An Empirical Study On Negative Transfer At Syntactic Level In Chinese College Students’English Writing

Language transfer has been an important topic in SLA research. Many scholars at home and abroad have conducted researches concerning the influence of the native language in SLA, most of which, however, focus on theoretical analysis. Only a few researches are targeted to syntactic transfer. Furthermore, among these limited studies, syntactic transfer in Chinese college students’writing is hardly dealt with in detail. The author conducts an empirical study to explore negative transfer at syntactic level in Chinese students’English writing based on error analysis theory. Ninety non-English major sophomores from Shandong University are invited as subjects of the research. English writing test, questionnaire and individual interview are adopted as the research instruments to justify the hypothesis the author proposed. With the above mentioned combination of qualitative and quantitative strategy, the author concludes that:(1) Run-on sentence, subject-predicate non-agreement, multi-predicate, omission or wrong expression of the subject as well as wrong expression of the passive voice are among the most salient transfer errors the students commit in their English writing;(2) Students with intermediate proficiency level commit far more transfer errors at syntactic level than those with advanced proficiency level;(3) Different thought patterns, lack of awareness of the syntactic difference between Chinese and English, as well as lack of comprehensible input are three main factors accounting for students’negative transfer at syntactic level. What’s more, with reference to the results of both the questionnaire and individual interview, the author gets the following implications for EFL teachers to improve learners’English proficiency and alleviate negative transfer at syntactic level:(1) responding effectively to the errors;(2) increasing comparison and contrast between Chinese and English syntactic structure in class;(3) increasing comprehensible input and output.(4) encouraging students to use English-English dictionaries.