A Study Of Chinese English Learners’L2Backward Transfer In Their L1Syntactic Recognition

Language transfer refers to what occurs when people who are in the process of learning a second language transfer the applications of pronunciations, meanings and sentence structures from their native language to the new language. The influence of the second language on the first is called backward transfer. In Second Language Acquisition both at home and abroad, investigations on backward transfer are far from sufficient. Few studies can be found in domestic SLA. As a result, the present study is to investigate the English influence on advanced learners’ Chinese syntax and try to analyze the findings from the cognitive perspective.A computer program TEST is designed to control the entire process including questionnaire, pilot study and experiment (the response time test and the judging test) and automatically record the precise data. Testing materials are ten deviant Chinese sentences (including noun with long attributive ahead, flexible clause sequence in complex sentence and a few transferred English structures) collected from published documents. The experimental results have addressed the research questions, showing that the response time of the experimental group1(advanced English learners) was generally shorter than that of the experimental group2(close Chinese monolinguals); regarding to the deviant structures "more+prepositional phrases+than" and "disjunct as the sentence initial", the experimental group1selected them problematic while the experimental group2not. Besides, both groups have successfully noticed the deviant structures "it is time to+verb","subject+verb+prepositional phrases" and "pronoun with a clause as attributive ahead", but failed to sense five influenced patterns "fixed proper noun with long attributive ahead","transferred word ’have’as’有’ for perfect tense","flexible clause sequence in complex sentence","noun with several adjectives as long attributive ahead" and "more+adjective+than"The present study makes a comparative analysis on the response time of the two groups and a classification and discussion on the findings of the judging test. It is considered that the integrated language system blesses a L2learner or user a more sensitive mind towards language, so that active networks of cognition in brain process the input of either language more quickly and correctly compared to the person who only masters one language. This is to some degree in line with the "multicompetence" view proposed by Vivian Cook.