An Empirical Study On The Influence Of L1 Transfer On Zhuang Nationality College Students' English Learning Effectiveness In Guangxi

Transfer refers to the impact that mother tongue or old language knowledge has on a targetlanguage or on the new language knowledge. This impact can be positive or negative, sotransfer can be positive or negative transfer. Study on transfer has a history of about onehundred years, and it has its heyday in 1960s. The theory of transfer is closely related to thebehaviorist theory whose chief representatives were Skinner and Lado. Skinner and Ladohold that differences between L1 and L2 will cause learning difficulties in L2 learning, whichresult in errors because the old rooted language habits from the first language will get in theway of forming the new habits during the process of establishing a new language system;while similarities between L1 and L2 facilitate L2 learning. Although such views have beenchallenged by cognitive linguists such as Chomsky and Selinker, many linguists andresearchers have proved by empirical studies that first language transfer has great influence onlearners' second language acquisition. Then, how does first language transfer influence theEnglish learning of the students in minority areas where economy develops relatively slowly?The Zhuang nationality possesses the largest population among all the minoritynationalities in China. Due to the influence of the social economy, language environment,cultural background and other factors, the Zhuang students' English learning demonstratescertain regional characteristics, such as more difficulties and errors in English phoneticlearning, strong accents of the Zhuang language in their pronunciation and so on. For manyyears, some researchers have studied the barriers of the Zhuang students in their Englishlearning and the interference of the Zhuang language in English phonetics learning, but fewempirical researches have been done on the influence of L1 transfer on the Zhuang students'English learning effectiveness so far. In this thesis, the author explores and investigates theinfluence of L1 transfer on Zhuang college students from different universities by 12qualitative semi-structured interviews. The results show that the Zhuang college students aregreatly influenced by L1 transfer in English learning. Their English pronunciation is mainlyaffected by the Zhuang pronunciation, while other aspects are mainly influenced by Chinesemandarin. It is because the students' learning process is affected by L1 transfer that their English leaming effectiveness is also affected. Besides, the results also show that the lowachievers with low self-esteem are influenced by L1 transfer more greatly than the highachievers.The data obtained from the study provides some insights for teachers who teach Zhuangstudents English. However, as the scope of the study is limited in the investigation among asmall number of Zhuang students from universities in Guangxi, more empirical studies needto be done to further validate the findings of this study.