On Elimination Of Mother Tongue Negative Transfer

Language transfer occupies an important position in Second Language Acquisition Research, and it is an essential problem of Applied Linguistics, Second Language Acquisition Research and language research for at least a century (Odlin,1989). The discussion about it always runs through history of Second Language Acquisition Research. Liming Yu has pointed out in Language Transfer and Second Language Acquisition the key problem of language transfer is how to evaluate influence of mother tongue or the first language in Second Language Acquisition and all problems are based on it. Does learners'mother tongue or the first language make a great impact on second language acquisition? How to influence it? It requires language researchers to start with definition of language transfer and to analyze its theoretical basis.This paper, based on the above theories and problems raised by linguists, makes micro-level analysis with mother tongue transfer from the perspective of linguistic factors and non-linguistic factors. As to the influence of mother tongue, we not only fully understand the negative influence which the difference between mother tongue and target language brings about but also know the positive influence which the similarity between mother tongue and target language brings about. Thus this paper, based on the relevant theories of Second Language Acquisition, mother tongue negative transfer, English translation of Chinese sentence patterns and research findings of the author, the author deals with the issue of what is mother tongue negative transfer and why differences between Chinese and English thought influence it and how it is eliminated by English translation of Chinese typical sentence patterns. The author holds a belief that any new knowledge or any new skill is influenced by current knowledge and skill, especially in second language acquisition, because firmly-established mother tongue system will have a positive or negative influence on second language acquisition, then positive influence is mother tongue positive transfer; negative influence is mother tongue negative transfer which brings about difficulties and mistakes in leaning foreign languages. Language transfer theory has a great influence on foreign languages acquisition in the middle of last century. Linguists, discuss it and come up with many theories such as contrastive analysis theory and intermediary language theory, and so on. Contrastive analysis holds that mother tongue's influence on learning foreign languages vary with differences between two languages.(Rod Ellis,1985). If mother tongue is similar to foreign language, it will improve learning foreign languages; if mother tongue is different from foreign language, it will hinder learning foreign languages. From the above mentioned, positive transfer is beneficial to learning foreign languages; negative transfer hinders it.As a result, this dissertation initially gives an overall review of mother tongue negative transfer so as to show a clear picture of influence of mother tongue in translation, including its definition, background, constraints of language and non-language and viewpoints of scholars at home and abroad. Then the thesis points out the difference and transfer of Chinese and English thinking modes. At last the thesis puts forward some feasible specific methods to eliminate mother tongue negative transfer in Chinese-English translation.