A Study On Chinese Syntactic Negative Transfer In English Writing Of Senior High School Students Based On Interlanguage Theory

English writing is a key standard reflecting comprehensive ability of English learners.There exists a common phenomenon where some sentences written by high school students simply consist of English words which are translated from Chinese words directly.That is because when learning English,students are accustomed to using Chinese knowledge to understand English if unfamiliar with language rules of English,which is universal when students learn English in a Chinese environment.A lot of students often put English into Chinese syntactic rules without considering whether they are suitable or not,such as abusing vocabulary,syntax,discourse,among which the most obvious problem is applying syntax mechanically,resulting in lots of Chinese English in their writing works.Based on interlanguage theory,this study conducted a survey about the errors caused by Chinese syntactic negative transfer,aiming to put forward a few suggestions on English writing teaching,improving the ability of English writing of students.This study intends to research the following questions: 1)What are the syntactic errors of Chinese negative transfer in the students’ English writing?Is the overuse of Chinese strategies one of the main causes of these errors ? 2)Is the number of all syntactic errors of Chinese negative transfer and each syntactic error different between high score level and low score level? 3)Does correlation exist between errors of Chinese syntactic negative transfer and students’ English level,and the score of English writing? To solve above questions,the study collects 100 English writing works from three classes in senior 2 students of NO.1 middle school in Zhenyuan county,marking out all the syntactic errors caused by Chinese negative transfer and doing statistical analysis.Meanwhile,combined with the practice of the surveyed students,questionnaireⅠconcerning Chinese strategies used by students when writing English composition and questionnaireⅡabout the students’ expectation to English teachers were made according to Xu Weiqing(2010)and Xia Shuhua(2018),to analyse and research the syntactic errors caused by Chinese negative transfer in English writing of high school students.Four main findings were got from the study: 1)Errors of Chinese Syntactic negative transfer in the English writing of high school students are: errors of predicate verb,errors of preposition,errors of article,errors of subject,errors of singular and plural forms of nouns,errors of attribute,errors of non-predicate verb,errors of conjunction,errors of adverbial modifier.The overuse of Chinese strategies is one of the main causes leading students to make mistakes in syntax.2)There are great differences of the number of all syntactic errors and each syntactic error of Chinese negative transfer between high score level and low score level.3)Great negative correlation appears between syntactic errors of Chinese negative transfer and students’ English level,and English writing score.According to the above findings,several suggestions on writing teaching are put forward: 1)Teachers should reinforce contrast analysis and get students to do plenty of English syntactic exercises.For example,teachers can gather the syntactic errors in students’ English writing,contracting differences between Chinese and English,especially stress the distinction of active voice and passive voice between Chinese and English,and the position of preposition and article in English sentences,then provide students with exercises of English-Chinese translation,and sentence pattern transformation exercises.Meanwhile,teachers can use English expressions to explain English words,provide some reasonable original English books for students to read,and encourage students to read text loudly and recite model essay.2)Teachers should pay more attention to the differences among students,instructing different students in different ways.For example,teacher can help students who are poor at English writing to analyze the differences of simple sentences between Chinese and English,and let them use simple sentences to do English-Chinese translation.As for the students mastering English better,teachers should explain the different position of attribute between Chinese and English,especially the position of attribute clause and antecedent,presenting relevant examples,then have students do imitative writing,exercises of Chinese-English translation and sentence pattern transformation.3)Teachers should make the way to polish English writing various,and correct errors in time.For example,teachers can let students exchange their writing works to correct mistakes,make them correct their own mistakes again,and then teachers polish the writing and provide advice on correcting mistakes in time.