The Study Of Negative Transfer Phenomena In English-Chinese IL

This thesis attempts to apply the interlanguage(IL) and language transfer theory to analyze negative transfer phenomena in Chinese - English IL. In 1972, /American linguist Selinker coined the definition of IL. And then the study on IL became the central topic in the field of Linguistics. IL is a language system that has a structural intermediate status between the native language(NL) and target language(TL). When a learner begins to learn a foreign language, his/her NL has already existed, which will inevitably influence the TL learning. In the course of English learning, the Chinese English learners are not quite familiar with English vocabulary, grammar and culture, and the learners' knowledge of Chinese language system will influence English learning. As a result, many negative language transfer phenomena are generated, which bring great difficulties to English learners. This thesis will analyze and study Chinese—English negative language transfer from the aspect of words, grammar, and culture and offer some strategies of language learning. At last some suggestions are put forward to instruct English teaching.