On The Negative Transfer Of Mother Language In English Writing Performance

When a learner’s have difficult in learning a foreign language, mother tongue(MT) will inevitably hinder his learning or even lead to the pragmatic errors. This phenomenon is called negative transfer in linguistic research. Since1950s, the research on negative transfer of MT has been the central issue of linguists and researchers. In the meantime, many new theories such as Error Analysis, Contrastive Analysis and Inter-language have provided guidance for them.The essay is based on the theories of Contrastive Analysis (CA), Error Analysis(EA) and Inter-language, the author made an empirical study of transfer errors to investigate the influence of native language transfer on Chinese students’ English writing. Specifically, the thesis aims at answering the following questions:(1) What are the frequency and percentage of errors in students’ English writing?(2) What are the different types of errors exist in the English writing?(3) What is the specific proportion of errors caused by negative transfer of mother tongue in the English writing of students?(4) What is the enlightenment to the teachers’writing English teaching?This research sets its subjects on the junior majoring in English in the College of Foreign Studies in Guangxi Normal University.150compositions are selected from English majors of Guangxi Normal University. For this study, both qualitative and quantitative methods are employed. The empirical study is dominant and descriptive study serves as additional explanations for the transfer error types. The results of this research are presented that L1transfer errors take a dominant part in writing errors. The negative transfer is an inevitable phenomenon in students’writing. Of the four dimensions in linguistic categories, errors in lexis, syntax, morphology and cultures rank in descending order, among which lexical errors are the most prominent, indicating that this is the greatest problem for students in their English writing. Finally, limitations of the present research and suggestions for further research are also provided at the end of this thesis.