Conceptual Positive Transfer From Chinese Concept "的" To Acquisition Of English Attributive Clauses—by Enhancing Noticing

Recently, as the central study in linguistics, the research of acquisition of second language(SLA) has increasingly been related to cognition. Then gradually, certain concepts in cognitive psychology have been cited in linguistics, such as cognition, motivation, noticing, memory and so on. Theories concerned have accordingly formed, with some empirical studies to offer substantial evidence for the theories.In addition, the transfer from native language to second language is an important subject for studies in both psychological linguistics and SLA. Researchers have already agreed with the existence of transfer, that is, there is definitely influence from the first language to second language. According to Ellis (2002), language transfer refers to a kind of process of learners applying their native language knowledge to SLA. In terms of the quality of transfer, it can be divided into two kinds:positive transfer and negative transfer. Positive transfer refers to the positive influence and help from first language to second language because of the sameness between them. while negative transfer means the disturbing influence owing to the differences between native and target languages.There have been many studies aiming at finding and avoiding negative transfers, especially for Chinese students to learn English attributive clauses. The purpose of this study is to illustrate that there is positive transfer for Chinese students to learn English attributive clauses based on the theory of universal grammar (UC). Besides, noticing is one of the cognitive factors that elicit and constrain conceptual transfer, so in this experiment, explicit and implicit teaching methods were utilized by the author to prove what effects of explicit and implicit noticing on the acquisition of English attributive clauses. More specifically, some students were explicitly taught how to relate the similarities between Chinese attributive concept "de" and some were implicitly taught the similarities. The purpose of doing so is to prove the different effects of the two different teaching strategies on SLA.In this study,167participants were chosen from first Grade students of Experimental Junior Middle School in Yuanping, Shanxi, who had not been taught English attributive knowledge before this experiment. And after pretest, the author selected120students to take part in the following treatment and tests, whose scores are in the scope of average scope, by which we can avoid the disturbing factors such as intelligence and gender. They were divided into three groups:control group (CG), explicit noticing experimental group (ENEG), and implicit noticing experimental group (INEG). The whole procedure included pilot study, pretests, treatment, immediate posttest and delayed posttest.After collecting and analyzing the data by SAS, the following conclusions were drawn.1) Noticing the similarity between Chinese attributive concept "的" and English attributive clauses can result in positive transfer.2) Compared with no guidance for students to notice the relationship between Chinese attributive concept "的" and English relative clauses, guidance. to a larger extent, can enhance students’ acquisition of English relative clauses, and using them more frequently and correctly.3) Compared with implicit teaching, explicit teaching, to a larger extent, can enhance students’ acquisition of English relative clauses, and using them more frequently and correctly.The author studied the influence of conceptual positive transfer and noticing strategy on acquisition of English attributive clauses. The results are that it is effective to teach Chinese attributive concept "的" and its relationship between English attributive clauses and that explicit teaching, compared with implicit teaching, can improve students’ acquisition of English clauses. What is more, the results of delayed posttest show that explicit teaching can have students remembering what they learned for a longer time. The results above suggest two directions in which teachers should consider. Firstly, while teaching English attributive clauses, teachers should also teach Chinese attributive concept and teach students to utilize the similarities between Chinese and English to improve SLA, which is based on positive transfer. Secondly, teachers should explicitly guide students to notice the relationship between Chinese attributive concept and English attributive clauses, which is based on explicit noticing strategy.In this paper, the level of students’ acquisition of English attributive clauses was measured by writing tests, by which the author intends to measure the ratio of using English attributive clauses and ratio of mistakes of English attributive clauses used in the writing tasks. However, if we want to definitely measure the level, it is better to apply some machines used to measure the time span when subjects making an English attributive clause or they recognize one. In addition, only doing research on English attributive clauses is not enough, so in order to enrich this studying field, it is significant to study the influence of cognitive transfer and noticing strategy on other grammar points. And the two factors which are believed to elicit and constrain cognitive transfer, intentionality and context, need be proved. In this paper, only intcntionality is considered. Thus, the research on how context influence cognitive transfer is a new studying direction.