Negative Language Transfer In English Writing

In the process of English learning in China’s institutions of higher education, the mother tongue of the learners has a vital effect upon the their English learning. In linguistics, the impact of the mother tongue on foreign language learning is often referred to as "transfer". This transfer phenomenon can be both positive and negative. The positive transfer can stimulate the learner’s learning while the negative transfer can hinder the learner’s learning. This impediment is reflected in the students’English writing. Error analysis and language teaching are inseparable and have been subjected to the attention of researchers.This study based on Second Language Acquisition, Negative Transfer, Contrastive Analysis Hypothesis, Error Analysis and Interlanguage theories. It focused on the negative impact of the mother tongue transfer on college students’English writing. The research corpus comes from the English compositions by English majors of different grades in Daqing Normal University. By analyzing the errors in their writing, based on the results and discoveries of the study, corresponding measures are proposed to promote English writing teaching and student writing skills.In this study, mainly qualitative research is adopted and it is supplemented by quantitative research. Errors in80English writings are collected and divided into four main categories. They are analyzed and discussed as10common errors. The research results obviously demonstrate the presence of negative transfer of Chinese to the college students’English writing. The negative transfer is mainly found in four aspects:in vocabulary, syntax, discourse and mother tongue thinking. The error frequency analysis shows that the error from mother tongue negative transfer account for46.2%of all errors of which syntax errors account for the most. The most prominent errors are those of verb tense and voice. These errors are mainly caused by the differences between English and Chinese. In the writing process, students often subconsciously use Chinese sentence patterns in their English writing directly.English and Chinese are two different language systems. The differences between the two languages lead to a large number of errors which appear in the students’writing. In Chinese-speaking environment, the students have not yet formed a system of thinking in English. They carry out English learning only depending on the aid of their Chinese knowledge in their minds. Generally they organize English languages according to Chinese sentences and structures. Their Chinese thinking precedes the translation of their thoughts into English. Therefore, there are many English sentences with Chinese characteristics in the students’ English writing. Chinglish shows the learners’word-for-word translation of their thoughts based on their mother tongue thinking. In view of these errors, this paper makes some proposals on the teaching of vocabulary, grammar and English writing strategies to reduce the negative transfer of the mother tongue in the students’English writing.