The Influence Of Mother Language Transfer On Chinese Junior Middle School Students’ English Request Strategies

During the study of second language acquisition (SLA), mother language transfer is inevitable andoccupies an important position. It has been one of the central questions in applied linguistics, languagestudy and SLA. The research conducted an investigation to study the influence of mother languagetransfer on Chinese junior middle school students’ English request strategies by using a DCTquestionnaire. Ninety-two Chinese junior middle school students in Yan’an High School, ChangningDistrict in Shanghai are chosen as research subjects to participate in the present study. They are dividedinto three groups: the first group consists of47subjects for the English data, the second group consistsof41students for Chinese data, and the third one is composed of4native English speakers for standarddata as English requests. The questionnaire used in the study is made up of6situations in which requestspeech act may be performed. It is designed on the basis of the questionnaires used by Western scholars.After careful modification, it proves to be applicable for junior middle school students to the study ofthe speech act of request performed in various daily situational sets.The present study focuses on the following three aspects:(1) a general description of requeststrategies employed by the three surveyed groups, the group of Chinese request, English request andnative speakers;(2) the features of Chinese requests adopted by Chinese request group;(3) an analysisof the influence of mother language transfer on junior middle school students’ English requeststrategies.Our data analysis yields the following major findings. Firstly, the production of requests by juniormiddle school students in our study has displayed some features universal to English native speakersand advanced English learners, that is, the most frequently employed request strategy in English isconventionally indirect request strategy.Secondly, the Chinese junior middle school students prefer to employ direct strategy in Chineserequest. The features of Chinese requests are:(1) The Chinese prefer to adopt imperative strategy;(2)There are more alerters and less ‘please’ in Chinese requests;(3) The non-conventionally indirectstrategy is overused in Chinese requests.Finally, Chinese request indeed has positive and negative transfer on junior middle school students’English request. The specific positive transfer is that the structures like我能/可以…吗，你能/可以…吗，能不能/可不可以…in Chinese requests are similar to the forms like May I/Can I/Could I…Can you/Could you…, in English requests. Therefore, the subjects prefer to use the request structures thatshare similarities with their native ones. In this sense, it can be viewed as the positive transfer of theChinese mother language in requesting. The specific negative transfer is shown as follows:(1) WhenEnglish requests are concerned, a great many students prefer to adopt the structures as…, can you/couldyou/will you/would you/? This phenomenon is heavily affected by the structures of…好吗/行吗/可以吗/行不行in Chinese requests. In Chinese, it is proper and valid to use the structures of…好吗/行吗/可以吗/行不行in making requests, because the euphemistic mood of speaking can be viewed aspoliteness. However, it is not appropriate to translate the same structures into “…, will you/wouldyou/can you/could you?” in English in making requests.(2) The overproduction of conventionallyindirect strategy of Can you/Could you…is the negative transfer of teaching order. This negativetransfer is the result of overproduction of modal verbs, such as “can/could/”, which have been earliertaught in the initial stage of language learning. The subjects intend to rely on these earlier taughtstructures no matter what the specific situations are. Therefore, the Chinese mother language restrictsthe variations of junior middle school students’ English request strategies.The findings indicate that, in English teaching nowadays, the teacher’s main target should beteaching the students how to express themselves in the exact ways in communications but not only toteach students to make correct sentences in speaking and writing.