Influence Of Chinese Negative Transfer On English Word Meaning Study Of High School Students And Countermeasures Against It

According to the language transfer theory, it is assumed that where there are differences between the native language and foreign language, the learner's native language knowledge will interfere with the foreign language, and where the native language and foreign language are similar, the native language will actively aid foreign language learning, that is, in the case of similarities between the native language and foreign language, the transfer functions positively, while in the case of differences, it functions negatively. Native language transfer can't be avoided in the foreign language learning.At present in China, A majority of the high school students are learning English in a kind of environment full of Chinese factors. They have neither chances nor surroundings to communicate in English with each other except in their class. In the process of learning English, Chinese has negative influences in the study of English word meanings, partly because there are many differences both in language form and culture between China and English-speaking countries, and partly because before the Chinese students began to learn English, they had mastered a plenty of Chinese words, which the students like to lean on, for it can help them freely express their thoughts and ideas.To start with, the thesis expounds the essence of language transfer and then the factors and elements of its development in theory. Then, by using the scientific research methods of questionnaire and inquiry, the thesis tries to find out how much the English teaching and learning relies on the Chinese meanings aid. In terms of conceptual meaning, connotative meaning, collocative meaning and idioms meaning, the thesis draws an elaborate contrastive study between the English word meanings and their Chinese explanations. As for the conceptual meaning, the English words and their Chinese meaning explanations are not only unreciprocal, but also complicated. There is no exactly reciprocal Chinese explanations for theEnglish vocabulary. On teaching the connotative meaning of English vocabulary, as it is a kind of additional meaning conditioned by the ethnic culture, a certain expression and name has its meaning only when it matches with the culture consciousness, not knowing the connotative meaning will bring trouble to the cross-culture communication. On the collocative meaning, because it is a kind of meaning connected with the meaning of other words, the collocative meaning can not be understood by correspondence of single English word and its Chinese explanation. On the meaning of the idiom as the English idioms emphasize their special usages while the Chinese set phrases (usually composed of four characters) emphasize their sources and patterns. They both have similarity and difference, and can't be learned by simply match.After a documentation of the influence of Chinese negative transfer on English vocabulary study, a large space of the thesis is devoted to discussing the strategies of how to prevent the influence of Chinese negative transfer on English word meanings study. First the thesis presents four basic principles of how to teach English word meanings: situation principle; the principle of combining pronunciation and form with meanings; the principle of teaching words in context and encouragement principle. In order to make it clear that the influence of Chinese negative transfer can be greatly lowered in the process of English vocabulary teaching, the thesis presents four concrete teaching methods in details meanwhile. The thesis also points out that transfer can function positively, the teacher can teach English vocabulary through creating language environment and by making full use of positive transfer.