A Study Of Negative Transfer Of Native Language On English Writing Of Senior High School Students

World’s economic globalization makes English the main international language, which is also one of the most important ways for China to communicate with other countries, especially the ones that take English as the official language. Writing is, to some extent, the complete reflection of the other three basic skills-----listening, speaking and reading. It also reveals one’s English level from one side. Therefore English writing is of great importance. However, as an English teacher in senior high school, the writer finds that students make various mistakes when they learn how to write in English in their writing, among which the use of Chinglish in particular calls for teachers’ attention. Investigating its reason, the writer finds negative transfer of mother tongue affects students most. Consequently, studying the negative transfer phenomenon of mother tongue and thinking actively about the solutions to the problem have been the major tasks of most English teachers.How to help students get rid of the Chinglish to improve their writing ability during classroom teaching? The most important is to make students aware of the errors caused by the negative transfer of mother tongue and then correct them. By categorizing and analyzing students’ mistakes in their writings, this essay explores the negative transfer of Chinese on English writing in order to find out some strategies to solve the problem.Based on the related theories of the second language acquisition, the thesis adopts both the qualitative and quantitative research methods. 105 students from different classes in Ethnic Middle School of Dongfang City participated in the research as subjects. Their writings from the first monthly exam papers are chosen as samples for analysis. The analysis of the statistical test results confirms that the interference of mother tongue extremely affect students’ English writing. Afterwards the writer summarizes the typical errors in terms of vocabulary, syntax and discourse, which are analyzed according to the predecessors’ transfer theories, error-analysis theories and contrastive analysis methods, further clarifying the main causes. This main causes from teaching, learning and cultural differences of thinking. In the end, it comes to the conclusion that the negative transfer of mother tongue should be dealt with correctly for the promotion of the positive transfer of language. Therefore, the corresponding strategies for the negative transfer of mother tongue should be proposed in English writing teaching to improve students’ writing ability.