The Influence Of The Mother Tongue Transfer On Uigur Students' English Learning In Xinjiang

Language transfer has been a controversial topic in English language teaching. Transfer refers to the impact that mother tongue or old language knowledge has influence on a target language or a new language. Transfer is a psychological term originally and falls into two categories: positive transfer and negative transfer. Study on transfer has a history of about one hundred years, and it has its heyday in 1960s. The theory of transfer is closely related to the behaviorist theory, the chief representatives of which are Skinner and Lado. Skinner and Lado hold that differences between L1 and L2 will cause learning difficulties in L2 learning, which result in errors because the old rooted language habits from the first language will get in the way of forming the new habits during the process of establishing a new language system, while similarities between Ll and L2 facilitate L2 learning. Although such views have been challenged by cognitive linguists such as Chomsky and Selinker, many linguists and researchers have proved by empirical studies that first language transfer has great influence on learners'second language acquisition. People always focus on the negative transfer and some researchers even hold that mother tongue is"interference"for English language learning. So mother tongue can not be avoided in English language teaching and learning. Mother tongue transfer is an important source of students'learning difficulties, or even errors in the English language learning process and the influence can occur in the course of learning all the systems of English language. The mother tongue phenomenon is an important topic that many linguists and psychologists research in the second language acquisition.The Uigur nationality possesses one of the largest populations among all the nationalities in China. Due to the influence of the social economy, language environment, cultural background and other factors, the Uigur students'English learning demonstrates certain regional characteristics, such as more difficulties and errors in English phonetics learning (e.g. clear L and dark L), proper use of the preposition and word order and somewhat strong accents of the Uigur language in their pronunciations, and so on. For many years, some researchers have studied the barriers of the Uigur students in their English learning and the interference of the Uigur language in English phonetics learning, but few empirical researches have been done on the influence of Ll transfer on the Uigur students so far. In this thesis, the author explores and investigates the influence of L1 transfer on Uigur college students from two different schools by 16 qualitative semi-structured interviews. The results show that the Uigur college students are greatly influenced by L1 transfer in English learning. Their English learning is mainly affected by the Uigur language as well as Chinese Mandarin. Besides, the results also show that the low achievers with low self-esteem are influenced by L1 transfer more greatly than the high achievers.The data obtained from the study provides some insights for teachers who teach Uigur students English. However, as the scope of the study is limited in the investigation among a small number of Uigur students from Xinjiang University and Xinjiang Electric Power School in Urumqi, more empirical studies need to be done to further validate the findings of this study. In addition, what should be noticed are the attitudes towards the difficulties and errors that the English language learners will often confront and make. In the field of English pedagogy, the factors that affect English language learning, (motivation, self-confidence, perseverance, anxiety, etc.) should be carefully tackled by the practitioners. Practical methodology, e.g. error analysis, should generate more effective ways of course implementation.