The Transfer Of Native Language In Foreign Language Learning

The term "transfer" is first defined by behaviorist psychologists to refer to the process of automatic, uncontrolled and subconscious use of past learned behavior in the attempt to produce new responses. According to them, the main impediment to learning was interference from the prior knowledge. Proactive inhibition occurred when old habits got in the way of attempts to learn new ones.Psycholinguists use the term to refer to the influence imposed by a learner's possessed linguistic knowledge and skill upon the subsequent learning of new linguistic knowledge or skill. Generally speaking, there are two types of transfer, positive transfer and negative transfer. Positive transfer results in correct performance while negative transfer results in errors.For years, teachers of EFL have controversial ideas about the role of the native language in FLL. Most experts have emphasized the negative transfer in foreign language learning (FLL), and neglected the positive role of the native language (ML). However, NL can never be excluded in the FLL process. Just as Ellis has pointed out, "No theory of L2 acquisition that ignores the learner's prior linguistic knowledge can be considered complete." (Ellis 1994). Whether they are formalists or functionalists, all linguists agree with the universality of languages. This is the initial theoretical point of departure of this thesis.On the other hand, in the process of teaching and learning, the author has found numerous interesting similarities between the native language and the foreign language in various aspects oflanguage form and function and have used them extensively to facilitate the foreign language teaching and learning. The students have improved a lot from the bilingual comparison and contrast: Not only have they actually improved their practical ability in the application of the foreign language. but they have gained new insight into the native language and the nature of other languages.Besides, the difference between the FLL of children and adults determines the importance and indispensability of the NL in FLL: because the young children get to know the world by learning to speak the language while the adults learn the language after learning about the world. In the adults' learning, the appropriate amount of the comparison of the grammatical rules and vocabulary and expressions can actually facilitate their quick mastery of the language essentials at the elementary stage and intermediate stage. On the part of the young children, they cannot comprehend the abstract rules. So the direct method, TPR should be employed in teaching young children while an eclectic method which integrates and makes use of the merits of all the schools of language teaching, and which takes advantage of both the NL and the FL should be employed in teaching adults. This may be what the Director of the Higher Education Department of the Ministry of Education Mr. ZhangYaoxue meant when talking about the goal of the College English teaching: practicality. This means that the learners are expected to communicate freely and translate easily. Or to put it in another way, they are expected to dance and slide to and forth: from English to Chinese and vice versa. To achieve this purpose, the NL cannot be excluded. This is the practical point of departure of the thesis.On the basis of the previous research, the present paper is a tentative and detailed exploration in the positive and negative transfer from various aspects and perspectives at different levels between the native language and the foreign language, mainly from five dimensions: phonetic, grammar, graphical, lexical and thinking mode and habit. In the course of the analysis, the features of transfer phenomena in FLL are discussed. The factors affecting them are pointed out from three perspectives including the language, the learning environment and the learner. Strategies to deal with transfer in intralanguage, interlanguage are discussed together with the enlightenment of the universal transfer. The positive transfer exer...