A Research On Transference Of Mother Tongue In English Lexical Learning Of Mongolian College Students

Language Transference has always been a central issue in applied linguistics and second language acquisition for at least a century.At first,it was regarded as an obstacle when linking together with behaviorism theory.However,more and more researchers believe that mother tongue plays a very important role in second language acquisition in recent years.In this thesis,based on the theories of the second language acquisition and third language acquisition abroad and the status at home,a comparison between the lexis of the native language(Mongolian)and that of the target language(English)is made to find out the similarities and differences of lexicon between the two languages,such as derivation words,compound words,conversion,loan-words and the rules of word change.The most important thing is that understanding the positive and negative transference from native language to target language helps Mongolian college students recognize the similarities and differences between Mongolian and English lexis so that it helps them learn English more efficiently.The research was conducted in Inner Mongolian University and Inner Mongolian Normal University,where the non-English majors classes of the Mongolian students who are taught in Mongolian from the primary school to college were chosen as participants.And the author analyse the lexis building rules between Mongolian and English through a contrastive analysis.The union reality,the author put forward the following research questions:first of all,what are the similarities and differences of lexis between Mongolian and English?Secondly,What are the effects of the similarities and differences of lexis between the two languages during Mongolian college students'English lexical learning?Finally,what are the potential factors that may impact on the language transference from Mongolian to English in English lexical learning of Mongolian college students?In the process of this thesis,the instruments is questionnaire and test which use SPSS22 software and Excel 2017 to calculate the data and make the tables.Thus it makes a research on the language transference from Mongolian to English.The results indicates the responses from the questionnaires show that the smaller language distances between Mongolian and English in terms of lexis such as derivation,conversion,compounding and loan words during the Mongolian college students'English lexical learning,and they are more willing to transfer the relevant knowledge of Mongolian to that of English.The results from the tests show that the similarities between Mongolian to English on lexical aspects such as derivation words,compound words,conversion and loan-words,which facilitate the English lexical learning of Mongolian college students that is positive transference.However,the differences from Mongolian to English on lexical aspects such as derivation words,compound words and rules of words change,which interfere the English lexical learning of Mongolian college students that is negative transference.The thesis includes five chapters.Chapter One is an introduction of the research background,significance,purpose and outline of thesis.Chapter Two is literature review and theoretical basis of the research.Chapter Three is the research design including research questions,participants,instruments,procedures and data collection.Chapter Four is about the results and a contrastive analysis from questionnaires and tests.Some suggestions about pedagogical implication for the future research are also discussed here.Chapter Five is the conclusion including the main findings from the research and some limitations for future researches in which more factors that effecting on English learning should be taken into consideration.