Negative Chinese Transfer In English Writing Of Chinese College Students And Countermeasures

Of the four important language skills in second language learning, writing is regarded as the most complex one for Chinese college students. Compared to students' writing in their native language, students have to acquire language proficiency, writing strategies and skills in English writing. One noticeable factor that exists in Chinese students' English writing is the negative transfer of the mother tongue.Since English majors are more privileged than non-English majors in time for learning English and timely help from teachers, thus having better language proficiency, the negative transfer of the mother language is more common in non-English majors' writing than English majors'. Through error analysis of 30 compositions by senior English majors, the author found that the English writing by Chinese students is affected by the negative transfer of their mother language in many aspects and negative Chinese transfer constitutes an obstacle that can not be neglected in English writing by Chinese college students.To improve the quality of students' English writing, proper measures should be adopted to eliminate or minimize the interference of negative transfer of the Chinese language in students' English writing. In this regard, the author proposes five countermeasures in teaching English writing: 1.contrast the two languages; 2. increase target language input; 3. increase grammar teaching; 4. teach students how to establish cohesion and coherence; 5. provide effective feedback to the errors in students' writing.