Cross Linguistic Influence Of Typical Mongolian And Chinese Syntactic Structures On The Oral English Expression Of Mongolian English Majors

Language error is a common phenomenon in foreign language learning and no learners can avoid it. However, the significance of language accuracy in communication is recognized again in the current linguistics and applied linguistics circle. Mongolian students, as a distinctive group who acquire Mongolian as their first language and learned Chinese as their second language, are influenced by both Mongolian(L1) and Chinese(L2) in their oral English expression. Therefore, the study of Mongolian students’ language transfer in oral English expression should be processed from the perspectives of both Mongolian(L1) and Chinese(L2).In recent years, there have been an increasing number of Error Analysis studies in foreign language learning, of which most concentrate on the influence of L1 on L2 or of L1 on L3 in terms of written English expression, and relatively few studies are devoted to the language transfer in oral English expression from the perspective of the influence of L1 and L2 on L3. Therefore, concerning these points, the researcher of the present thesis carried out an empirical research to find out the influence of typical Mongolian(L1) and Chinese(L2) syntactical structures to Mongolian English major students’ oral English expression. Based on the above statements, the study attempts to answer the following research questions:(1) What is the distribution of typical syntactic errors in the oral English expression of Mongolian English majors?(2) What different syntactic errors are likely to appear in Grade One students and Grade Three students’ oral English expression?(3) What are the reasons causing the above errors?The present thesis adopts quantitative and qualitative methods to investigate the influence of typical Mongolian and Chinese syntactic structures on Mongolian English major students’ oral English expression.Nineteen Mongolian English major students each ten Mongolian English majors from 2014 Grade and nine Mongolian English majors from 2012 Grade are chosen from the Inner Mongolia Normal University to participate in the research. The data are collected through recording,interview, and Likert-scale questionnaire: the speaking recording is processed to collect Mongolian English Major students’ oral English expression errors; interview is done to see how the participants think about the influence of typical Mongolian and Chinese syntactic structures on their oral English expression; the questionnaire is designed to show Mongolian English major students’ attention level to the syntactic errors they make in their oral English expression and SPSS 17.0 is used to analyze the quantitative data from the questionnaire. The research findings are:(1) Mongolian English major students make intralingual errors about three times more than interlingual errors.(2) First-year students make more interlingual errors influenced by Mongolian and Chinese syntactical structures while third-year students make more intralingual errors that result from the incomplete mastery of the target language in their oral English expression. However, first-year students show higher occurrences both in intralingual errors and interlingual errors compared to third-year students.(3) First-year students’ oral English expression errors are mainly caused by the syntactical influence of Mongolian(L1) and Chinese(L2) while third year students’ errors are caused incomplete mastery of the target language. In general, Mongolian English major students’ oral English expression errors are mainly due to the students’ incomplete level of the target language linguistic knowledge and weak language awareness of English(L3), which caused their mixed usage of syntactical structures of three languages in their oral English expression.In summary, the findings show that Mongolian English major students make a large number of interlingual errors(about one fourth)and interlingual errors(about three fourths) in their oral English expression. The present thesis makes a systematic classification of interlingual and intralingual errors in Grade One and Grade ThreeMongolian English major students’ oral English expression and provides a basis for university teachers to have an understanding of the Mongolian English major students’ oral English error focus to help their students to correct their oral English errors based on their different grades.It should be noted at the same time that the study itself has some limitations. For instance, the scale of the oral English recording is rather limited and there maybe some deficiencies in the questionnaire because its compilation is restricted by many factors. Therefore, further studies on Mongolian English major students’ oral English expression errors influenced by Mongolian and Chinese syntactical structures should be conducted in the future.