The Influence Of The Characteristics Of Chinese Temporality On The Chinese-speaking Learners' Acquisition Of English Present Perfect Tense

English temporality has been the research objective of many EFL researchers who have found that L1 transfer subsists in the interlanguage of learners who learn English as a second or foreign language. According to the cross-linguistic transfer theory, the typological characteristics of their native language play a major role in the formation of learners' interlanguage. and with the improvement of learners' proficiency, their interlanguage displays a certain tendency. The present study aims to explore how Chinese temporality influences the acquisition of English present perfect tense, why the influence sustains and what tendency will be shown in the learning outcomes of learners at different proficiency levels.The present study focuses on three parameters according to the three Characteristics of the Chinese Temporality (CCTs): time-phrase influence, time-space influence and tense choice. On the basis of the English proficiency, the subjects were divided into four levels: preliminary, lower intermediate, higher intermediate and advanced. They completed a translation task and a questionnaire, which made up the data for the study.The research finds that Chinese learners transferred their L1 temporal characteristics into their interlanguage; with the improvement of their English proficiency, learners gradually reduced the negative transfer of CCTs. The whole learning process displayed a developmental tendency, but the development occurred to varying degrees in different proficiency levels. The learners at the preliminary level were most likely influenced by the CCTs and preferred to translate the characteristics literally into English. Up to the advanced level, learners had generally established the English time concept, but they still failed to overcome the negative influence of Chinese on the whole, which was probably caused by the learning plateau and fossilization. The research also finds that learners' beliefs about and strategies for English grammar learning affected the increasing of the level of ability to overcome the negative L1 transfer.