A Study On The Transfer Of Chinese Topic-prominence In Chinese Efl Learners' Interlanguage

The development of interlanguage and the role of learner's first language are the important areas in the research of second language acquisition. English and Chinese, as two distinct languages, belong to different language typological systems respectively. Chinese is a topic-prominent language in which topic plays an important role in the formation of a sentence whereas English is a subject-prominent language in which subject is an indispensable element that determines the English sentence pattern. Therefore, the author found that Chinese learner's interlanguage is always influenced by topic-prominent structures in their first language. In other word, the topic-prominent structures will be transferred to the interlanguage of Chinese EFL learners. Based on related researches, this study has examined the cross-linguistic influence of Chinese language topic-prominence in shaping Chinese-English interlanguage.According to related literature, there are six topic-prominent structures which include double-subjects construction, existential constructions, zero anaphora, pseudo-passive, pseudo-tough movement and periphrastic structures. This paper illustrated the features of topic-prominent languages at first, and contrasted the difference of"topic"in Chinese and English. In the study, subjects are comprised of 90 Chinese students who are grouped into three types according to their English proficiency. The primary group has 30 high school students, and intermediate group are 30 sophomores. While, advanced group consist of 30 postgraduate students. The instruments of present study are sentences translation and a questionnaire. Part one contains 30 Chinese sentences of topic-prominent structures which need subjects to translate into English, while Part two includes 30 English sentences, and subjects are required to read and judge each sentence is correct or not. Then, the data from two tests will be collected to further study.There are two major findings from this study: 1) The Chinese EFL learners'interlanguage is characterized by interference of topic-prominent features of their native language. According to the results of sentences translation and questionnaire test, the use of periphrastic structures and pseudo-passive structures by subjects is higher than other structures, while, the use of double-subject constructions and zero anaphora is lower in their interlanguage. 2) The Chinese EFL learners at each proficiency level have employed topic-prominent structures in their interlanguage to a certain extent. However, there is a general tendency that the frequency of using topic-prominent features in the interlanguage decreases with the development of learners'English proficiency level. Therefore, the present study is expected to be of some help to foreign language teachers and learners, raising their awareness of the influence of Chinese topic-prominence in EFL learners'interlanguage. It is sincerely hoped that foreign language teachers should compare the differences of Chinese and English structures so that the learners could be more aware of the similarities and differences between native language and target language in order to avoid negative influence of mother language transfer.