The Study Of Chinese English Major's Compusitions-From A Perspective Of Cultural Transfer

Cultural transfer occurs in all processes of intercultural communication and in foreign language learning as well. Transfer was originally a concept of psychology, later, transfer was cited and analyzed by many researchers in Second Language Acquisition. In 1989, Odlin defined transfer as"transfer is the influence resulting from similarities and differences between the target language and any other language that has been previously (and perhaps imperfectly) acquired."According to Odlin's definition of transfer, cultural transfer refers to the cultural influence resulting from similarities and differences between the target culture and any other culture that has previously acquired. Dai Weidong and Zhang Hongling stated that cultural transfer was caused by cultural difference, which shows that people subconsciously use their cultural norms and values not only to guide their behaviors and thoughts but also to evaluate other people's behaviors and thoughts; it often results in misunderstandings, communicative failures, and even hatred. Cultural transfer can be divided into two layers: transfer of surface-structure culture and transfer of deep-structure culture. The thesis mainly focuses on the Chinese English majors'compositions from a perspective of cultural transfer, especially the perspective of transfer of deep-structure culture. By analyzing the influence of native culture and target culture on Chinese English majors'compositions, the aim of the thesis is to enhance students'"Acculturation"and at the same time encourage them to adapt to the English mode of thinking actively and conscientiously so as to avoid native cultural transfer effectively and produce much purer English writing as well.Listening, speaking, reading, writing and translating are basic skills for Chinese English majors, among these, writing is considered as a good reflection of one's overall mastery of English learning. The thesis first introduces the most important English writing teaching approaches at home and abroad as well as the researches on cultural transfer, then the theories of cultural transfer and the relationship between language and culture are introduced. Based on the sample compositions written by freshmen, sophomores, and juniors majoring in English in Shandong Normal University, the researcher analyses them from three aspects, namely, the location of the topic, the frequency of the occurrence of Chinglish expression and the frequency of the use of idioms. The results show that cultural transfer does exist in Chinese English majors'compositions, what's more, as the grade increases, negative transfer of native culture decreases while positive transfer of target culture increases. Therefore, pedagogical implications based on the results are put forward in order to improve English writing teaching to help Chinese English majors to produce much more authentic and purer English compositions.