in English writing,resultingin words and sentences are semantically incorrect.For conceptual transfer,the main transfer is overproduction,which is reflected as overuse of personal subjects,short sentences and dynamic verbs.In light of the above problems,the study proposed some teaching strategies and learning methods,aiming to take advantages of positive transfer and overcome the negative transfer.For teachers,firstly,it would be better for them to explicate the difference between Chinese and English to students;secondly,they can try to teach lexicon and syntax by using language rather than explaining language;lastly,culture of English speaking countries,especially the language culture,should be enriched during the teaching process.As for L2 learners,they must firstly be aware of and understand mother tongue transfer;second,they should read as much as possible English articles written by native speakers,and imitate the use of lexicon and syntax;lastly,they can learn from the translation between Chinese and English,utilizing in their writing by summary of the differences and similarities of Chinese and English writing.