A Study Of Chinese (L1) And English (L2) Negative Transfer In Japanese (L3) Learning

Because of globalization,more and more people recognize that it is not enough to master only one or two languages.People start to learn a third even a fourth language to improve their communication skills with foreigners.As a result,in the early 1970 s,based on the theory of Second Language Acquisition(SLA),the theory of Third Language Acquisition(TLA)appeared.However,there are still not enough researches on Third Language Acquisition so far.In this study,28 undergraduate students in their second academic year,majoring in Japanese at North China University of Science and Technology are selected as subjects.The purpose of this study is to identify cross-linguistic influence(CLI)from Chinese(L1)and English(L2)during the process Japanese(L3)learning.CLI could be divided into positive language transfer and negative language transfer.This research will focus on the impact of negative transfer from previous acquired language in the aspect of Japanese vocabulary learning.Both qualitative and quantitative research methods are used in this research.There are three research instruments,including the questionnaire,Japanese vocabulary test and interview.According to the analysis of research data,the following findings are found.Firstly,the learning of Japanese vocabulary is easier to be influenced by Chinese due to shorter distance between these two languages.Secondly,negative language transfer from both Chinese(L1)and English(L2)would be reflected in morphological transfer,phonetic transfer,sematic transfer and word-class conversion transfer.This study could enrich the theory of TLA in China and help researchers have a better understanding of CLI.Meanwhile,some practical implications would be provided for L3 teachers in order to improve leaners L3 learning efficiency.