An Empirical Study Of Language Negative Transfer In CET-6Writing

This study shows that language transfer is unavoidable and does have some effect on the second language acquisition (Ellis,1994), which has been studied for nearly half a century in the field of linguistics. Although many scholars at home and abroad have made some empirical research about the language transfer especially the second language writing since the1980s, these studies mainly focus on the analysis of language transfer theory, or on the testing whether the process of second language writing is the same as that of first language writing. There are only a few in-depth studies about the syntactic transfer and discourse transfer in the English writing by the non-English majors.The study mainly aims to explore the negative transfer from the perspective of syntax, taking into account the discourse negative transfer in CET-6writings, which involve the subjects of120non-English major sophomores in Shandong Institute of Business and Technology. Quantitative methods together with qualitative method are adopted in analyzing the data gathered from the subjects’ English composition samples, questionnaires and individual interviews with the help of SPSS. Two hypotheses are proposed concerning syntactic transfer and discourse transfer in the subjects’English writings:1) The negative syntactic transfer is one major source of the errors in CET-6writing by the non-English majors in the college;2) From the perspective of discourse transfer, the Chinese spiral and inductive discourse mode will interfere in the English linear discourse mode. The first hypothesis is the focus of the discussion.The research findings correspond with the research hypotheses. The results are found as follows:1) The negative syntactic transfer is one major source of the errors in CET-6writings and the main manifestations are the misuse of verb tense and verb voice, the avoidance and misuse of relative clause, prepositions and articles which are largely based on the Chinese thinking patterns and Chinese collocation habits and the subject omission.2) The main manifestations of discourse interference are the Chinese pattern of theme development model, lack of the cohesion and coherence of discourse, and lack of logical segmentation of paragraphs. There are many reasons explaining the above phenomena, which can be summarized from both linguistic factors and non-linguistic factors, and the non-linguistic factors will be discussed and analyzed in detail in this paper. Based on the above findings, further investigations of the implications for English teaching are made. The author explores the implications and meaning of the study from the three aspects of English learners, English teachers and SLA researchers.This study provides valid and reliable data for studying college English writing teaching and learning and it is useful in helping us understand a complete picture of English writing ability, aiding students to reduce the negative effects of syntactic and discourse transfer on their English writing and improving the English writing ability of Chinese college students. Meanwhile it also provides teachers with an opportunity to reflect on their teaching ways comprehensively. So it is advisable for college English writing research and teaching.