| How to foster English learners’ability to acquire and manage information in English and the capability of analyzing and solving problems as well as carrying out critical thinking in English is still a hot issue in the realm of English teaching. There are many distinctions between Chinese and English. Typologically, Chinese is a topic prominent language while English is a subject prominent language. Researches show two contradictory claims on the role of topic/subject prominence (TP/SP) typology in second language (L2) acquisition. One claim is that irrelevant of learners’first language, the process of L2acquisition is characterized by an inchoate universal topic-prominent stage and that the typology of topic/subject prominence is not convertible. Another claim is that learners’L1plays an important role in their L2learning and that as their L2capacity increases, native speakers of TP languages increase the use of SP features gradually in their L2production. In any case, both claims need more empirical evidence for further proof.Language transfer has exerted a great influence upon the learning of second language. The topic prominence has played a more important role in the translation skills of Chinese students. Because Chinese, serving as a type of complicated language in the world, is a system full of topic prominences. This paper focuses on the transfer phenomenon of TPC in Chinese students’English translation and reveals the orientation, significance and organization of the study carried out. The language transfer can be further divided into two categories—positive transfer and negative transfer, whose relationship will be illustrated in details in this paper by comparing two concepts known as topic and subject. By studying the way in which second language is delivered, features of both positive and negative transfer can be learned, therefore, one can attempt to make the utmost of the positive transfer in learning second language and avoid the negative transfer which may interfere with the comprehension of target language. Thus, Chinese students of English may be better at in English and more efficient in communicating in English.Based on the typological difference and comparison of Chinese and English, the present study investigates the influence of Chinese Topic Prominence Constructions (TPC) on the acquisition of English with the instruments of translation task.200subjects of English major were divided into two groups according to their English proficiency level.(subjects of Lilin High School for low level and subjects of Shouzhou Normal University for high level). The results were analyzed and calculated in terms of four types of TPC:Noun phrase as topic, clause as topic, verb phrase as topic and prepositional phrase as topic.Three major findings were achieved from the present study. Firstly, learners’translation is characterized by interference of TPC of their mother tongue—Chinese. Secondly, subjects can make English sentence correctly. Because of the feature of permeability of second language, gradually learners’translation becomes more target-like subject prominence with the increase of subjects’English proficiency level. Thirdly, after dividing the TPC sentences into four types in order to have a further analysis, it was found that the high level subjects used more prepositions or prepositional phrase and to-phrase and v-ing to introduce the topic instead of using other two types which manifests the universal learning strategy.The findings of the present study contribute to a better understanding of the process of Chinese EFL learners transfer Chinese into English development from topic prominence to subject prominence at both the performance level and the competence level. In addition, the results of the present study are significant for the English teaching in China. Language teachers should improve the typological comparison between Chinese and English so that the learners can be more aware of the distinction between these two language and errors could be avoided. |
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