A Study Of Chinese Syntax Transfer In China's High School Students' English Writing

Syntactic transfer, a branch of language transfer, is drawing researchers' attention. In process of over ten years' teaching practice, the author collected various examples of syntactic transfer in the students' English writing. The thesis aims to explore and discuss the positive and negative transfer based on the influence of Chinese syntactic structure and rules on English writing. The author analyzes the main reasons resulting in the syntactic transfer in the theoretical frame of Contrastive Analysis, Inter-language, Error Analysis and cognitive psychology and supplies some implications for English writing.The results of the analysis shows positive and negative transfer coexist in students' translation and writing. The similarities in syntax and semantics between Chinese and English facilitate the students' writing while the differences interfere their writing. Further more, Chinese and English adopt different thought patterns and culture which lead to varieties in language.The main syntactic differences between Chinese and English are as follows.1. Hypotactive vs. Paratactic. In English articles, various link words, such as relative words, conjunctives, prepositions, and the form changes of nouns, adjectives and adverbs are used to make the sentences meaningful and logic. Whereas Chinese achieves coherence and cohesion by the meaning of dictions. Because of the interference of the native language, many run-on sentences occur in students' writing. Also many sentences lack of the agreement between the constitutes.2. The subject-predicate structure vs. the topic-remark structure. A lot of errors occur because of the omission of subjects, objects and relative words, which clearly are influenced by Chinese structure.3. Noun and preposition prominence vs. verb prominence. English is a static language which expresses actions by nouns and prepositions, however, verbs are preferred in Chinese. In students' English writing, too many verbs are used and simple sentences occur frequently. Sentences lack of varieties and they read boring.4. Passive vs. active. English adopts impersonal subjects to state the facts while personal subjects are frequently used in Chinese. Thus Chinese students feel it difficult to adjust to English style. In addition, some typical English sentence patterns are missing. From the perspective of cognitive psychology, students try to avoid using these structures since there are no equivalents in Chinese. They are afraid of committing errors.Based on the above research result, some teaching implications for English writhing are supplied.1. Syntax comparison to strengthen the students syntax awareness. Through this method the students will learn the differences and similarities between Chinese and English, and facilitate English writing.2. Adoption of syntax training.3. Combination of reading and writing.4. Laying emphasis on vocabulary teaching.5. Exploring effective teaching models and strategies on English writing.Through researching into the syntactic transfer in students' English writing, theauthor aims to explore how these transferring phenomenon occur. It's hoped the research is illuminating so that English teachers in China will obtain implications to improve their teaching in writing. It would be better if they could adopt effective teaching strategies to avoid negative transfer, and facilitate positive transfer. It is the purpose to help the students improve their writing ability. It's also hoped the research will benefit the researchers who further the study of syntactic transfer.The thesis consists of five parts. The first part is the preface. In this part, the author introduces the definition of transfer, the basis of the paper and the present study of syntactic transfer. The second part is literature review. It's about the theories and concepts related to this research. The third part involves in the description of the syntactic transfer in students' English writing and further explanation. The fourth part supplies some implications on English teaching on the basis of the research. The fifth part is the ending part.