A Study Of Negative Transfer Of Mongolian Syntax On English Writing For Mongolian Non-English Majors Of Inner Mongolia Normal University

Language transfer has long been known as one of the main branchesof linguistics and language acquisition. Postman, L stated that learning isa cumulative process, the more knowledge and the skills an individualacquires, the more likely it is that his or her new learning will be shapedor influenced by his or her past experiences. So is the language learning.Language transfer refers to the influence that learner‘s first languageexerts on the acquisition of second or foreign languages. This influencecan be presented in many ways. If the learner‘s first language canfacilitate second or foreign language we can consider it as a positivetransfer. On the contrary if the previous language prevents or interfereswith the subsequent language learning it is viewed as negative transfer.Commonly, however, it is a popular belief that first language slows downand interferes with the process of second acquisition.Mongolian is a minority group with a large population in China. ForMongolian students English learning is much more challenging andcomplicated than those Han nationalities. In the process of languageleaning learner‘s mother language is one of the sources of error in learnerlanguage. First language is already there in Mongolian students heads andthey begin to learn and accept subsequent languages with their motherlanguage as the foundation in their minds. So we can not neglect theexistence and influence oflearners‘first language.For most of the students English writing is always considered as oneof the difficult parts in English learning. When Mongolian students writeEnglish compositions they make many errors at the level of syntax andthese errors tend to be related to Mongolian syntax to some degree. The author tried to find out the negative transfer of Mongolian syntax onEnglish writing for Mongolian students. The thesis is to explore thefollowing research issues:the common difficulties in Mongolian students‘writings; the main types of syntactic transfer errors in their Englishwritings; the extent of the English writing influenced by Mongoliansyntactic structures.The thesis is conducted on the basis of relevant researches onlanguage transfer and language acquisition. Contrastive analysis betweenEnglish and Mongolian on syntax aspect is also presented as the referencewhen analyzing the errors. Mongolian non-English majors‘compositionsalong with their questionnaires serve as the instruments of the study. Theresearch is to work out the result by conducting the error analysis ofstudents‘compositions at the level of syntax. The major findings of thethesis is that intralingual errors take up a larger proportion; there aremainly six types of syntactical errors and four types of application errorswhich may be influenced by Mongolian syntactic structures.The thesis consists of the following five chapters. Chapter one is theintroduction including research background, purpose of the study andsignificance of the study. The second chapter is literature review whichcovers five aspects of the theoretical foundations of the thesis. Chapterthree is research methodology presenting the research questions, researchsubjects and research instruments. The key part of the thesis is ChapterFour in which the negative transfer theory is used to analyze the syntacticerrors of the subjects and the causes of these errors. Chapter Five isconclusion including major findings, pedagogical implications andrecommendations for future study.