The Effects Of The Native Language On EFL Writing In Senior High Schools

In the process of second language learning, the impact of first language on second language acquisition cannot be avoided and it has always been a focus in second language research. At the beginning, influenced by behaviourism, most researchers agreed that native language only had negative effect on the second language learning. With the development of Interlanguage Theory, native language was regarded as a resource that the learners can refer to when they were lack of second language knowledge, so the effect of native language was reconsidered as a learning strategy, because second language learners may consciously borrow the knowledge of their mother tongue in order to improve their performances of target language. What's more, considering the present situation of English teaching in China, we can find that it requires high level of English to write English compositions well and even though the students spend much time and energy on it, it seems that there is no obvious improvement, so compared with the other three skills: listening,speaking and reading, writing has been widely neglected. However, in the College Entrance Examination, writing takes up twenty percent of the total score of English, so in a sense, English writing ability becomes a key factor in deciding whether the students can be admitted by universities. In addition, just as we can see, although there are many researches on English writing teaching, most of them only analyse the products and draw the conclusion that the native language only has negative effect on foreign language learning, which is mostly a biased result. There are also some kinds of researches conducted on the process of writing teaching, but no obvious effects appeared. The present research aims to find out whether it is helpful to sdudents if they purposefully use translating approach in L2 composing. That is to say, the research wants to prove that if the students write compositions in Chinese first and then translate them into English, they can produce higher quality compositions than write compositions in English directly. In fact, it cannot be denied that because of lacking the knowledge of English, some Senior Middle School students have to refer to their native language in the process of writing English compositions. The study intends to answer three questions: First, are there any differences between the two writing modes, writing an essay directly in English and writing one in Chinese first and then translating it into English? Second, what are the major advantages and disadvantages of direct writing and writing by translation? Last, how to evaluate the role of native language in second language writing?The study lasted almost one year. Two parallel classes with intermediate English level were selected to receive two different kinds of writing training, one of which is direct writing mode, the other is translated mode. Pre-test, post-test, interview and questionnaire methods were adopted to collect the data, and the SPSS software was applied to analyse the data and the conclusion were as follows: Qualitative analysis of the writing samples showed that the translated compositions were relatively better in orgnization and content. To be specific, this kind of compositions were better in aspects of variety of sentences, specification of content, clarification of ideas, idea development and logical sequence. However, in terms of vocabulary use, the other kind was better. Quantitative analysis showed that significant superiority was found in syntactic complexity in translated writing, but in terms of fluency and accuracy of the essays it was worse in this mode. The questionnaire responses reveal that most students prefer to direct writing mode in order to save time and cultivate the sense of second language, but to some degree, they conciously or unconciously use Chinese either in content or organization, for thinking in English hinder the development of the train of thought. In a word, the conclusion drawn from the study was that provided that Chinese Middle School students notice the differences between English and Chinese composition structures and use their mother tongue consciously or intentionally, Chinese can help them produce better English compositions, which can prove in a sense that the mother tongue plays a positive role in English writing.The thesis consists of five parts. The first part reviews the former theories and studies of the influence of the native language on foreign language learning at home and abroad. The second part clarifies the theoretical basis of the study. The third part presents research methods and procedures of the experiment. The fourth part analyses the results of the experiment and draws conclusions. The last part point out the implications for teaching and learing. At last, the writer summarize the thesis, pointing out the limitations of the study and the field worth further researching.