An Analysis Of Negative Transfer By Chinese Learners Of English And The Strategies To Avoid It

Transfer is originally a psychological term. And now it is among one of the most popular topics being discussed in the field of interlanguage pragmatics. By transfer is meant "the influence resulting from the similarities and differences between the target language and any other language that has been previously (and perhaps imperfectly) acquired. Transfer falls into two categories: positive transfer and negative transfer. Positive transfer, as its name suggests, plays a positive role of facilitating the process of target language acquisition. Negative transfer, on the contrary, impedes it. Negative pragmatic transfer from learners'any acquired language to the target language has been repeatedly evidenced in cross-linguistic comparisons of speech acts. However, the studies and researches available do not present satisfactory results, for example, no effective strategies have been put up to help avoid the impediment resulting from negative transfer. These baffling but significant questions still await an answer and thus are the research foci of this dissertation. Chinese learners of English as their target language are the subjects in the investigation of this thesis. Based on the learners'performance in the investigation, problems of negative transfer are thoroughly studied and analyzed. Through a legion of data, both observational and elicited, the study and investigation of the problems are carried out. The elicited data in the thesis are gained directly from the investigation, while the observational data come from the author's observation of the students'performance in the class-discussion, their homework assignment, and in examination writings. The elicited data come from the students'response in the investigation concerning multiple-choice, Chinese-English translation, and writing. The elicited data reflect 140 students'mastery and comprehension of, and producing speech act in the target language. Among the 140 students, 90 are undergraduate English majors in Xi'an Peihua University, 30 from each grade; the other 50 are non-English major graduates in Xidian University. The students were selected randomly. Then based on the convincingly enough data from the investigation, the author of this dissertation analyzes negative transfer at the levels of phonetics, lexics, syntax, text, and the way of thinking. It is evidenced from the study that negative transfer of Chinese into English reveals itself at all levels mentioned above. It is also found in the investigation that negative transfer is committed by Chinese learners with different levels of proficiency at the target language, ranging from English majors to...