An Investigation On Chinese Negative Transfer In Senior High School Students' English Writing

For a long time,mother-tongue negative transfer in foreign language learning has been one of the major issues discussed in language learning and teaching research.Students' writing ability is a way of showing their comprehensive ability.Negative transfer from native language is a major obstacle for Chinese students to improve their English writing skill.Based on the results of previous researches,the author conducted an investigation on the phenomenon of Chinese negative transfer in senior high school students' English writing,analyzed the common errors caused by mother-tongue negative transfer and attempted to find out suitable teaching strategies for senior high school students to improve their writing competence.The significance of this research is to find effective ways for second language learners to avoid negative transfer from mother tongue and to improve their English writing ability,which can provide practical references for the research in this field.With a combination of quantitative and qualitative research methods,this thesis aims to find out the distribution and frequency of errors occurring at all levels due to mother language transfer in sample compositions.Based on the negative transfer from native language in senior high school students' English writing,the research questions of this study are as follows:(1)What types of errors do senior high school students tend to make at lexical level due to mother-tongue negative transfer?(2)What types of errors do senior high school students tend to make at morphological level due to mother-tongue negative transfer?(3)What types of errors do senior high school students tend to make at syntactic level due to mother-tongue negative transfer?(4)What is the proportion of each type of the errors? In order to achieve the expected goal,the author collected and analyzed 60 students' writing examples,examining negative transfer from L1.The subjects are from Mayang No.1 Senior High School,and their English level is relatively low.They were asked to write a composition titled "New School Life" within 30 minutes(no less than 120 words).Then the errors caused by mother-tongue negative transfer in their writings were analyzed thoroughly.Furthermore,a questionnaire was used to investigate and explore students' writing errors in more detailed aspects.According to the results of the analysis from the sample compositions of the students,the errors caused by negative transfer from students' mother tongue are divided into three different categories: errors at lexical level,morphological level,and syntactic level.Lexical errors are mainly reflected in part of speech,misuse of sense of the word,improper use of collocations.Morphological errors are mainly reflected in singular and plural form of nouns,incorrect use of tenses,the misuse of participles and so on.Syntactic errors are mainly reflected in the absence of sentence components,run-on sentences and so on.More specifically,syntactic errors take up42.3%,accounting for the largest proportion.Among syntactic errors,run-on sentence errors account for the largest proportion,taking up 34%,which means that students still tend to rely on the Chinese-way of thinking in the process of English writing.The second one is morphological errors.The proportion of morphological errors is 34.2%and verb morpheme errors make up the largest proportion of morphological errors,which means that students' awareness of the differences between Chinese and English languages is comparatively weak.And lexical errors take up the smallest proportion,accounting for 23.3%.From the final research statistics,it can be concluded that Chinese students' native language really produces a certain amount of negative interference in their English writing process.Based on the findings of the study,it is believed that students still tend to use Chinese-way of thinking in English writing.They just depend on the internal logical meaning of sentences to achieve the integrity with the transitional words missing most of the time.At the same time,the lack of English language environment makes it difficult for Chinese students to get rid of the influence of Chinese thinking modes.In addition,the limited vocabulary and the lack of cultural background make L1 interference occur easily.Finally,the lack of target language input directly leads to students' stronger dependence on their mother tongue.This thesis also provides suggestions for English teaching and learning in China,particularly in senior high school.Firstly,teachers should help students enhance their awareness of the differences between Chinese and English.It is of great importance for teachers tocultivate students' sensitivity and insight on the similarities and differences between the two languages through comparative analysis of Chinese and English languages.Secondly,teachers should pay special attention to the input of target language in English teaching.With limited language input,students are apt to turn to Chinese for help hence the errors occur.Therefore,adequate language input should be increased to meet the needs of writing.Lastly,teachers should increase the practice of writing in their English teaching.Teachers can guide students to use appropriate native language strategies to promote their English language output and help them clear the obstacles in the process of English learning.At the same time,they should teach students the basic skills of writing,and do certain exercises targeting at the problems in writing.As for students,firstly they should deal with the errors correctly,errors actually can provide feedback in their process of learning.Secondly,they should improve the learning of English vocabulary and grammar;a solid foundation of English language knowledge can effectively reduce the mother-tongue negative transfer in their English writing.Lastly,they are supposed to do more bilingual extensive reading to increase the input of the target language so as to reduce their dependence on the mother tongue.In addition,in order for the improvement of writing ability and teaching level,students and teachers should make use of the influence of positive transfer of native language in classes.