A Study Of Chinese And English Transfer In French Learning For The Middle School Students

Since the 1960 s,language transfer theory,language acquisition theory,and especially second language acquisition theory have been important theories in the field of applied linguistics.The theory of third language acquisition is a brand-new research field that emerges through continuous deepening and discussion during the development of second language acquisition theory.Scholars at home and abroad are paying more and more attention to this new field.With the advancement of the college entrance examination reformation in 2019,another three languages have been added to the curriculum reformation plan for the senior high school students,and there will be more and more young multilingual learners.How to effectively use the existing language knowledge to help learn a new language and how to use the existing acquisition theory to promote the learning process of a new language have become the issues that the researchers pay close attention to.This study is based on the transfer theory under the framework of third language acquisition theory,takes the middle school students who learn the second foreign language as the research object and their writing samples as the research corpus to make a quantitative and qualitative analysis.Through identification and analysis of errors,the thesis explains the causes of the errors and then interviews the learners with the topic of learning strategies to explore the influence of Chinese and English on French learning.The study shows that in the process of French learning,both the existing Chinese and English language knowledge have transfer effect,but the effect of the two languages is manifested in different aspects: The influence of Chinese transfer is mainly reflected in vocabulary and discourse,while Englishtransfer is mainly reflected in vocabulary and grammar,and the types of transfer errors caused by English are more diverse.In addition,according to the questionnaire,the research objects are generally aware of the similarities and differences among the three languages,and can actively seek help with the existing language knowledge.But at the same time,the existing language knowledge can also bring obstacles in the process of strategy application and French learning.Through the analysis and discussion of the research results,the conclusion is drawn,hoping to make suggestions for the second foreign language teaching of the middle school students in China,serve the teaching practice and enrich the theory of the third language acquisition in China.Finally,the deficiencies of the study,both methodologically and academically are pointed out and the suggestions for further research are proposed.