An Investigation Of L1-L2 Transfer In English Writings By Chinese High School Students: An Adaptive Transfer Perspective

This research investigates EFL(English as a foreign language) students writing, with a focus on analyzing errors. There are various causes of errors in EFL compositions, among which misapplication of rules governing the first language usage to writing in the second language is a major culprit. Therefore, this research is guided by the following three questions:(1) What are the characteristics of errors in Chinese high school students’ writings in English?(2) How many of those errors are caused by misapplying first language rules to producing compositions in the second language? In what ways are first language rules misapplied?(3) What are possible implications for improving effectiveness of foreign language instruction?Based on the theories of the Contrastive Rhetoric, the Errors Analysis and the Interlanguage, translation exercises are designed to as the control variable in the teaching procedure for students from two freshmen classes in a high school in Huzhou who are regarded as one experimental class and a control class. Students are requested to write compositions both at the beginning and the end of the semester and the compositions are collected and the errors in them are analyzed. At the same time questionnaires for students are also contained.The result indicates that the transfer error of Chinese takes a proportion of about78% in the total number of errors in students’ compositions. Among them the lexical and grammatical errors are more serious than the sentential errors. After the translation exercises for a term, students in the experimental class had a better grasp the words selection and the using of grammar, while in the control class the improvement is not so obvious. As for Chinese high school students, they do not have a high level of English knowledge so during writing most of them would first think the words and sentences in Chinese and then translate it into English, which may result in the whole composition not so native. With the help of the translation exercises, students can know more about the western thinking pattern and improve their English writing to be more natively.Thus the hypothesis can be validated. The translation exercises can help students to reduce transfer errors and enhance their writing competence.