| Uyghurs constitute the largest of minority’s population in Xinjiang, as well as that of junior middle school classes for students from backward areas. For Uyghur middle school students, Chinese is the second language acquired after their mother tongue, by which followed the third language English. As a result, the acquisition and use of Chinese has much influence on that of English.As a main form of language output, writing can reflect learners’ thinking process precisely. The study of cross-linguistic influence of Uyghur middle school students’ Chinese proficiency on their English writings would contribute to the improvement of English teaching methodologies and strategies and the advancement of the English teaching level concerning English writing. In addition, Lay found that, in the perspective of second language acquisition, positive transfer would occur in 7 aspects of writing ability from native language to second language. However, under the circumstances of third language acquisition,few related research is found. Therefore, three questions are set in this paper:(1) whether or not correlations exist between Chinese proficiency and English writing competence of Uyghur schoolers?(2) If the correlations exist, in which aspects Uyghur middle school students’ Chinese proficiency influence their English writing competence?(3) Whether the influence varies as a result of their different Chinese proficiencies?Firstly, based on the massive related researches, summary was made about cross-linguistic influence,at home and abroad, of the second language on the third language acquisition. Next, core concepts like Chinese proficiency and cross-linguistic influence were defined. Then three basic theoretical foundations in this research including transfer theory, error analysis theory and information processing theory were illustrated. Based on the above situations, 76 Uyghur students in Grade 9 were taken as research objects,whose Chinese proficiency and English writing competence were surveyed by means of test,error-analyzing approach, and interviews.The result shows that(1)remarkable positive correlation exists between Uyghur middle school students’ Chinese proficiency and their English writing competence with the correlation index r=0.753(p<0.01);(2) The influence embodies both positive transfer and negative transfer with the positive transfer being that after entering junior three, the research objects formed habits of thinking in Chinese to some degree, which functioned as the media language of English writing process such as conception,organization and recalling, so as to play an even more important role than their native language. Meanwhile,compositions from 76 testees show an overall of 403 errors originated from Chinese negative transfer,divided into 7 types, of which the third person singular’s error shows the highest frequency, accounting for33% of total negative transfer.(3)This study shows that significant difference exists concerning the influence of high-and-low Chinese proficiency of Uyghur middle school students on their English writings.The research offers two pieces of advice on the teaching of Uyghur middle school students’ English writing:(1)English instructors in those middle schools should fully realize the influence of Chinese positive and negative transfer on English writing competence and take active actions to reduce the negative transferwhile promoting the positive one.(2)The second language proficiency itself determines whether or not it would transfer to the third language and whether the transfer appears to be positive or negative. The efficiency of the third language acquisition depends much on its coordinated development with the second language acquisition level. Therefore teachers should pay attention to comparisons among Uyghur middle schoolers’ three languages, enhancing their second language proficiency synergistically, increasing the input of target language and intensifying writing practices, which can develop their writing skills effectively. |
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