An Analysis On Negative Transfer Of Mother Tongue In Senior High School English Writing

English teachers are often confronted with different kinds of mother tongue transfer errors made by senior high school students in their English teaching. Language negative transfer has been discussed for a long time in foreign language teaching, second language acquisition and applied linguistics. Because mother tongue negative transfer often appears in Chinese senior high school English writing, mother tongue negative transfer caused errors are major in students'English writing. Though much research has been done on the negative errors in senior high school English writing, transfer errors still exist. This thesis tries to analyze transfer errors which appeared in senior high school English writing.It is known that spoken language is a good means used to communicate in daily life, but writing is to some extent a better communication way. If Chinese senior high school students can express themselves properly in English, they are very successful in their English study; however, writing is usually considered the most difficult task in the four basic skills of listening, speaking, reading and writing. Their writing is always influenced by their mother tongue Chinese. Thesis gives ideas on language transfer, contrastive analysis and Interlingua, which is to do with the errors caused by negative transfer of mother tongue in senior high school English writing.This thesis consists of four parts besides Introduction and Conclusion: Chapter I, Chapter II, Chapter III and Chapter IV. Introduction reviews the related studies of Language Transfer, Contrastive Analysis and Interlingua Hypothesis, which created further significant on writing.Chapter I introduces the related study of transfer, contrastive analysis and Interlingua Hypothesis to solve the problems to be mentioned in Chapter Three and Chapter Four.Chapter II offers a questionnaire about the present situation of writing teaching and the problems of writing. This thesis collects and analyzes 100 compositions written in the same period of time on the same topic by 100 students in Zhong He Senior high school of Sichuan province. In these 100 compositions, altogether over 200 errors are identified.Chapter III classifies the errors. The findings through the analysis of errors are main problems in senior high school English writing teaching– lacking enough vocabulary, writing time, an effective teaching and writing approach.Chapter IV discusses the ways out for negative transfer of mother tongue in English teaching: encouraging students to think in English, enforcing English writing motivation to practice, enforcing language input through reading and reciting, enforcing lexical and grammar learning, dealing with the negative transfer in a correct way, enforcing translation practice, and enforcing cross-cultural communication awareness.Conclusion lists the problems that have not been solved in this thesis and puts forward some suggestions.The purposes of the study in this thesis are: firstly, to try to help senior high school students avoid negative transfer of their mother tongue and improve their English writing ability; secondly, to enrich senior high school teachers'experience of writing teaching, reduce English writing errors, help them tackle the English writing errors and adjust their teaching methods.