On The Negative Transfer Of Mother Tongue In English Writing Of Senior High School Students

Transfer is originally a psychological term. And now it is among one of the most popular topics being discussed in the field of interlanguage pragmatics. Transfer means "the influence resulting from the similarities and differences between the target language and any other languages that has been previously(and perhaps imperfectly)acquire" (Odlin,2001:27).Transfer falls into two categories: positive transfer and negative transfer. Positive transfer, as its name suggests, plays a positive role of facilitating the process of target language acquisition. Negative transfer, on the contrary, impedes it. Negative pragmatic transfer from learners' any acquired language to the target language has been repeatedly evidenced in cross-linguistic comparisons of writing. However, the studies and researches available do not present satisfactory results, no effective strategies have been put up to avoid the impediment resulting from negative transfer. These baffling but significant questions still await an answer and thus are the research of this thesis.As English teachers in China, they pay more attention to the negative influence of Chinese. This research just tries to investigate main types of errors made by senior high school students in their English writings, and to find out the specific proportion of errors caused by negative transfer of mother tongue.Senior students of Chongqing Baxian Middle school are the subjects in the investigation of this thesis. The method in this study combines qualitative method with quantitative method. Based on the learners' performance in the investigation, problems of negative transfer are studied and analyzed. Through a legion of data, both observational and elicited, the study and investigation of the problems are carried out. The elicited data come from the students' response in the investigation concerning writing. The elicited data reflect 150 students' mastery and comprehension of, and producing composition in the target language.Then based on the data from the investigation, Present thesis focuses on how and to what extent the senior high school students are influenced by their mother tongue in English writing. hence, it attempts to answer three questions: (1) What are the frequency and percentage of mistakes and errors in students' English writing? (2) How many types of errors exist in the English writing of middle school students?(3) What is the specific proportion of errors caused by negative transfer of mother tongue in the English writing of senior high school students?It is evident from the study that negative transfer of Chinese into English reveals itself at all levels. It is also found in the investigation that senior students are influenced by the negative transfer in their English writing. But the extent to which they meet negative transfer varies as their mastery of the target language differs: the more they expose themselves to the target language, the fewer negative transfer they meet. In the empirical research, we can see that among the students of class 2, mistakes related to one's language performance constitute 16% of the faults made by them (here "faults" include both mistakes and errors according to Corder's distinction), and errors related to one's language competence constitute 82% of "all the errors"; and that among the students of class 3, mistakes related to performance constitute 17% of the faults made by them, and errors related to competence constitute 83% of the faults; and that among the students of class 7, mistakes related to performance constitute 15% of the faults made by them, and errors related to competence constitute 85% of the faults. Meanwhile, we find 19 main types of competence errors. It is easy to find that Chinglish expression, lexical errors, run-on sentences, and errors in the passive voice, take up the four highest percentages of all the errors.As it is still impossible to erase negative transfer in the learners' process of target language acquisition, certain strategies are expected to avoid negative transfer.Finally, on the basis of the above study and analyses, some suggestions are proposed to achieve the purpose of avoiding negative transfer of mother tongue in English writing for teachers and learners.English teachers are suggested to do the followings for avoiding negative transfer of mother tongue: (1) Explaining explicitly the differences while explaining the rules of a certain language phenomenon to the students; (2) Paying attention to the significance of errors and error analysis.