On Chinese Transfer In English Grammar Teaching

Language transfer, especially the influence of the native language on the second language acquisition, has long been a key issue in the research on psychological linguistics and second language acquisition. This paper starts with a review of the related theories of language transfer developed in Western countries and the researches on Chinese transfer in English acquisition conducted in China. Then, based on the contrastive analysis hypothesis, the markedness theory and the cognitive theory and from the viewpoint of learning psychology, the paper focuses on the correlation between the English Grammar test scores of the English majors and their perceptibility and willingness towards Chinese transfer in their study and on the promotion of such perceptibility and willingness to foster the positive transfer and minimize the negative transfer of the Chinese grammar in teaching and learning English grammar. The research methods employed are questionnaires and interviews. And SPSS software package is used in the research for quantitative analysis of the data.The results of the research indicate: 1) there exists a significant difference between the high-score group and the low-score group in respect of the students' perceptibility and willingness towards the transfer of Chinese grammar in the course of learning English grammar; 2) the higher the scores, the higher the perceptibility and willingness; 3) all the teachers and most of high-score students interviewed are in favor of the contrastive analysis of Chinese and English grammatical rules in teaching English grammar.The conclusions drawn from the research are: 1) if the learners are able to perceive the similarities and differences in grammar between their native language and target language and willing to realize the positive transfer and avoid the negative transfer of their native language grammar, they can effectively acquire and master the target language grammar; 2) it is feasible to apply the contrastive teaching in the grammar course of the target language.Finally, the paper works out the conceptual and pedagogical implication of the research for the EFL learning and teaching in China.