Negative Transfer Of Mother Tongue In English Majors' English Language Writing: Current Situation And Countermeasures

English writing is regarded as the most complex and difficult one of the four basic language skills. The students often make mistakes when they are writing. The main reason for this situation is the negative transfer of mother language, which has been a heated topic recently. The negative transfer of mother tongue always obstructs students in their English language writing. At present, most researchers only focus on the present situation and the causes of the negative transfer of mother language to the writing ability of the non-English majors and middle school students. And they just research into this phenomenon from the standpoint of the theoretical perspectives.With the help of the questionnaire survey, the thesis makes a study of the current situation and the influence of negative transfer of the mother tongue in English majors'English language writing. The countermeasures to the problem are also explored in the paper. The subjects for the study are one hundred and ten freshmen of English majors from three classes of grade 2009 in a Teachers'College.The study reviews Language Transfer and some related research findings, such as Contrastive Analysis, Error Analysis as well as Interlanguage Theory. The significance of language transfer to English language writing is also discussed.By investigating the current situation of negative transfer of mother tongue in students'writing, the study reveals the following facts:most students always organize and finish the article with the help of mother tongue mode of thinking; most errors appeared in students'English writing are closely related to the negative transfer of mother language; the negative transfer of Chinese language makes the students unable to express their thought in English fluently and accurately.The thesis also discusses the main sources of negative transfer of mother tongue in English writing. The differences between Chinese and western cultures, the different thinking modes, the features of the two languages and the lack of cross-culture conscious are the main reasons. At the end, some countermeasures, such as enlarging the vocabulary, creating English learning environment and introduction of English language culture are presented in the paper.