A Survey On The Analysis Of Native Language Transfer In English Writing For Low-proficient Non-English Major Students

Writing is considered to be an important way to convey thoughts and feeling,which exercises a vital role in measuring learners’ overall language competence.Up to now, English writing is regarded as an indispensable item in Englishexaminations, but actually learners’ writing performance is far from satisfaction.And it is suggested that native language transfer is deemed as one of the principalfactors leading to such a result. Consequently, it has become a hot issue and hasattracted more and more linguists’ attention now.Under such a background, the present thesis adopted transfer theory,contrastive analysis and error analysis theory to serve this research. The purposeof the research is to explore the influence of native language transfer in Englishwriting for low-proficient non-English major students. It employed bothqualitative and quantitative research including writing test, questionnaire andinterview. The subjects in this research are125sophomores in Vocational Collegeof Xi’an Polytechnic University majoring in Dyeing Technology and ElectronicInformation Technique. The research undertook is conducted from threeaspects—lexis, syntax and discourse and there are great findings on nativelanguage transfer in English writing for low-proficient non-English major studentsafter the analysis of the collected data, which are as follows:First of all, it is found that it is a common phenomenon for low-proficientnon-English major learners to be affected by native language transfer in theirEnglish writing. Compared with male learners, female learners depend less onnative language, but the difference between the two is not so obvious. Therefore, more attention should be paid to such a common phenomenon in English writing.Second, it shows that under the influence of native language transfer thenumber of errors in lexis ranks the first followed by errors in syntax and the last iserrors at discourse level. The findings of this indicate that one of the main reasonsresulting in learners’ poor performance is that learners even didn’t acquire thebasic knowledge such as the spelling of words as well as the certain utilization ofwords and structures.Third，the involvement of native language transfer does vary with differentstages of writing. The result indicates that learners depend on native languagetransfer to the maximum in the pre-writing stage because they are more likely toresort to Chinese to analyze the task and plan the content. In the course ofwhile-writing stage they depend heavily on mother tongue transfer to drive theEnglish writing continually and the Chinese thinking patterns as well as somewriting strategies are also used to adjust the English sentences and paragraphs.Compared with the native language involvement in the two previous stages,learners depend minimally on native language transfer in after-writing stage.Last but not least, on the basis of the above analysis, the author finallysupplied suggestions for both English teaching and learning. For instance, it isvery necessary for teachers to apply contrastive theory and error analysis theory toEnglish teaching to guide learners. Since low-proficient learners made so manyerrors in lexis and syntax, teachers need to put more emphasis on the above twoaspects in their teaching process such as more explanations and examples onwords and structures. Moreover, another two crucial ways for English writingimprovement will be proposed here that extensive reading can devote to theimprovement of English input and more writing practice is propitious to favorableoutput.All in all, the research of native language transfer on English writing isexpected to provide a feasible direction for both teachers and learners so as toboost the quality of teaching as well as the learners’ favorable performance intheir English writing.