Negative Transfer Of Native Language In Senior English Composition And The Application Of The Length Approach

One of the major goals of language study is to develop learners' writing ability.The syllabus for Senior Middle School English Course has made definite requirements on the development of the students' four skills,including writing.Meanwhile,the College Entrance English Examination has also made writing as an important item designated to test the candidates' ability to express their minds in the English language.In light of its vital importance,teachers of Senior Middle School English Course should put emphasis on helping their students develop their English writing ability.However,the present author has noted in the teaching that there are always many errors in the students' compositions,which has presented the development of the students' English writing ability.Some of these errors occur repeatedly although they are corrected continuously.In order to reveal the influential factor causing the high error frequency in Senior English compositions,the present author recently did a survey of the errors in the compositions of the Senior One students in No.1 Xiangyang Senior Middle School in Xiangfan,Hubei.The survey revealed the negative transfer of native language as one major factor.Then the present author analyzed the types of errors in aspects of morphology,lexicology,syntax and discourse.The researches of second language acquisition show that the mother tongue interference is one of the aspects which affect second language learning.It will affect the second language phoneme,glossary, morphology,syntax and discourse.Since 1940s,the researchers of mother tongue transfer at home and abroad have made achievements in revealing the functions of both linguistic and non-linguistic factors and their interaction in language study.In this thesis,the present author,based on available references,first gives a definition to language transfer,describes the different types of language transfer and summarizes the historical development of the research of language transfer.Then,aiming at reducing the errors caused by the negative transfer of native language in Chinese Senior English compositions,the present author proposes the application of the Length Approach in Senior English writing class,with the hypothesis that the Length Approach is more effective than the traditional way of correcting errors in reducing the frequency of the aforementioned errors.The Length Approach is a task-based and write-to-learn approach to foreign language learning,proposed by Professor Wang Chuming of the University of Guangdong Foreign Studies.Its principle is to write first and then to improve.Through manipulation of the length requirement of writing,learners are pushed to write increasingly long compositions,thus reinforcing their sense of achievement,enhancing their confidence in their ability to write in English.One of its basic differences from other teaching method is the teachers' attitude towards errors.Finding out errors and correcting errors is no longer the major goal of the teachers' grading task.Instead,a new grading system which covers such 4 aspects as length,structure,content and expression is introduced(王初明,2000:49).The length Approach has been applied successfully in college English teaching.However,whether it is suitable for Senior English teaching,or more precisely,whether it may effectively reduce the errors caused by negative transfer in Senior English compositions,remains undiscussed and unproved.To prove its effectiveness,the present author did an experiment with the Length Approach in her Senior One English writing class.Two classes in No.1 Xiangyang Senior Middle School were randomly chosen and designated as the Experiment Class and the Control Class.The Pre-experiment examination(Appendix 2)shows that the two classes were at the same level in their English writing ability.The length Approach is applied in the teaching of the Experiment Class while the traditional error-correction method in the control class.The experiment lasted 16 weeks.Afterwards a post-experiment examination(Appendix 2)is given to both classes.Their respective average grades and grades at different levels were analyzed.The results show that the Experiment class has made significantly greater progress in English writing ability than the Control Class.More importantly,the Experiment Class has made fewer errors caused by the negative transfer than the Control class.The data proves the hypothesis that the Length Approach is more effective than the tradition error-correction method in reducing the frequency of errors caused by the negative transfer of native language.