Positive Chinese Transfer In English Learning And Its Pedagogical Implications—a Study Of Mother Tongue’s Function From A Cognitive Framework

The phenomenon of language transfer has always been a central issue in the field of second language acquisition. The term-"language transfer" refers to the influences which mother tongue exerts on the acquisition of foreign languages. Meanwhile, the role and status of mother tongue in the process of foreign language learning has also been a controversial topic for both linguists and scholars. Different linguistic schools hold different views toward this issue. In the specific context of China, language transfer mainly focuses on the transfer of learners’mother tongue-Chinese in English learning process. In order to provide English learners an authentic language environment, teaching method such as "bilingual" and "immersion" are strongly recommended and delivered among various schools in China. However, the continuous practice of these teaching methods do not come to a satisfying result due to the disparity between English as a second language and English as a foreign language and different teaching resources.The fact that knowledge of mother tongue does exert some influences on various aspects of English teaching cannot be denied, with its function being considered as the central point of English teaching method in EFL. Although most of the scholars and linguists hold the view that the negative transfer occurs more frequently and hinders the process of English learning which leads to the poor English competence of the learners, the author of this thesis believes that Chinese affects pronunciation teaching, morphology teaching, and syntax teaching in English teaching process, with a large amount of similarities existing in pronunciation, grammar, word order and syntax. In this sense, the author assumes that the positive transfer of mother tongue does exist and its blurred influence is caused by the lack and absence of deep investigations and further researches. By revealing the psychological mechanism of English learners, cognitive theories demonstrate the application of mother tongue in English learning process is inevitable and necessary learning strategies as well as communicative strategies. Besides, the proper application and involvement of mother tongue may ease the anxiety of English learners which not only contributes to efficient English teaching but accelerates the learning process as well.Based on the previous researches and studies in language transfer, this thesis attempts to give detailed and specific explanations about similarities between Chinese and English in several aspects such as pronunciation, grammar, word order and syntax by delivering a questionnaire survey which takes art students as its subjects. The thesis tries to confirm the positive influences of mother tongue on learners during English learning process with assessing the specific details of English teaching. By taking both the factors which exert influence on language transfer and the relative cognitive theories into consideration, this thesis aims at designing a fit teaching method for the art students so as to improve their poor language competence.